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On 03/05/2020 19:42, Re Rose wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.0.1588531320.459.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org"><span
style="border-collapse:separate"><span
style="border-collapse:separate">IMHO, I think whole-body
cryopreservation is far better than neuropreservation as I
believe the body is a system and you need all of it. Thus, I
have issues with uploading</span></span></blockquote>
<br>
The one doesn't follow from the other, even if it is true (which I
don't think, but that's a separate argument).<br>
<br>
People tend to think of uploading as just meaning an emulation of a
brain. In practice, an upload will need an emulation of a body too,
so it would be better to think of it as emulating the entire
organism (and, of course, an external environment, too).<br>
<br>
Because emulating an external environment is trivial (we can do that
already), it doesn't tend to get mentioned much. Because a body is
much simpler than a brain, that too can be easily emulated - more
easily than a brain, anyway - so that doesn't tend to get mentioned
much, either. We focus on brains because that's where the essential
action is. No brain, no person. But don't forget that's not the only
thing we'll want to emulate in an upload.<br>
<br>
So, accepting that we'll want to emulate a body as well as a brain,
do we actually need a real body to record and upload? I doubt it. It
follows from the fact that a body is simpler, that we will be able
to easily create a virtual body from existing data about human
bodies, so no need to preserve an actual body unless you don't want
to be uploaded at all, but have your biological self reanimated at
some point, and even then... Yet another separate argument :) .<br>
<br>
I can only think of one possible case where you'd want to upload
(and thus preserve in the first place) an individual body, and
that's the (extremely unlikely, imo) case where your unique body is
essential to reproducing your unique mind.<br>
<br>
We undergo all sorts of changes to our bodies, all the time, and it
doesn't seem to have much effect on who we are. I can testify to
that, having had various bits of my body changed and even removed,
over my lifetime. On the other hand, change or damage or remove even
a tiny bit of your brain, and you have a different person, or at
least a different personality. Ergo, the brain is vastly more
important than the body to get exactly right (and thus, to
preserve).<br>
<br>
I'm pretty confident that a generic body model would be quite
sufficient for the purposes of an upload, especially as you could
modify it yourself afterward, to your own requirements (just in case
you decided that your appendectomy scar or missing toe was somehow
essential to your personality). And even so, it would be easy enough
to record any differences to 'the standard human body (female)' that
you in particular might have, keep the data with your neuro
corpsicle, and feed them into the upload data, instead of going to
the extra expense and trouble of vitrifying (or chemopreserving) an
entire body.<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Ben Zaiboc</pre>
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