mmm@cup.portal.com (12/20/89)
[Moderator's note: I was hard-pressed to decide whether to post this. It is really more suitable for the cryonics mailing list, and is a bit off the subject of nanotech per se. However, volume on this newsgroup has been low recently, and similar identity/reconstruction questions have been discussed before (e.g. transporters & duplicators). I'm hoping for followups along the lines of "a mature cognitive science will/won't be able to to reconstruct a person from their diary" and not "cryonics is/isn't a ripoff"...] Recently, I attended a birthday party where there was a cryonicist (actually, more than one, but one was more vocal than the others). And when I was identified as the author of certain postings, I was required to answer certain questions, along the lines of: 1. IF YOU ACCEPT THE POSSIBILITY CRYONICS MAY WORK, DOESN'T IT MAKE SENSE TO SIGN UP FOR CRYONIC SUSPENSION JUST ON THE POSSIBILITY IT MIGHT WORK? Well, this is just a new form of the old "Should I believe in God?" argument (I believe this originates with DesCartes). If you lose, you lose the money you invested in cryonic suspension. If it works, it means the difference between existence and non-existence. If (in economics lingo) you are infinitely price-flexible on (using Presidential parlance) the existence thing, any reasonable dollar amount on cryonics is a sensible investment. (oh yeah, the DesCartes thing was "If I believe in God and he doesn't exist, it doesn't make any difference whether I believed or not" and "if I believe in God and he DOES exist, I am saved") 2. IT WILL WORK, IF YOU ACCEPT PRESENT TRENDS OF TECHNOLOGY AS DESCRIBED IN DREXLER'S BOOK, AND IF NOT WHY NOT? Okay, I must agree that a significant amount of information will be recoverable at some future date from frozen brains. But I still think it will be an experience like electroshock. Or worse, possibly much worse. 3. THE PRICE IS REASONABLE, CONSIDERING WHAT IS BEING OFFERED! This is sort of like (1), above. If you consider continued conscious thought after death to be valuable, infinitely valuable, then any price is okay. The real price is much lower than I thought, about what I pay for car insurance (I pay a very low rate). That gets you a basic insurance policy. Its some kind of policy where you can get all your money back if you change your mind. This argumentative person at the birthday party pulled aside one of the other guests, who apparently was a known cryonicist, and asked him to tell what he payed for cryonic insurance. Apparently this fellow was a poor choice, because he was paying a high rate--over $1000 per year. He was some kind of karate expert, and he was signed up for a deluxe service where they preserved your spinal cord with your brain. This is believed to give a better chance for preserving physical skills. The vocal person mentioned that arranging for extra money is important if the cryonics people have big expenses to get your brain. Like if you're in Brazil when you die, it would be a good idea to be signed up for extra, so that the cryonics people would charter a plane to come get you. Now all this gets me to thinking of these basic tests of the sincerity of the cryonicists (though this time I won't be making far-fetched inferences, which got me a lot of criticism in the past): 1. DO YOU KEEP A DIARY? Won't you admit the cryonics process MIGHT not pass through as much of your personality/self/??? as you might want? A diary might help restore your local context (i.e. recover from short-term memory loss). It might have uses you might not foresee. Perhaps a record of recent thoughts (shortly before cryonic suspension) will be valuable in recovering your intelligence. 2. HAVE YOU MADE A DEATH MASK? Actually, I guess they're called a "life mask" when made from a person that is still alive. You can't expect your face to be reconstructed from photographs, do you? It really costs not much to make a mold of your face, wouldn't a true cryonicist do that? In the case of the karate expert, I would recommend molds of the whole body, because your reactions will be tuned to a body with a particular mass distribution which will be irreproducible if you allow your body to be lost. 3. DO YOU HAVE VIDEOS OF YOURSELF? This is sort of like question (1) about diaries. There MIGHT be aspects of your life which will be difficult to reconstruct without video. Maybe your frozen brain will be used to create an artificial neural network--video still might be needed to train that network to your speech and mannerisms, and maybe even your thinking process. Have you ever sat down and had a good one-on-one discussion with a camcorder? Doesn't it make sense to carry a video camera through AT LEAST one day of your life to record the important bits, like how you interact with strangers, friends, your wife. In fact, you wouldn't want the experiences of a single day to affect your recorded persona, do you? You'll want to record at least a week or two, 24 hours a day, if you want a decent sample of who you are right now. All of these questions involve simple and cheap things a cryonicist can do to supplement their cryonic insurance policy. Do you, cryonicist, do these things? If not, why not?
