[ExI] Essential Upload Data

[John Clark]

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 8:10 AM Re Rose via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:




>> Cryonics is a unproven technology and will remain that way until the day
>> it becomes obsolete. The only way to prove it works is to bring a person
>> back from being frozen, and if we have the ability to repair all that
>> damage then we can certainly turn a sick person into a healthy person
>> and so we won't need Cryonics anymore.
>
>
> --->* THAT IS SOME HUGE statement*
>

Huge is the only sort of statements that I make because I
figure everybody is entitled to my opinion.

>  *I disagree bigly. I don't think it will be that hard to reanimate a
> person, once we figure out how to freexze them with minimal damage. This
> does not require nanotech,*
>

The minimum freezing damage possible is still an enormous amount of damage,
with the method Alcor currently uses the brain shrinks considerably due to
dehydration for heaven's sake, and the shrinking is not symmetrical. I hope
the damage just distorts the information and doesn't erase it, and I think
that's probably the case,  but it's going to require Nanotechnology not
only to obtain all that detailed distorted information but you're also
going to need Nanotechnology to make the MASSIVE amounts of calculations
needed to process it so it can be un-distorted and repaired. It was only
after I read Drexler's book and he convinced me that Nanotechnology was
possible that I became interested in Cryonics. Before that book I thought
Cryonics was silly, after it I thought it was worth placing a $80,000 bet
on it. Without Nanotechnology existing on the reviving end I can't see any
way of it working.


> >> We know that Nanotech needs no new scientific principles to work and we know
>> that nature has developed a crude version of it called "life".
>
>
> > *MOSTLY AGREE, except I don't think biology is a crude version of
> nanotech, I think it is the real deal. Proteins for example are wonderful
> little nanomachines*
>

I disagree, I think proteins are pretty crappy nanomachines, they can't
build anything at all with most of the elements in the periodic table, and
even for the element they're most comfortable with, carbon, they can't even
make something as simple as a cubic lattice, aka a diamond. The limitations
of life should not be a surprise because Evolution has many serious flaws
that are inherent in its very nature. Evolution is a cruel and rather
ridiculous process but until it managed to come up with brains, after
screwing around for about 3 billion years, it was the only way complex
objects could get made.

>>If you're going to bet on Cryonics then you've got no choice but to rely on,
>> not new science but, new technology. We need smaller fingers.
>
>
> -->* WELL, I'M TRYING NOT TO not to bet on it, but to work to improve it
> as I can. I'm working to design a non-toxic cryopreservant,*
>

Then I salute you! I mean it, Cryonics needs all the improvement it can get
from this end. But we're still going to need Nanotechnology at the future
reviving end.

> --> *OK, WELL, I THINK "extraordinarily superb precision" is hard*
>

I know extraordinarily superb precision is hard, that's why we don't have
it right now, and that's the only reason why today people still get old,
get sick, and die.


> *> and depending on the scale nescessaty, may be impossible.*
>

If Nanotechnology is impossible then so is Cryonics. But I don't see why
something that doesn't violate any physical principle we know today and
doesn't need any new physical principle unknown to us today should be
impossible. Difficult yes, impossible no.


> --> NOT MORE EXPENSIVE to store someone at temps higher than -196C if you
> design a passive storage tank properly. It will be VERY big,
>

I'm not sure exactly what you have in mind but if it's going to be VERY big
it's probably going to be VERY expensive too, and all to fix a problem that
is not very important. I think people concentrate on a trivial form of
damage like fracturing because they know how to fix it even if it's a very
expensive and impractical way, but they ignore the far more serious problem
of uneven brain shrinking ( the volume within neurons including axons and
dendrites declines by around 70%) because they don't know how to fix it.
Well actually that's not true they do know how to fix it,
Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation would fix it, but for reasons never
made clear to me they don't like ASC.

*> ASC is not going to preserve enough info! Sorry, its very nice and a
> pretty method, but its not right for our goals because its pretty lossy.*


Electron microscopes don't lie, if ASC is lossy the existing method is much
more lossy.


