[ExI] Essential Upload Data (was: Subject: Boltzmann brains)

[John Clark]

On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 12:23 PM Re Rose via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> I agree about repair of current crypreserved patients needing
> Drexler-style nanotech (which might as well be magic at the moment,*
>

No. Traveling into the past and Faster Than Light Travel and Perpetual
Motion Machines are magic, but Drexler's Machines don't need new physics or
better science, they just need more advanced engineering, more specifically
smaller fingers.

* > which I alluded to in my prior post). I think the way forward will be
> in the design of non-toxic cryoprotectants applied in a homogeneously
> cooled manner, at a temperature far higher than that of liquid nitrogen.*
>

It's cheap to store things at  -196 degrees Celsius, because that's the
temperature of liquid Nitrogen which is only about as expensive as milk.
It's very reliable too because such refrigeration requires no moving parts.
But if you wanted to avoid cracking you'd have to store brains at -125
degrees Celsius and there is just no simple way to do that without much
more complications and lots more ways things could break down and go
disastrously wrong. It's just not worth taking that risk to avoid a minor
problem like cracking, not to mention it would be much more expensive.


> *> But the use of ASC is the exact opposite of preservation of the entire
> body, it is a technology focused on uploading,*
>

It could also be used to make a identical biological brain, I very much
doubt that will happen because it would be silly to put a person in such
obsolete hardware, but there is no technological reason it couldn't be done.

> which I do not believe will work if the goal is reanimating the same
> person who went in.
>

Why not? You don't think the atoms in your body are fundamentally different
from the atoms in my body do you?

> *Consider that the amount of information needed to be read from the
> upload (using unknown methods at the moment) has been estimated to take
> hundreds of years just to read,*
>

The human brain has about 86 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses; and
I found a 10 trillion byte USB 3.0 disk drive for  $182. By next year it
will be cheaper:

Seagate Expansion 10TB USB 3.0 hard drive
<https://www.newegg.com/black-seagate-expansion-10tb/p/N82E16822184781?Description=100%20tb%20external%20hard%20drive&cm_re=100_tb_external_hard_drive-_-22-184-781-_-Product>

So with 10 of these you'd get 100 trillion bytes and it would cost less
than 2 grand. And it doesn't even need Nanotechnology. It would take USB
3.0 about 7 hours to transfer 10 trillion bytes of information not hundreds
of years. And by the age of Nanotechnology I have a hunch we'll have
something a tad better than USB 3.0.

> *with no idea how to deconvolute the data *


If you understand how the human brain works that would be very nice but
it's not necessary to revive a Cryonics patient, all you need to know is
what atom is suposed to go where.


> > *But worse - ASC is complete brain destruction,*
>

But it's not complete mind destruction as long as the information in that
brain has been saved, that's why a computer disk drive crash is not an
utter disaster if you have a backup copy.

> *we can map the geography of the connectome clearly from an ASC preserved
> brain (if we can Eye-Wire all the neurons! And glia....)  we can't read the
> chemical states, plus we lose all the dynamics of the smaller dendritic
> spines.*
>

Why can't we read them? Chemical states and dendritic spines are made of
atoms just like everything else.

*> The chemical states include both the ionic state of each neuron, plus
> the pattern of neurotransmitter concentrations. That information is all
> lost. Forever.*
>

If all that stuff is important and if for some mysterious reason we can't
read it then all forms of Cryonics is hopeless because any form of freezing
is going to distort things and it you can't read something you can't repair
(or replace) it.

*> So, I say a huge *ACK!* to aldehyde stabilized cryopreservation,
> beautiful as it is. It's a great tool to stabilize the tissue and to study
> the connectome, no question. Brilliant. But if you ever want to be "you"
> again - keep your brain intact !!!*
>

Yes, and electron microscopes show clear as a bell that ASC keeps a brain
intact much better than the vitrification process Alcor uses today.


> *> As per your comment re: hormonal cycles, yes. I think it may be
> impossible to model a system that has inherent chaotic components.*
>

A double pendulum is a chaotic system but you can play around with a
computer model of it just by moving your cursor, and there are plenty of
other chaotic systems on the same site:

My Physics Lab
<https://www.myphysicslab.com/pendulum/double-pendulum-en.html>


> *> The slow-replacement theory isn't persuasive, as each component
> acclimates to the surroundings slowly which I think is ok. That's not a
> massive uploading event.*
>

I don't know what that means.


> *> The thought-experiment I trust the most, which is against uploading,
> is the one where you consider uploading a copy made before you are dead
> into a new body.*
>

I don't like that either because the thing I dislike about death is having
a last thought, and in that scenario I would still have one. I would only
be satisfied if my uploaded copy were made right NOW. How long is "now"?
Long enough to have a thought, about a second, maybe two.

> *A copy is a copy. Fun and maybe comforting for your surviving friends
> and family, and to be sure it is an agent in its own right - its just not
> you. *
>

And if you found out that last night after you went to speed somebody made
a copy of you and then destroyed the original would you feel that you were
not you, and if so did you feel that way before you found out what had
happened? Or suppose the perpetrator got confused and destroyed one but now
he isn't sure if it was the copy or the original he destroyed, would you
care?  I wouldn't.

John K Clark
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