ems%nanotech@princeton.edu (12/21/89)
I suspect a cryonicist (I am not one) would answer your "insurance" questions with a statement of faith in cryogenics. This is a faith I lack, because, as far as I can tell, human brains have not been frozen, then thawed, with cell structure intact. It seems safe to say that with full blown nanotechnology any molecular structure will be able to be duplicated. But if the crucial structure of the brain is not preserved in the first place, there will be nothing worthwhile to duplicate. It could be that my understanding of this field is incomplete, I haven't followed it at all that closely. I would be very much interested is seeing the before and after results of the following cryonics experiment, if anything like it has already been done. Take a gorilla or chimpanzee, train it for some particular task. Then take some small brain tissue sample and prepare micrographs. Now freeze and thaw the test animal. If the subject survives, great! Test for memory of the pre-learned task. If the subject cannot by revived, determine why. In any case, take post-freeze brain tissue samples and make micrographs. Publish all data in exhaustive detail. Has anything like the experiment that I've just outlined been performed and published? If so, a reference would be appreciated. I lean toward immortalism, I would like to live forever. I am very interested in any technique that offers a better than even chance of getting "over the hump" to the nanotechnological future, which promises to be a *very* interesting place. One chance in a million, however doesn't interest me (I don't play the lottery, either.) Right now, it seems, a better bet would be a brain transplant (Assuming that your brain was reasonably intact). Probably a vastly more expensive undertaking, but perhaps you get what you pay for. I recall that, in the brain, tissue rejection is not much of a problem. Has this experiment ever been done? (Outside of grade B horror pictures, that is :-) Ed Strong ems@Princeton.EDU [This is probably a good place to reiterate that cryonics is based on the concept that enough information will be saved by freezing brain tissues to recreate the brain with a mature nanotechnology-- *not* that the brain could be restored to order simply by thawing it out. This is sort of the same difference as that between the murderer hanging around at the scene of the crime to await the cops, or having left enough clues that Sherlock Holmes can figure out who he was. Given that it is common practice to freeze human embryos and thaw them *in a viable state*, right now, it is hard to believe that the freezing process destroys so much information that an atom-by-atom analysis could not figure out what had been there. The highest-level whole-animal experiment I know of involved a dog, which I understand is still alive. Can someone fill in more details? --JoSH]
hcobb@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Henry J. Cobb) (12/21/89)
If you are a infinitely fined grained chaotic dynamic structure, then freezing you isn't going to do much good. Otherwise you're a Turing machine, and might as well wake up in hardware. BTW: anybody remember which issue of Sci. Am. had the cold quantum chemistry article? Or as I like to call it "frozen rot". Turns out that there is a minimum rate for every chemical reaction, regardless of how cold it gets. Henry J. Cobb hcobb@walt.cc.utexas.edu [If you are a infinitely fine-grained chaotic dynamic structure, then a butterfly in Peking can change your whole life. There is good evidence that our brains are chaotic (e.g. Paul Rapp's work) but if so, our concept of personal identity must necessarily correspond to the attractor and not to an individual microstate. --JoSH]
alan@oz.nm.paradyne.com (Alan Lovejoy) (12/22/89)
In article <Dec.19.17.04.11.1989.25949@athos.rutgers.edu> mmm@cup.portal.com writes: >1. IF YOU ACCEPT THE POSSIBILITY CRYONICS MAY WORK, DOESN'T IT MAKE SENSE >TO SIGN UP FOR CRYONIC SUSPENSION JUST ON THE POSSIBILITY IT MIGHT WORK? >Well, this is just a new form of the old "Should I believe in God?" argument >(I believe this originates with DesCartes). ... There is a tendency to assume that a person who does not speak our language is merely hard of hearing--so we speak more loudly or even yell. We think perhaps the person can be made to understand if we use baby talk. But of course, the real problem cannot be conquered by yelling or using simple words, because