X-Message-Number: 3635
From:  (Joseph J. Strout)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: LTP + Alternative Technology
Date: 7 Jan 1995 00:08:10 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <>

In article <>,  (Thomas
Donaldson) wrote:

> Perhaps I didn't make myself clear, but I've never questioned that our
> memory capacity is finite. What I was pointing out was that LTP could not
> alone explain long term memory because if so our memory would be a whole lot
> less than it is. No one yet, even the very healthiest old person, seems yet
> to have filled up their memory. I'll also say that this possibility does
> not worry me when we think about immortality. We don't remember things and
> ideas we have not used for a long time; I suspect that what will happen will
> be that older stuff will simply get dumped by more recent stuff. (Besides 
> the likelihood that we'll have ways of adding to our memory, too).

You seem to assume that human (or other animal) memory is like a 
conventional computer, where each new datum is put in a little storage area

separate from all the others.  When all the storage areas are used up, 
nothing more can be stored.  This is clearly not the case.  All evidence 
indicates that memory is stored in a distributed fashion; new memories 
overlap with old ones.  Artificial neural networks provide an excellent 
model of this.  Such systems experience graceful degradation, i.e. as one 
attempts to store more and more information, the memory quality breaks 
down, but there is no fixed "capacity".  Things just get muddled together, 
especially things you haven't seen or done for a long time.  Such systems 
also exhibit such phenomena as interference, which you wouldn't expect if 
memories were stored separately as you imply.

I agree with your sentiments about exploring alternate technologies, but I 
don't believe you've justified saying that LTP is not the basis of memory.


-- 
Joseph J. Strout                   Dept. of Neuroscience
                   Univ of CA, San Diego
--------------------------------------------------------
check out the Mind Uploading Home Page:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/jstrout/uploading/MUHomePage.html



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