X-Message-Number: 3888
From:  (Robin Hanson)
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 17:37:43 -0800
Subject: Why I'm Signed Up


Marty Nemko explains he is leaning against signing up because he
expects sufficient (nanotech) cell repair to remain prohibitively
expensive.

I too am wary of relying on a cell-repair revival scenario.  The human
body looks too damn complicated to inspire great hope of detailed
understanding and repair abilities anytime soon.  We've known how to
fly for some time now, but are still pretty ignorant about how birds
and bees do it.

But I've just finished the (neuro) sign up process, and here's my
reasoning.

I think the chances are pretty good that within a century or two we
will identify the important small brain units, and their relevant
states, and know how to make "good enough" local models of how the
state of each unit changes as a function of its interaction with a
relatively small number of other units.  

If the errors in such models, relative to the real thing, are
sufficiently small when compared to the noise and disturbances that
real brain units must deal with, it seems plausible to me that a
computational simulation of such a model will give a similar large
scale behavior to a real brain (when connected of course to
appropriate I/O).  Finally, I think the chances are pretty good that
such a computation with similar large scale behavior would have
similar internal "conscious" experience.

The cost of scanning a frozen brain in enough detail to construct such
a model, and of getting a big enough computer to run it fast enough to
be interesting, will be great at first, but plausibly will soon fall
low enough to imagine revival.  Thus my hopes of revival are almost
entirely focused on the "uploading" scenario.  

Of course there are real risks that the physics of consciousness is
too different from my hopes, risks of pain/insanity/alienation from a
subtly not good enough model, and risks that scientific process will be
slower than I hope.  But I think there is relatively little risk
that a frozen brain won't contain the important information, or that
computer prices won't continue to fall rapidly, or that scanning
technology won't get cheap enough fast enough.

The biggest risk is, I think, that current cryonics organizations
won't last long enough to get me from here to there.  They may suffer
a war, political turmoil, or simply mismanage their assets.  But if
you sign up too, that risk for me can only go down.  So please
reconsider.

Robin Hanson

P.S. To any future cryo-revivers scanning old email for clues to
intentions: If you can upload me, DO IT.  If you aren't sure
whether it would work but are sure that in trying you wouldn't lose
the relevant information to let you try again later, then TRY IT.
I'd rather suffer the risk of upload-alienation than pin my hopes on
getting flesh again later.  Besides, as my article "If Uploads Come
First" in Extropy 6:2, 1994 explains, I don't expect much demand for
flesh-folks once uploading is feasible.

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