the person is not hard or hearing and is not a child. Similarly, when people fail to agree with our point of view even after extensive discussion, we tend to think that the problem is either that we have not used the "magic words"--that mystical turn or phrase or analogy which will show the person the error of his ways--or that the person is simply dumb or brainwashed. But of course, the real problem is that the person is operating from a different set of basic assumptions and/or value judgements. You cannot argue a chocolate-lover into becoming a vanilla-lover. Either you like the price of "immortality" and buy the service, or you don't. Same as anything else. THIS IS RIGHTFULLY EACH INDIVIDUAL'S PERSONAL PEROGATIVE. Cryonicists should not seek to "convert" others to cryonics. Each individual is ultimately completely responsible for his/her own life. Adults have the right to reject medical treatment, food--and cryonics. On the other hand, cryonicists have the right to cryonically suspend themselves, just as all humans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of hors d'oeuvres. Once a cryonicist knows that you have heard the essential facts about cryonics, he is under no moral or ethical obligation to "make you see the light." And once you have been informed of the costs and speculative nature of cryonics, there is no moral or ethical justification for "protecting you from yourself" by attempting to dissuade you from arranging to have yourself cryonically suspended. Cryonics is NOT salvation. It is medicine. If you don't want medical treatment, you have the right to refuse it (just ask the Christian Scientists). Hopefully, we'll never have a situation where seeking the medical treatment of your choice (or failing to seek it) becomes a crime. So why am I writing this then? Because I think that it is important that people understand the world-view of a cryonicist--whether they agree with it or not. Lack of understanding leads to fear, and fear leads to persecution. How long you want to live--and what steps you are willing to take to do so--are none of my business. All I seek is that non-cryonicists respect my right to attempt to preserve my life using whatever means I may decide upon that does not endanger others. >2. IT WILL WORK, IF YOU ACCEPT PRESENT TRENDS OF TECHNOLOGY AS DESCRIBED >IN DREXLER'S BOOK, AND IF NOT WHY NOT? Okay, I must agree that a significant >amount of information will be recoverable at some future date from frozen >brains. But I still think it will be an experience like electroshock. >Or worse, possibly much worse. Why? On what basis do you conclude that the experience will be unpleasant, even specifically like electroshock? And even if so, why is that a reason for denigrating cryonics? Perhaps some people don't mind going thru a little pain in order to significantly extend the length AND OVERALL QUALITY of their lives. If you find the possibility of such pain to be unacceptable, that's fine by me. It's your life, and your responsibility. I won't even attempt to argue you into changing your favorite flavor. >1. DO YOU KEEP A DIARY? ... Some cryonicists do keep diaries. Anyone at any time could become an amnesia victim. So should we all keep diaries "just in case" this should happen to us? Imagine that someone were to walk up to you, prove to your satisfaction that you were an amnesia victim who had grown up as So-and-so (in spite of the fact that you continue to have no recollection of your former life), and hand you So-and-so's diary. Would you feel satisfied that reading the diary would resurrect So-and-so's personality in your mind? Having read diaries, autobiographies and biographies, I seriously question the utility of keeping a diary for the purpose of personality resurrection. Identical twins who grow up together, who share many of the same experiences, and could probably write each others' diaries, do not consider themselves to be the same person. In view of this, I see many reasons to strongly suspect that more than a diary is required to resurrect one's personality. There is the infinitesimal possibility that if I dig a ten foot hole in my back yard, I will discover tons of buried gold bars. But the probability is too low to be worth the effort. By expending such time and effort, I may miss out on much better chances. The time I spend writing a diary takes away from the time I have for making money (cryonic suspension is not free, nor is medical care) and from