[extropy-chat] Alternative to CryowasTheAmazingCellularRepairdevice

[Brett Paatsch]

John Clarke wrote:

> "Brett Paatsch" <bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au>
>
>> Your weren't put together in lego block fashion.
>
> You were put together in exactly a Lego block fashion.

Lego block construction proceeds with the construction tools
(the kids hands) outside the block. And the instructions/design
decisions about what will be build also outside the block (in the
kids head). The lego blocks don't grow and divide steering
themselves down developmental paths (as cells do), construction
proceeds with the lego blocks being snapped in discretely to the
outside of the first block that was laid down.

Nature in growing Spike had the advantage of not caring about
what particular Spike (Spikes neural structure and memories) in
a range of possible Spikes would emerge as a result of the dna
instructions meeting extracellular environmental stimuli. Nature
wasn't trying to reverse engineer a particular Spike it was just
getting on with building an original from a make-something-like
-a-Spike genetic instruction set in the dna formed when Spike's
mum and dad's dna got together.

If you were going to use Drexlerian nanotechnology to build the
cellular structure of Spikes brain you'd be trying to building lego
block fashion using atoms as your base construction element not
cells. But to recreate Spikes brain in flesh (and get Spike back)
you would have to create a whole lot of cells (trillions of them)
capable of functioning as the massive specific concert of cells
that was biological Spike. And you'd have to create them on
location because you couldn't move them past each other as
assembled cells. Their shapes which are interlocking wouldn't
allow that.

To build lipid layers of cells on location without using water
chemistry (which you couldn't because of the temperature
constraint, water doesn't act like water when its ice) you'd be
placing molecules of lipid with nanobot tweezers. A broken
lipid cell membrane (width 6 nanometres) means a non
functional cell or cellular compartment and it would certainly
mean non-functioning mitochondrion in the cell.

It would take too long (I don't know how long but perhaps
age of the universe timescales) to construct like this unless
you had a massively parallel construction operation going
on. And you can't do that because there isn't space between
the being build cells for your nanobots that are having to
place molecules to less than 6 nanometre precision to get
functioning cells.

> One tiny transfer RNA
> molecule grabbed hold of an even smaller amino acid molecule and brought 
> it
> to a place dictated by a large messenger RNA molecule that was created by 
> an
> even larger DNA molecule. A fraction of a second later another transfer 
> RNA
> molecule grabbed hold of a different amino acid and the messenger RNA told
> it to place if very carefully next to the first amino acid and then it
> connected to it. Repeat this assembly process several thousand times and 
> you
> have a long sequence of amino acids, release this sequence and it folds up
> into a very complex shape called a protein. Repeat this protein making
> process several million billion times and we get you.

All of which happens in a watery chemistry environment (important
for causing the proteins made up of amino acids to take the three 
dimensional
shapes they do and for lipids to arrange themselves as they do) inside the 
cell
at  temperature of around 37 degrees. Much away from 37 degrees and the
water chemistry wouldn't have worked and the development of Spike from
that first cell containing the how-to-build-something-like-spike-dna-by
growing-and-then-dividing-at-the-right- time doesn't work and the
development of Spike wouldn't have proceeded.

>> I don't see how any future technology could put your
>> atoms back together by rebuilding the organic chemistry
>> structures.
>
> And I don't see why not, but actually the question is irrelevant.
>
> Once there
> was a readout of the position of all the molecules in your body (a much
> lower resolution would probably be sufficient) I very much doubt anyone
> would even try to reconstruct another body made of proteins and fats
> floating in water like we have now, rather the function of the brain 
> neurons
> would be duplicated in silicon hardware, or perhaps just in software, if
> done carefully we'd never notice the difference.

I'm effectively certain that they wouldn't try to.

But that was the scenario Spike was musing over, he wasn't musing over
uploading (a separate thing with its own problems) he wanted his brain
back in a new buff body.

Brett Paatsch



> > you can make say an ice cream out of  steal.
>
> Your brain and mine were made from last years potatoes, and more than 20
> years ago somebody made diamonds out of peanut butter; ice cream out of
> steal would be more difficult because you'd have to transmute iron into
> carbon hydrogen oxygen and nitrogen and a few other trace elements,  but 
> it
> wouldn't be magic, transmutation has been accomplished, and on a 
> industrial
> scale too. It's not like time travel or perpetual motion or anti gravity, 
> it
> wouldn't violate any known law of physics.
>
>
>   John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
>
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