X-Message-Number: 8389
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 21:22:15 -0700 (PDT)
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: Marty's Questions

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In #8379 On  Wed, 16 Jul 1997  Marty Nemko <> Wrote:
                             
        >MEMORY IS IT LEAST PARTLY ELECTRICAL, SO WHEN ONE DIES, MEMORIES ARE 
        >LOST, MUCH AS COMPUTER INFORMATION IN RAM IS LOST WHEN THE POWER IS 
        >TURNED OFF.  


Memory is just not that ephemeral, and that tells us that electro-chemical 
circuits in the brain are almost certainly not used for long term memory. 
People who have survived powerful electrical shocks can remember nothing about 
the 10 minutes or so before their accident but their long term memory is not 
harmed. Children have been submerged in near freezing water with no heartbeat
for almost an hour, and they not only survived, but still knew who they were.
                                                  
The most important storage mechanism of the brain is thought by most to be 
Long Term Potentiation (LTP). It theorizes that memory is encoded by varying 
the physical structure and thus the strength of the 10^14 synapses that  
connect the 10^11 neurons in the human brain. We know that when one synapse 
undergoes LTP it spreads out to other synapses (the LTP signal is probably 
sent by the diffusion of nitric oxide). This means there must be a large 
amount of redundancy in the storage mechanism of memory (if LTP really is 
memory) and that could  help a lot if we want to repair a badly damaged 
frozen brain.
          
        >the probability that my memories will be retained during the 
        >hundred(s) of years TIMES


Chemical reactions at liquid Nitrogen temperatures would be so slow that the 
damage from natural background radiation would probably be more important. 
Even so, your shelf life should be hundreds if not thousands of years. 


        >probability that your suspension will be uninterrupted.


Yes, that is one of my biggest concerns, will I really remain at liquid 
nitrogen temperature until the age of Nanotechnology?  I don't know, I'll 
just have to hope for the best.
             

        >MOST OF THE ESTIMATES OF THE TIME IT WILL TAKE UNTIL WE CAN BE 
        >REVIVED IS BETWEEN 100 AND 250 YEARS, 
             

I think that's too high, I would say 40 to 100 years, and if we can't do it
in 100 years we never will. Almost anything we can imagine that doesn't 
violate the Laws of Physics will be possible in a century.
           

        >IN MY VIEW, THE PROBABILITY OF OUR HAVING THE TECHNOLOGY TO DO NOT

        >--TOO-COSTLY REVIVALS WITHIN THE NEXT 250 YEARS IS NO BETTER THAN 0.1.
                

If a society could control matter with atomic precision, and they would need
to for revivals, then everything would be either dirt cheap (literally) or
impossible, nothing would be expensive. The cost of my revival will be almost
but not quite zero, as would be my value to the people of that time. My major 
worry, greater than any you have mentioned, is that my value in such an 
advanced world would be exactly equal to zero and so not worth bothering
with. I have no idea what probability figure to put on this unsettling  
possibility.

After you have finished multiplying your numbers together there is one more
question to ask, what is the probability that your probability estimates are
correct? Rather than say the probability of success is low, I would say
the probability is unknown.

           
        >THE REVIVAL PROCEDURE COULD BE 99.9999% EFFECTIVE, YET IF ONLY A FEW 
        >CELLS ARE NOT RIGHT, WE COULD BE IN DIRE PAIN.  


Even today we're not too bad (but not good enough) at dealing with pain. If 
we had Nanotechnology and enough knowledge of the brain to repair it at the 
cellular level then I really don't think pain would be a problem.

Even if it turns out that Cryonics doesn't work, it seems to me that it would 
still confer a certain amount of nobility to those who made the attempt, 
perhaps enough to elevate life from the level of farce to give it the dignity 
of tragedy. I don't want to go gentle into the night, I want to rage against 
the dying of the light.                

                                           John K Clark     

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