Re: Medtch 2180

Beth Fulton wrote:

> You've probably put this one to bed already too, but here's my razoo's
> worth anyway.

That takes brass.
 
> Cloned replacement parts I can believe, cloned bodies with memory
implants
> nope. The following points have a fair bit to do with this opinion

--->8---

I agree with the bulk of what you say. Just one or two quibbles.

I have an interest in cryonics, ie "Many were cold, but few are Frozen".
The big problem in this is that when the heads get thawed out, there is,
basically, freezer burn. I've seen pictures of a nice neural network
before freezing, after freezing (still OK), and during thawing
(unavoidable ice crystals totally disrupt the structure).
I've also seen the results of an algorithm that looks at the detritus,
and attempts to deduce what it looked like before the ice exploded the
cell membranes, and created voids and fissures in the connections. The
results were staggering, a very good match indeed. On the order of the
difference between a neural network on Thursday afternoon vs Saturday
Morning. Enough to preserve the personality? Very probably, it's a good
bet IMHO. I'm willing to chance it anyway.

OK, so from a frozen head we can deduce what the fine structure of the
brain looked like. The only problem now is re-construction. Do we
attempt a repair, or just build a new one? Probably repair is easiest.
This requires a very significant advance in nanotechnology, so much so
that if we had it, we could do surgery on individual chromosomes to
restore the missing codons (and so rejuvenate on a cellular level, no
more hyper-aging of cloned tissue).

Basically, revivification from a cryonically preserved corpse will only
be possible until some time after we achieve personal immortality. I see
this as probably being technically possible within a few centuries at
most. However, there are so many ethical issues that may be raised in
the meantime, that legal complications may multiply the timescale by at
least 10, and may prevent it altogether.

Using similar technology to re-grow limbs, provide neural shunts around
gross disruptions (ie repair paraplegia caused by broken spinal cords
etc) is vastly easier. I expect this to be possible on a limited scale
well before 2050, and possibly in a very limited sense even within 5
years.

One final point: if we can deduce the fine structure of the brain,
simulation of it using a different physical architecture may be a lot
easier still. Uploading one's personality into a digital model would be
possible. But the amount of information involved is significantly large,
as to simulate the brain of a mouse would take more data storage than
exists in the world at the moment just to hold a snapshot of the model,
let alone run it. There's also non-linear effects (ie Chaos) which means
the model might be so imperfect (quantisation too coarse) that the
resultant organism-model might not even be alive (however you may define
that).	
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