the time I have for improving my education (knowledge may save my life, and it often can be lucrative). >2. HAVE YOU MADE A DEATH MASK? ... Why do you assume that I want to look exactly like I do now in the nanotechnicalfuture? ****** If you are really interested in the technical questions of the biochemistry of memory, I suggest taking a look at some of the recent issues of Science. Although there are still many unanswered questions, some significant basic questions are being answered, and the "solution space" (continuum of possibilities) is getting ever smaller. The next decade may very well see many startling advances and discoveries. Recently, some of the key steps in the chemistry of short term and long term potentiation (of nerve cell synapses) have been discovered. Proteins, enzymes, hormones, genes and receptors which are key players in memory at the chemical level have been identified, and their method of operation is partly understood. Long term potentiation apparently involves GENETIC CHANGES IN THE NERVE-CELL NUCLEUS in order to "permanently" change the amount of neurotransmitter and/or receptors used by the cell at the synapse. So far, the advance of science is making cryonics appear ever-more feasible. ____"Congress shall have the power to prohibit speech offensive to Congress"____ Alan Lovejoy; alan@pdn; 813-530-2211; AT&T Paradyne: 8550 Ulmerton, Largo, FL. Disclaimer: I do not speak for AT&T Paradyne. They do not speak for me. Mottos: << Many are cold, but few are frozen. >> << Frigido, ergo sum. >> [Included quotations edited to save space. --JoSH]
honig@ics.uci.edu (David A. Honig) (12/22/89)
In article <Dec.20.17.43.11.1989.15650@athos.rutgers.edu> hcobb@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Henry J. Cobb) writes: > > If you are a infinitely fined grained chaotic dynamic structure, then >freezing you isn't going to do much good. > > Otherwise you're a Turing machine, and might as well wake up in >hardware. Um, if you are "infinitely fine grained", ie you require real-numbers, *infinite* precision, then you're not a Turing machine regardless of whether you're *chaotic* or not. Of course, if you are chaotic, you better have infinite precision... Or if I'm wrong, would someone please explain why? -- David A. Honig ... "Don't let your schooling interfere with your education." [The original comments were presumeably tongue-in-cheek... However, let me reccomend Penrose's new book, "The Emperor's New Mind", to those interested in the subject. --JoSH]
ems%nanotech@princeton.edu (01/04/90)
>[This is probably a good place to reiterate that cryonics is based > on the concept that enough information will be saved by freezing > brain tissues to recreate the brain with a mature nanotechnology-- > *not* that the brain could be restored to order simply by thawing > it out. This is sort of the same difference as that between the > murderer hanging around at the scene of the crime to await the > cops, or having left enough clues that Sherlock Holmes can figure > out who he was. I'm sorry if my posting gave that impression. I too expect that a great deal of nanotech reconstruction would normally have to be done. I just don't think there is any guarantee that trail of clues you refer to will exist, or if it does exist, point *uniquely* to only one possible starting condition. > Given that it is common practice to freeze human embryos and > thaw them *in a viable state*, right now, it is hard to believe > that the freezing process destroys so much information that > an atom-by-atom analysis could not figure out what had been there. Why is this so hard to believe? The number of cells in an embryo, just after fertilization, is on the order of tens or hundreds. This is very much smaller than the number of cells in a human brain. > The highest-level whole-animal experiment I know of involved a dog, > which I understand is still alive. Can someone fill in more details? > > --JoSH] I dimly recall such an experiment involving a dog. I think it also involved an experimental blood fluid substitute, as well. Has it occurred to anyone to investigate the other possibilities for preserving dead tissue, other than freezing? If irradiation were used, for instance, you'd avoid the destruction caused by crystal growth entirely. Also maintaining irradiation over even thousands of years is a snap, since it doesn't require an external power source, unlike freezing. Reconstruction, of course, would then