X-Message-Number: 8511
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 11:05:27 -0400
From: yvan Bozzonetti <>
Subject: Msg # 8504 on LN2 and uploading

In message #8503 Thomas Donaldson said:

>To Yvan:
>
>I don't understand your claim that LN2 is toxic. Cells have been preserved
in
>LN2 for decades and revived afterwards.
>
Yes LN2 is corrosive on a long time basis. Cells have been preserved at LN2
temperature, not in direct contact with LN2. Cell samples are most often
put in glass tubes for that purpose.

>If you keep something at CO2 temperature it does still deteriorate. If you

>vitrify it (using some cryoprotectant as yet unknown) CO2 temperature
might
>work.

OK
      

>Finally, about "uploading". If the "uploading" means basically the storage
of
>information, I have no metaphysical problems about uploading. However I'd
add
>that if you want a difficult problem in 1997 practice the problem of
uploading
>looks far harder than vitrification. 

That may well be true, but the objective are different. That is why I am
interested in  uploading and at the same time be a PP pledger.
Vitrification is a solution to get reversible cryonics for would be patient
taken in the best possible cases. Uploading is an outdoor for current
patients and comming ones storred in bad environments. Well, we must first
perfect the simplest way, that is vitrification, but we must think too 
about getting back current patients, even if this look hard and may need
some time.

>In the first place, to upload we must
>first understand how our brain works, which we don't yet do.

I think this is not a prerequisite: we may have a computer drawing software
able to picture a brain at the cell level and then put in each place where
there is a neuron in the drawing a copy of a neuron simulator. We have
both, the picture soft and the neuron simulator, even if they can't run at
man brain complexity level for some time.
> Secondly, we want
>some way to upload a 3 D scan of brain structure AND chemistry on a
microscopic
>scale. Not only that, but ideally this scan must NOT be immediately
destructive,
>so that we may check it for correctness before we destroy the original
tissue.
>That's a hard physics and electronics problem.
>
There are two problems: First to get a brain picture at dendrite button
level (100 nm resolution) and second a chemical analysis at atom level near
these buttons to know the initial state of these neuroreceptors.

For the first problem, the best option today seems to be X-ray scanning
with quantum nondemolition. This solve the radiation question.

The second step may use a similar scanning  limited to interesting points,
using very narrow band radiation so that a reaction with a given electronic
level in a given atom is excited.

I have discused all of that two years ago, the new matter on the subject is
about the progress on X-ray optics.

Given the progress in computer power, I think uploading could be
implemented 20 to 30 years from now, may be not wery later than reversible
cryonics.

        Yvan Bozzonetti.

Not only this, but even for those now suspended and those suspended under
poor
conditions (which you quite correctly point out will go on for some time
even
with full suspended animation possible under GOOD conditions) we are left
with
freezing as the most likely form of storage. Any improvements here will
decreasethe destruction caused by suspension and thus make revival
easier... and upload-
ing easier too, if ultimately we go that route.

Basically I think "uploading" is too often just a copout, and would
challenge
anyone who proposes it to explain just how to do it. NOW. We do have ideas
on
how to improve our freezing methods. Those who favor uploading as a
strategy
for 1997 should provide their own ideas as to how to do it.

                        Best and long long life,

                                Thomas Donaldson

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