[extropy-chat] Cryonics is the only option?

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 4/16/07, Brett Paatsch <bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au> wrote:

A reanimated Eugen or Robert would be more like a photograph
> a sentimental momento made to someone elses specifications than an
> actual Eugen or Robert.  The actual Eugen and Robert were not
> designed in the first place, genes interacted with environments to
> produce once-onlys.  Nature was able to do it precisely because
> she didn't give a damn what she made - anything that sort of worked
> was going to be fine. You and Robert on the other hand do care.
> You want to remake not just any old person that pops up - but
> yourselves.
>

Perhaps in a roundabout way you are referring in this paragraph to the
effects of chaos. Suppose you are trying to simulate the weather. You take
very detailed measurements and input them into a supercomputer, but no
matter how good your model and how precise your measurements, after a short
period the simulation will deviate from the behaviour of the real weather.
In a similar fashion, if you take measurements from an individual's brain
and attempt a computer simulation, no matter how good the measurements and
the model, the behaviour of the simulation will soon deviate from that of
the original. However, this doesn't matter, for the behaviour of the
original might also have deviated from what it actually was had a butterfly
flown this way rather than that way last month. Even if God made a copy of a
person perfect to the quantum level it would immediately start deviating
from the behaviour of the original, simply because they could not occupy the
same space. So like nature, you have to do a good job of making a precise
enough copy at a particular point in time, but what that copy does from
there on is its own business.

Stathis Papaioannou
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