X-Message-Number: 5930
From:  (Steven B. Harris/Virginia George )
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension,uk.legal
Subject: Re: Virtue of suffering
Date: 13 Mar 1996 05:54:34 GMT
Message-ID: <4i5nuq$>
References: <> <4i56ce$>

In <4i56ce$> 
(RHA) writes: 
>
>>Nanotechnology is the hardware, but the software will be what really
makes
>>it go, and preparing the software to repair the brain will be very
>>complex, I think.
>
> Gee, then I wonder how a human embryo manages to build one 
> without all that "complex" software. Do you think we might
> bootstrap the process by learning how to read our own DNA
> code; you know, sorta like "Read The Chapter On 'How-To-Build-
> A-Brain' In The Freakin Manual".


Comment: No.  DNA is a recipe, not a blueprint.  You might be able to
bake a chocolate chip cookie according to a simple recipe, but let's
see you make another one that is exactly the same (location of chips
and all), or repair one with the same level of complexity of machinery,
if somebody crumbles it.

It's always easier to make stuff mindlessly than to fix it.  That's why
you can total your car with only a minor amount of damage, don't you
know.  And why we are very close to totally automated auto production,
but nowhere near automated auto repair.  See the point?

 
> Funny how organisms have built and *repaired* their bodies
> simply by using their built-in DNA source code without 
> *first* needing complex third party software.  

Organisms don't repair most of their bodies, because they don't need to
before they reproduce.  Look at your teeth.  Well, guess what-- the
same is happening to your neurons, your eye lens, your alveoli,
glomeruli, etc, etc.  You're built mostly of one-shot devices.  You're
about as self-repairing as a car that is self-tuning and
self-lubricating.  Don't let a few simple systems fool you.

> The problem with our internal source code is that damn "All 
> Systems Stop" command.
>-- 
>rha


Nope.  The problem with our internal source code is that it was never
written to make us immortally self-repairing.  It didn't have to be,
and so it wasn't.  All those self-repair systems needed for a non-aging
complex organism don't even exist.  It is the height of silliness to
imagine that they have been designed by evolution (for what reason, and
what purpose?), and then disabled (for what reason and what purpose--
you cannot have it both ways).

                                            Steve Harris, M.D.


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