mean complete body replacement with non-radioactive materials. (Although to a future nanotechnological society, a tendency to leak radiation might be considered no more than a minor faux pas, like body odor. :-) Ed [Sorry, Ed, I didn't intend that comment for you particularly, I just wanted to make sure that a big discussion didn't start up with people not realizing what the real assumptions behind cryonics are. Re irradiation, I'm virtually certain that it would cause a lot more damage than freezing--irradiated foods appear less changed because the damage is at the molecular level and the gross structure is unchanged. (That does not mean, of course, that irradiated foods are dangerous to eat--neither radiation or freezing is in the same league as cooking when it comes to rearranging molecules...) In fact, my semi-educated guess is that future nanotech could restore frozen organisms but could not restore irradiated ones. --JoSH]
hcobb@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Henry J. Cobb) (01/04/90)
The reference is: Sci. Am. Feb 86, "Quantum chemical reactions in the deep cold.", Goldanskii, V.I. Henry J. Cobb hcobb@walt.cc.utexas.edu [This message edited for reasons I have communicated to Mr. Cobb. --JoSH]
ems%nanotech@princeton.edu (01/04/90)
...Text Elided >>Re irradiation, I'm virtually certain that it would cause a lot >>more damage than freezing--irradiated foods appear less changed because >>the damage is at the molecular level and the gross structure is >>unchanged. (That does not mean, of course, that irradiated foods are >>dangerous to eat--neither radiation or freezing is in the same league >>as cooking when it comes to rearranging molecules...) In fact, my >>semi-educated guess is that future nanotech could restore frozen >>organisms but could not restore irradiated ones. >>--JoSH] I did a little research on radiation injury to human tissues. "In humans, sensitivity of tissues to radiation decreases in the following order: (1) lymphoid tissue and bone marrow (2) epithelial tissue, ie testes and ovaries (3) salivary gland (4) skin (5) mucous membranes (6) endothelial cells of blood vessels and peritoneum (7) connective tissue (8) muscle, bone, and nerve tissue" That nerve tissue is at the end of this list is promising, don't you think? Since it is primarily those 10**11 nerve cells, the brain, that we most want to preserve? Why would you rule out repairing radiation damaged tissues? Isn't this implicit in the cancer cures we expect from nanotechnology? If nanotechnology is really going to give us *complete* control of molecular structures, all molecular damage of any type, will be repairable, provide we have a map of, or can deduce, the original structures. I would really expect the smaller scale damage caused by irradiation to be more easily repaired by molecular scale assemblers, than the larger scale damage caused by freezing. By (risky) analogy, ants can more easily move many leaf bits around than they could move an uprooted tree. (Although with *enough* ants, anything is possible. Rocket nozzles for instance, ala KED.) [ Asbestos suit on. Halon primed and ready. ] I think the real reason no one has looked into irradiation as a (viable? :-) alternative, is that the general public has been conditioned into knee-jerk fear of the (gasp) "r-word". Just because radiation is a deadly threat now doesn't mean it will always be. Especially if nanotechnology lives up to its promise. Ed [Your comments on radiation are refreshingly non-phobic. I'm just assuming that the levels of (ionizing) radiation used for food sterilization do significant damage because they are after all intended to kill any microorganisms present. That's troublesome because the thing you need to retrieve is "strengths" associated with the synapses, which are basically chemical concentrations in and around the nerve cell endings. Given that even non-ionizing radiation (sunlight) causes dye decomposition (fading) I would guess that a 200 year bath in hard gammas would leave you somewhat absent-minded. --JoSH]
landman@hanami.eng.sun.com (Howard A. Landman x61391) (01/05/90)
