X-Message-Number: 7897
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 1997 21:40:42 -0800 (PST)
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: Uploading

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In Message #7885  (Thomas Donaldson) On 18 Mar 1997 Wrote:
                    
         >Time for Uploading Chapter 3 (or is it 4?):


More like Chapter 34, but before I get into it I want to say again that 
Uploading is not the enemy, death is. Cryonics is here now, Uploading is not, 
they are not competitors.
            


        >One major problem with any emulation by a DIGITAL computer, no
                >matter how large, fast, small, etc etc is simply the chaos problem 


Chaos means that a tiny change in initial conditions can cause a huge change 
in the outcome, but I don't see what that has to do with the price of eggs.  
Are you saying that when they repair your frozen body if it is not 100% 
identical to you at this instant then "you" have not survived. If so then 
every time you drink a cup of coffee you die, because that certainly changes 
you.                                      

        >NO astronomer would claim that the Solar System is digital:


In the first place, nowadays most astronomers spend much more time in front 
of a DIGITAL computer than a telescope, in the second place, every astronomer 
knows that the dominate theme of Science in the last hundred years is that 
EVERYTHING is digital. We found out that matter came in digital packages 
about a century ago, although even the ancient Greeks suspected it, then we 
found out that electrical charge was digital too, then energy, then momentum, 
then the Genetic Code, then information, then spin, then charm, then color... 

It's true that nobody has found a quantum theory of  gravity yet, but 
everybody knows we need one, General Relativity is not compatible with 
Quantum theory and breaks down  completely when things get smaller than the 
Plank Length or less the Plank Time,  space-time becomes a confusing foam, 
to understand what is going  on at even smaller distances or shorter duration 
we need quantum gravity and  we don't have that yet.  
 
For this reason the idea of continuos spacetime is looking increasingly  
suspect. I quote Richard Feynman, on the trouble quantum mechanics has with  
gravity and speculating on possible solutions:        

   "Another way of describing this difficulty is to say that  perhaps the 
   idea that two points can be infinitely close together is wrong, the 
   assumption that we can use geometry down to the last notch is false."     

In other words, two points can not be INFINITELY close together. Contrary to   
high school geometry, a line is NOT made of an INFINITE number of points. 
Two points can NOT be just anywhere, but only in a finite number of  
positions.       
                         
It's ironic that you are talking to us in a digital language of 26 letters by  
way of a binary digital computer, and you're using those pure digital 
techniques to say analog is better .        
                         


        >I dislike Nanotechnology, but have no objection to nanotechnology.
                >We capitalize God, and those who capitalize nanotechnology         
        >unwittingly tell us something of how they feel about it. 


I'm big N and I'm proud. 
         


        >If the computer takes its information and program off a disk, and
        
        >reads the result back onto the disk, then it is essentially moving
                >and modifying a large set of very small magnets.


And the human brain is essentially moving and modifying a large set of very  
small sodium, potassium, and calcium ions.         
                        


        >an object can be stored in a computer, so long as those storing it
                >agree on the set of symbols used         


And I can ask another person to remember something for me, as long as we 
agree on a language to use. I don't need to have any idea of how his brain 
works, just as a child needs no knowledge of the internal workings of his 
computer to play a game on it.
         


        >I have no more reason to believe that this computer simulation is
        
        >conscious than I have to believe that the characters in a film are
                >conscious. 


I can pass The Turing Test, so can you, someday a computer will too, 
the characters in a film never will.


                                            John K Clark     

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