[ExI] Essential Upload Data

Wed May 20 12:49:14 UTC 2020

Hi Rose, ja we are reading this.  Why is it confusing?  Your posts are filled with good stuff.

spike

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Re Rose via extropy-chat
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2020 5:39 AM
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Cc: Re Rose <rocket at earthlight.com>
Subject: [ExI] Essential Upload Data

OK, I'm going to do the interspersed-with-NON-YELLING-CAPS-thing again, below.

Are people really reading this? It's confusing even me!! LOL

happy day to all~~

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Date: Mon, 18 May 2020 13:59:01 -0400
From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com <mailto:johnkclark at gmail.com> >
To: ExI chat list < <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Essential Upload Data
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On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 8:10 AM Re Rose via extropy-chat <
 <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> 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.
>
>
--> WE CAN CERTAINLY creep up from all sides on on proofs-of-concept for cryonics, as we researchers have and will continue to do over the years. Example, natural freezing of increasingly larger and more complex creatures (water bears, c.elegans, bugs, bees, frogs), observation of mammals (cats, dogs, skiers and other humans) recovering from hours of near-freezing with *no damage*, use of deep cooling to do complex surgery. 

----> THEN THERE there is freezing and recovery of various organs with no damage. We already know how to do this for certain tissues and part of organs, and it has been highly sucessful. As well as for plants. And then there are the disturbing but useful experiments done to switch or add heads to mammals (dogs, cats, chimpanzees). Hopefully this will be followed soon by Canavero carrying out a sucessful head transplant (and if it is sucessful imagine what we will learn about a brain controlling a new agent body! Importantly if it works, does it cause a mental breakdown - or not).

--> THIS ALL adds up to indicate that cryonic preservation and reanimation of a more complex organisim such as a human can be acheived, something I am sure eveyone in this list already agrees with to some degree. My point here is a demonstration that I do not agree that cryonics is an entirely unproven technology  :)

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

---> LOL!! 

>  *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, 

---> NOT NECESSARILY, and the goal is to minimze the damage done by current methods.

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, 

--> HM, I THINK YOUR choice of words indicates that you think of neural information storage as being similar to the way a computer encodes data. Don't do that. Very different. In any case, I believe the information physically coded in the brain (which is by no means all of the information necessary to recreate your consciouness) might be deranged in a variety of ways: via physical damage to neurons, via disruption of correlated pathways, via loss of electrical entrainment signalling mechanisims, among others. This is different from "distortion" or "erasure" of the data.

is there 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. 

--> UNTIL WE KNOW A MECHANISIM FOR repair I think its premature to say cryonic reanimation will *require* nanotechnology. It might, and it might not.

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. 

--> THIS IS A TERRIBLE objection! Biological proteins usually have no business using most of the elements in the periodic table. BUT when you look at extremeophiles, you see they posess many beautiful, unusual, and highly versatile proteins that handle all sorts of exotic and toxic metals and other heavier elements that are present in the ecological niche of those organisims. If a protein (or related) molecule needed to make a cubic lattice, it would certainly be capable of doing so as long as the reaction was thermodynamically feasible.

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.

---> EVOLUTION FINDS BRILLIANT SOLUTIONS yto many problems, and even evolutionary algorithims quickly lead to novel and adaptable solutions! Don't be mean to evolution.

>>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.

--> THANK YOU! I don't agree we will necessarity need nanotech, but I do agree that it certainly would be a great tool.

> --> *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.

--> NOT THE ACTUAL REASONS FOR AGING, if thats what you mean....

> *> 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.

---> OK WAIT -- I'M NOT SAYING NANOTECH IS IMPOSSIBLE! I'm saying (again and again in  grillions of ways) copying the information is impossible. Not at all due to physical limitations of nanotech, rather, due to the inerent characteristics of the system.

> --> 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. 

--> NO! NOT VERY expensive at all, and the problem of fracturing is huge - don't dismss that so easily. Obviate the fractures and cracking, and you're far closer to feasible reanimation.

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 proble 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.

---> WHO'S IGNORING THE DEHYDRATION issues? Not me. I have some ideas how to fix it, but they are untested and unfunded -- so far :)

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.

---> OMG HAVE I FAILED TO BE clear as to exactly why I think ASC is not a good method to address this??? You don't need to agree, by all means, but the reasons are clear!!!

*> 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.

---> NO ITS NOT!!! I've said why in previous email, reallly, in quad-grillions of different ways. That's a lot of ways.

> >> 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 as I already said. It is not contained in the atomic positions. I am sure Prof. Stuart Kauffman described this way better than I ever could. His books are widely available. I'd start with the earlier ones.

>
> ---> *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?

--> YOU WILL HAVE TO LOOK THAT UP, no way can I explain system dynamics and all the other good stuff here. 

>> 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.

--> IF YOU THINK ASC IS the best way, you do *NOT* know where the information lies. Sorry. For some of that background, there are lots of texts on neural coding. I also recommend reading papers by Prof William Bialik on entropy of information storage in neural systems, and the book by Jeff Hawkins, "On Consciouness". 
>
>
> *--> WHY DO YOU make that assertion?*
>

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

--> ALAS THAT IS not enough information!!! 

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

--> AGAIN -- 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

--> You're asking me to provide an online compendium of knowledge and information I've synthesized over two decades or so -- in an email. Oh my. I cannot. You have to go read some stuff, my friend. 

>
> ---> *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.

--> THIS IS NOT a problem I have observed or am particulary worried about. As I said in my last post, viscosity increses as temperature decreases. Of course, there will be some damage done by freezing. Our job is to minimze what we can.

--> *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.

--> I HAVE GIVEN MANY DIFFERENT responses and reasons but you keep brushing them aside and asking the same questions over and over. Also, if you think the electron microscpe images capture all the necessary information - then you haven't been throughly reading any of my posts, starting from the first one. I'm taking lots of time to write them so please re-read them. Also, I'm sure you would be interested in reading the work of the people I've cited throughout my posts. I've only cited those whose work I think gives the best insight into these issues, their work is well worth reading.

--*> 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. 

---> ALRIGHT, FIRST OF ALL IT WAS A SCONE! I am far too refined to offer you a mere "cookie". And second, I blasted you apart with your permission. Why did you give it? Don't change your story now, John.

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.

---> THIS IS A NICE STORY, and I'm sure the *scone* will still be fresh after a thousand years because it was cryonicaly stored for you. But the position and momentum are not not not enough to recreate you, I cry again. And don't get me started on Heisenberg. He's not going to support your position-and-momentum thing in the least. Even that can't be done. 

* > 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.

--> YOU KNOW YOU ARE NOT the copy. The copy doesn't know. But you do.

>> 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.

--> YES THE COPY will have a problem, thinking it is me. Poor copy. But I am still me -- and that, BTW, is Regina, not Rose. Rose is my copy, and she keeps thinking she's me, but I, Regina, have written these posts. If she posts anything here please know she doesn't always agree with me, so don't let that  confuse you. She has her own mind.

>
> -->* 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.

---> NO IT'S SCIENCE.

> *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.

--> BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH for! The copy will be happy to be you and eat scones with me, but you will still be dead. It really should not be good enough for you, if your wish is to be reanimated. 

Stay healthy

--> Thx, you too!

--Regina

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