In article <Jan.3.23.23.32.1990.10879@athos.rutgers.edu> ems%nanotech@princeton.edu writes: >That nerve tissue is at the end of this list is promising, don't >you think? Since it is primarily those 10**11 nerve cells, the >brain, that we most want to preserve? This amounts to an article of faith - that because most *conscious* thought occurs in the brain, preservation of the brain in isolation will preserve the entire personality. Personally I don't think that necessarily follows; I want my *whole* self along for the ride if at all possible. >Why would you rule out repairing radiation damaged tissues? Isn't >this implicit in the cancer cures we expect from nanotechnology? > > [Given that even non-ionizing radiation (sunlight) causes dye > decomposition (fading) I would guess that a 200 year bath in hard > gammas would leave you somewhat absent-minded. > --JoSH] I think the difference here is partly due to different models. Model 1. Initial radiation sterilization followed by some means of maintaining sterility. Model 2. Continuous radiation to maintain sterility. I accept JoSH's objections to #2, and have a further objections to #1, which is that unless you freeze too, you're going to have unacceptable thermal degradation; but if you're going to freeze anyway, why bother irradiating and taking further unnecessary damage? In regard to the viability of frozen embryos: remember that an embryo at this stage is basically a ball of undifferentiated cells. The death of 20% of the cells in such a ball may have no critical long term effect on its ultimate development. Indeed, it is conceivable that even one surviving cell might be enough to grow into a normal organism. The situation with an adult, fully differentiated body is quite different. On the other hand, the incredible advantage that nanotech reconstructors will have with a full body is that there is incredible redundancy. ALL of the genetic information is available in EVERY cell. Synapse states have both chemical and physical correlates. You're not going to want them to reconstruct you exactly anyway (complete with scars, retrovirus infections, subcritical heavy metal poisoning, filthy lungs, DDT in your fat tissue, the back injury that's been nagging you for years, hearing damage from too many loud concerts, local mutations like birthmarks and small benign tumors, etc.). What you want is for them to fix everything that's wrong with you that they know how to fix, except possibly those that affect your personality. That will require modifying almost every cell in your body, and possibly doing some large-scale alterations (e.g. if they fix your slipped disk, they might have to adjust the sizes of the supporting muscles and ligaments). You might also want your biological age adjusted if you were "over the hill" when you died. The question is, if their technology allows simulating your mind, do you also want them to "fix" anything "wrong" they find there? Maybe they should revive you and ask you first? Would it be OK if they asked the simulation instead, to save time? Howard A. Landman landman@eng.sun.com -or- sun!landman
ems%nanotech@princeton.edu (01/05/90)
>>>... no one has looked into irradiation ... >>> >>>Ed >> ... hard gammas would leave you somewhat absent-minded. >> --JoSH] Are there any food irradiation experts out there? I'm afraid we're both shooting in the dark. (Though I am trying to dig up more facts on the subject.) And isn't memory, especially long-term memory, stored in structural changes in the synapses themselves, besides chemically? I would expect those long-term memories would prove more difficult to "bleach out". Nuclear physics is rife with macabre stories of men who, having accidentally received lethal dosages of radiation, then walked around lucid and clear-headed until they died. (Perhaps in those cases amnesia would have been a blessing.) If there is some truth to what you assume here, we can still minimize the damage by irradiating the body briefly once, to kill the microbes, then hermetically sealing it. There's no need to bathe in hard gamma for 200 years, one brief dip will do. ED [As Howard Landman notes, you still have to worry about ordinary chemical decomposition at room temperatures. As far as synapses are concerned, you may be right. According to Crick (in PDP v2 p365) it isn't really known how the weight of the synapse is represented, but his guess is simply the area of the zone of apposition across the synaptic cleft (see p338). In the best of all cases it might even be proportional to the volume of the presynaptic process, a feature whose size is on the order of a micron (ie, big; the cleft is 20-30 nm across). If so, you might get away with irradiating the body and simply dessicating it for the long wait. I wouldn't risk it personally though :^) --JoSH]