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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8511