X-Message-Number: 7844
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 23:09:46 -0500
From: Garret Smyth <>
Subject: Timescale of cryonics & uploading

Thomas Donaldson:
"As for uploading yourself, I personally doubt that will become possible
until some time after those frozen now have been revived."


Joe Strout:
"I find the prospect of repairing the brains
and bodies of those now frozen to be much more daunting than copying their
brains into artificial devices...  ...So if you would kindly provide a
bit more explanation and references, I would be much obliged."



The question here is *how* are you going to copy brains into artificial devices?

Learning is not simply a matter of whether there is a connection between one 
cell

and another, but how easily the synapses are triggered. The threshhold changes 
with
learning so affecting both "memory" and "processing" (in the Von Neumann 

architecture sense) are affected. To copy a brain in fine detail - and to upload

a "person" as I'm sure even die hard uploaders will admit, will require a pretty
high

definition copy - would need a scan of the brain almost molecule by molecule. 
This
would be so that ion gates and chemical receptors would not only be recorded 

numerically but also in terms of position. On top of this, current suspensions 
are

pretty disruptive, so the scanning will have to be done on an even finer scale 
so 
that calculations can be made as to where things should have been.


Okay, MRI might be able to do this scanning, but the knowledge needed to 
calulate 
what the information about fine brain structure means would need a knowledge of
so much greater than we have know that it we'll probably need to have done a 
plethora of nano-scale experiments to get there.


On top of this, gung ho neuro-patient that I am, I remain to be convinced that 
an 
uploaded copy of me would actually be me. Wimpy though you may think this point

of view, you have to agree that my uploaded copy (version) would agree with me 
and

so consider its ancestor cruelly murdered by the people that did the upload. So
beware of angry robots that answer to my name seeking vengeance!

TTFN


Garret

PS Sorry for the lack of references, but I don't think the information I drew on
was too controversial (and its ages since I left University!)


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