> >> The atoms in your brain get recycled every few months and if you've
>> seen one carbon atom you've seen them all, so exactly what is so
>> original about that "original tissue"?
>
>
> ---> *THE HIERARCHICAL INFORMATION is not in the atomic identy or
> geometry, so this is not a question. Replace all the atoms one by one you
> wish-as biology already does!!*
>

I don't know what you mean by "hierarchical information". And what
difference does it make if all the atoms in your body are replaced every 6
months or every 6 seconds or every 6 nanoseconds if atoms are generic?

>> I know that's where the information lies, and the best way to preserve
>> that information with the least amount of distortion is through ASC.
>
>
> *--> WHY DO YOU make that assertion?*
>

Because I believe my eyes when I look at pictures made with very high power
microscopes.

>> That's just more atoms in various positions.
>
>
> -->* NOPE.*
>

I'm sorry but that is not a satisfactory response.  Please specify the
missing information that is not encoded in a atoms position or momentum and
explain why Alcor's current method preserves that information better than
ASC can despite what microscopes show



>
> ---> *AS FOR CHAOTIC turbilence damaging cells, clearly Nature has solved
> this problem, as multiple organisims freeze solid and come back fine.*
>

No macroscopic creature can freeze solid and live, they all retain a small
amount of liquid water and their metabolism does not stop entirely, also
their body temperature is much higher than liquid nitrogen or even of dry
ice, and that's much too hot for long term storage. Some microscopic
organisms like tardigrades can freeze solid because they are so small they
can be frozen and thus fixed in place almost instantly and there is not
enough time for chaotic turbulence to push things far out of place.  But
there is no way you could evenly freeze something as large as a human brain
anywhere near that fast.

--> *HOPEFULLY BY NOW, with all the ways I have said the same thing, you
> can see  the sense in what I say. By no means do you need to agree, but
> what I say has sense.*
>

I'm not trying to be difficult but I don't think you've made a coherent
logical argument. You keep saying ASC distorts information more than
Alcor's method but you have nothing to rebut electron microscope pictures
that say the opposite.

--*> THE AGENT that is my copy may not know it is a copy if the body match
> is perfect (doubtful). But that is not the point. YOU will not be there.
> Re-read my coffee and scone analogy, and tell me how in the world you
> imagine you will be in the copied agent when I terminate you*
>

You ask me if I want a cookie and then immediately blast me apart, even my
molecules don't survive and have been torn into individual atoms. After a
thousand years you take entirely different atoms of hydrogen oxygen carbon
and nitrogen and arrange them so so they have the same position and
momentum they had before and I'll say "yes please I'd love a cookie they
look good", and if you didn't tell me a thousand years had passed I'd have
no way of knowing because I vividly remember being the person that was
asked if he wanted a cookie, and that was only a few seconds ago, at least
according to my subjective time.

* > it violates the rights of your copy. He won't want to stop existing.*
>

Obviously if I don't want to stop existing then my copy won't either. And
if I had a copy I wouldn't what him mistreated and I know he feels the same
way because for all I know I'm the copy and was made 2 minutes ago and the
other guy is the original.

>> If you are the copy then you have the exact same access to her past
>> memories that she has, both will remember being Rose yesterday, but the
>> two of you will have different futures, you will have diverged because
>> from the instant of copying onward the 2 individuals will be in
>> different places and
>> be seeing different things and be forming different memories.
>
>
> -->* THAT MIND WILL be in a totally different environment,*
>

Both the original and the copy remember being in the exact same environment
yesterday and both are in the exact same environment today. So what's
different?


> > *with a huge amount of missing information,*
>

Missing information that you can't quantify except to say it doesn't
involve atomic position or momentum. It's starting to sound like religious
type stuff to me.

> *and that new agent is not and will never be you. t will be its own,
> separate agent. Not you. *
>

Then maybe I died last night and I am not me, I just think I'm me; but if
so I don't care, thinking I'm me is good enough for me.

Stay healthy

 John K Clark
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