[extropy-chat] hope you can comprehend

[Samantha Atkins]

On May 20, 2006, at 5:20 AM, Robert Bradbury wrote:
>
> It is succinct, unfortunately  part of the statement is highly  
> problematic (perhaps even *wrong*).
>
> Paraphrasing:
> "If you are frozen there is some chance of  being revived."   True.
> "If you are buried in the ground you are absolutely guaranteed to  
> be gone forever."  Not so fast.
>
> For the last ~100 years or more in the developed countries many  
> "dead" persons have been embalmed and buried [1,2].  This results  
> in a significant retardation of many active ( e.g. bacterial) and  
> passive (biochemical) decay processes.  Anyone who watches CSI  
> knows that it is not unusual to recover the DNA from someone who  
> has been buried.  (In fact work is ongoing for the reconstruction  
> of the Mammoth genome from a Mammoth buried in permafrost for  
> ~30,000 years.)
>

Embalming is not advertised as preserving brain structure  
sufficiently to reclaim much if anything of the persons unique brain  
interconnections.  If you really believe this is actually present  
then by all means explain how.  A lot of us could save a bundle or  
cryogenics and still have a good chance of revival.

> 1. If you can get back the genome of an individual, you can get  
> back part of the basis for "who" they were.

No.  You get at best a clone, an individual with the same DNA but  
different experiences.

> 2. If you have sufficient information about the person, e.g.  
> biographies, autobiographies, tax records, credit card histories,  
> films of lectures ( e.g. Feynman), etc. you have a pretty good idea  
> of "who" or "how" they expressed themselves.

So what?  Very little is recorded in the above, certainly not enough  
to produce a convincing duplicate except in extremely limited venues.

> 3. Depending upon the length of time one has been embalmed and the  
> precise recovery methods you should be able to extract the  
> ultrastructural information (neuron number, location,  
> interconnection network, synaptic strengths, etc.) from a "dead"  
> brain.
>

Please provide a decent argument for this instead of simply asserting  
it.

> From (1) you can work forward to an individual.

A clone.

>   From (2) you can work backward to the individual.  Those combined  
> significantly constrain the phase space of "who" a person was to  
> give you some reasonable approximation of the person.

Not at all.  You only have a few snapshots of a few aspects of the  
person's life.

> Combined with (3) and you have significant recreation capabilities.

This seems like pure assertion there is remotely enough left from the  
embalming process to reconstruct the individual's brain state to any  
useful extent.

>   I doubt we understand the physiological & psychological  
> complexity of individuals sufficiently to be to evaluate when a  
> "recreation" is or is not effectively the "real", J.D., Kaz, Dyson,  
> Sasha, Feynman, Kennedy, etc.

I think we understand it enough to get that a meat doll with some  
behavioral engineering and little of the original's brain wiring is  
not that individual.

>   A significant aspect of this that Kaz (and many others) who  
> consider this problem miss is how much computer capacity in which  
> to run and evaluate simulations we will have at our disposal in the  
> future.  One could wonder whether the "dark galaxies" that exist in  
> the universe are devoted to reconstruction & simulation activities  
> aimed at "bringing back" particular individuals who were critically  
> important to the evolution of the first "advanced" civilizations  
> that evolved within those galaxies.
>

How do simulations have anything to do with actually bringing back  
the embalmed individual from the dead?  The simulation does not have  
the unique brain layout of the individual.  It may or may not get  
some simulated individuals that match what is remembered about the  
original.  But this is not remotely any sort of resurrection.

> In order to be *really*, *really*, *really* dead in this day and  
> age you have to actually work at it.  It starts with a minimum  
> requirement of having your body incinerated.
> You probably also have to incinerate your home, office and car  
> (leave *no* DNA behind), then you have to kill off a fair number of  
> your living relatives (who carry sufficient information that one  
> can get back to a reasonable approximation of your genome).  You  
> shouldn't purchase things by credit card, can't make investments,  
> can't pay taxes, can't be employed, etc.  Of course it goes without  
> saying that you certainly shouldn't be posting to the ExICh list...

Yeah, assuming your entire flight of fantasy is remotely plausible.   
I see no reason to assume it.

- samantha