X-Message-Number: 8390
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 22:23:16 -0700
From: Tim Freeman <>
Subject: Memory, other probabilities

Sorry, I had to downcase your text before I could reply to it without
making fun of it:

>The most likely scenario, I believe (and someone knowledgeable please 
>correct me if i am wrong), is that 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.

Maybe from days to weeks, but certainly not most of it.  Some data points --

1. Barbiturate overdose eliminates all perceptible brain electrical
activity, but it doesn't eliminate long-term memory.

2. Deep hypothermia does the same, with the same result.

3. Electroshock therapy similarly zaps short-term memory but not long
term memory.  I had a relative once who lost a few weeks of memories
this way, but no more.

>the probability that there are funds in my patient care account to
>revive me TIMES

The cost of a fixed level of technology tends to go down with time.
The patient care funds are invested for the purpose of increasing with
time beyond the storage costs required.  So getting the two curves to
meet is just a matter of waiting long enough, assuming that the other
probabilities you list go through.

>For every Catholic church and Harvard University that have been around
>for a long time, there are dozens of institutions that were designed
>to be around for a long time (e.g., lots of corporations), that are
>long defunct.

Corporations are generally incentivized to earn lots of money in the
next quarter, or maybe to earn the present CEO lots of incentive pay
before the present CEO leaves the company.  Maybe ideologically-driven
nonprofits are the right thing to compare with.  Hmm, this is an
interesting question I don't know the answer to -- what is the average
lifetime of nonprofits that reach (say) the size of Alcor measured in
annual cash flow?

>Given the number of cells that must be "fixed", each machine and each
>cell working perfectly, the odds of a successful revival--one in which
>the result is a fully functioning human being including brain,
>movement, sensation--sex???--, would seem to be very low.

You don't need all the cells -- people lose cells all the time and it
just doesn't matter.  You don't need all the machines to work
perfectly -- all you need is for most of them to work, and you also
need for the ones that fail not to do too much damage.  I don't care
in the slightest whether the wart on the back of my right hand is with
me when I'm revived, so there are vast tracts of cells in my body that
could be replaced with a reasonable guess and I wouldn't care.
(Anticipating this, I signed up for neurosuspension.  The wart on the
back of my right hand doesn't have a chance.)  

Since the important thing to me about myself is my memories, cognitive
functioning, and perceptions, *all* the cells could be discarded and a
reasonable simulation be used to continue the most important parts of
me, provided that the required information can be read out of my brain
and used to drive a well-done simulation.  This presupposes that
Ettinger and Penrose and such are wrong, of course.

-- 
Tim Freeman       
            http://www.infoscreen.com/resume.html
Web-centered Java and Perl programming in Silicon Valley or offsite

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