[ExI] Natasha​ Uploading and the New York Times ​

Dan TheBookMan danust2012 at gmail.com
Mon Oct 12 00:23:33 UTC 2015


On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 8:03 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> In the September Cryonics magazine there is a very interesting report on
the
> research Natasha Vita-More did on the retention on long term memories of
> nematode worms even after they've been cooled to liquid nitrogen
temperatures.
> So Natasha might want to write a letter to the New York Times
> (letters at nytimes.com) in response to a very negative uploading and
Cryonics
> article in todays times:
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/will-you-ever-be-able-to-upload-your-brain.html?ref=opinion


It seems to me that Miller's argument is just a vast argument from
incredulity because there's so much unknown about brain functioning and the
whole thing looks really really really complicated.

> In particular Miller says:
>
> "Our best current theories of how we store new memories without
overwriting
> old ones suggest that each synapse needs to continually reintegrate its
past
> experience (the patterns of activity in neuron A and neuron B) to
determine
> how fixed or changeable it will be in response to the next new experience.
> Take away this synapse-by-synapse malleability, current theory suggests,
> and either our memories would quickly disappear or we would have great
> difficulty forming new ones."
>
> And:
>
> "It will almost certainly be a very long time before we can hope to
preserve a
> brain in sufficient detail and for sufficient time that some civilization
much
> farther in the future, perhaps thousands or even millions of years from
now,
> might have the technological capacity to “upload” and recreate that
individual’s
> mind."

There might be other hurdles, even ones that make uploading (and
downloading) impossible, but much of this seems overly pessimistic in terms
of how long it will take to either successfully achieve this or find out
there's some fundamental issue with doing it.

> Natasha's experimental results would seem to flat out contradict
> Miller's hypothesis, unless human nerve cells are fundamentally
> different from the nerve cells of other animals, and I don't know of
> any scientist who believes that.

I haven't followed the research closely, but I'd still like to see a higher
animal -- an adult mammal would be my gold standard -- recovered with
intact memories from cryopreservation. What is the state of the art here?
(Too lazy to google at this point.:)

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/
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