A video tour of the ALCOR facility

[John Clark]

This is one of the best and newest video tours of the ALCOR facility that I've seen:

Should I FREEZE MYSELF when I die? |  with Katee Sackhoff

John K Clark

[spudb...@aol.com]

So, are you going to do this, John? So far, if we were able to revive organisms, I'd be more convinced. Maybe, for the few it fills an emotional need, like me with physics and an afterlife?

Mitch 

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[Lawrence Crowell]

This is no-go unless the problem of ice crystal expansion is solved. This causes disruption of cellular and intercellular structures. In effect people so frozen are simply dead. Also freezing is not something instantaneous. By the time brain cells are really frozen they are dead. They die within about 10 minutes after the heart stops. Freezing is not fast enough. 

You also have the problem  that even if that can be worked around a person so frozen, where I guess now it is just the head with the idea of cloning bodies etc, has to be kept in some sort of endowment. Within a century of so that will burn off like the morning fog. Even if money is kept in trust, economic changes and disruptions can also pull the off-switch. Maybe some famous or powerful people would be maintained and revived in order to know something of the future's past. For the average Jane and Joe if it takes to long I suspect the switch is turned off and they are taken out with the garbage.

Now, for those running ALCOR or related companies this might be for now a cash cow. If enough people can be duped into this it might provide serious profits.

LC

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 3:23 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is no-go unless the problem of ice crystal expansion is solved.

True, but that problem doesn't need to be solved right now, it can be left to future technology to figure out. The key question right now is will my brain enter a turbulent state when it is frozen or will the fluid flow be laminar? If it's turbulent then small changes in initial conditions will result in large changes in outcome and I'm dead meat, even nanotechnology couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. But if the freezing process is laminar then figuring out what things were like before they were frozen would be pretty straightforward.

Fluid flow stops being smoothly Laminar and starts to become chaotically turbulent when a system has a Reynolds number between 2300 and 4000, although you might get some non chaotic vortices if it is bigger than 30. You can find the approximate Reynolds number by using the formula LDV/N.  L is the characteristic size we're interested in, we're interested in cells so L is about 10^-6 meters. D is the density of water, 10^3 kilograms/cubic meter.  V is the velocity of the flow, during freezing it's probably less than 10^-3 meters per second but let's be conservative, I'll give you 3 orders of magnitude and call V 1 meter per second.  N is the viscosity of water, 0.001 newton-second/meter^2, If you plug these numbers into the formula you get a Reynolds number of about 1. And 1 is a lot less than 2300 so it looks like any mixing caused by freezing would probably be laminar not turbulent, so you can still deduce the position where things are supposed to be.

Actually to my mind the most serious obstacles to the success of my program are not scientific at all, they are these:

1) Will my brain really be frozen soon after my death?
2) Will my brain remain frozen until the age of nanotechnology?
3) When it becomes possible to retrieve the information in my frozen brain will anybody think I'm worth the trouble to actually do it?

Concerning that last one, I think it will either be impossible to revive me or cheap and easy to do , the time when it will be possible but expensive will be very short. I'm willing to concede that my value to the Jupiter Brain that will be running things then will be almost zero, but my (perhaps hopelessly optimistic) hope is that it is not precisely zero. Anyway, given a choice between no chance and a slim chance I'll pick a slim chance every time.  

 > By the time brain cells are really frozen they are dead. 

Both a cadaver and a healthy human being are made of atoms, the only difference between the two is how those atoms are arranged, so if information on the position and momentum them is preserved then one can be turned to another because atoms are generic; if you've seen one carbon atom you've seen them all.

 

> You also have the problem  that even if that can be worked around a person so frozen, where I guess now it is just the head with the idea of cloning bodies etc, has to be kept in some sort of endowment. Within a century of so that will burn off like the morning fog.

Maybe so, but at least I have a chance, even if cryonic suspension doesn't work it won't cause me to be any deader than if I was eaten by worms or burned up in a fire. And how long I will need to be maintained at liquid nitrogen temperature depends on when the age of nanotechnology arrives; I would be astonished if it occured in just 10 years, I would be equally astonished if it didn't happen in 100 years.

> Now, for those running ALCOR or related companies this might be for now a cash cow. If enough people can be duped into this it might provide serious profits.

The first human cryonic suspension occurred in January 1967 (and the guy is still frozen in the ALCOR facility to this very day) and in all that time nobody has gotten rich off of cryonics or even gotten close. I wish somebody had.

John K Clark

[Brent Meeker]

On 7/25/2020 1:56 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 3:23 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is no-go unless the problem of ice crystal expansion is solved.

True, but that problem doesn't need to be solved right now, it can be left to future technology to figure out. The key question right now is will my brain enter a turbulent state when it is frozen or will the fluid flow be laminar? If it's turbulent then small changes in initial conditions will result in large changes in outcome and I'm dead meat, even nanotechnology couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. But if the freezing process is laminar then figuring out what things were like before they were frozen would be pretty straightforward.

Fluid flow stops being smoothly Laminar and starts to become chaotically turbulent when a system has a Reynolds number between 2300 and 4000, although you might get some non chaotic vortices if it is bigger than 30. You can find the approximate Reynolds number by using the formula LDV/N.  L is the characteristic size we're interested in, we're interested in cells so L is about 10^-6 meters. D is the density of water, 10^3 kilograms/cubic meter.  V is the velocity of the flow, during freezing it's probably less than 10^-3 meters per second but let's be conservative, I'll give you 3 orders of magnitude and call V 1 meter per second.  N is the viscosity of water, 0.001 newton-second/meter^2, If you plug these numbers into the formula you get a Reynolds number of about 1. And 1 is a lot less than 2300 so it looks like any mixing caused by freezing would probably be laminar not turbulent, so you can still deduce the position where things are supposed to be.

Actually to my mind the most serious obstacles to the success of my program are not scientific at all, they are these:

1) Will my brain really be frozen soon after my death?
2) Will my brain remain frozen until the age of nanotechnology?
3) When it becomes possible to retrieve the information in my frozen brain will anybody think I'm worth the trouble to actually do it?

Concerning that last one, I think it will either be impossible to revive me or cheap and easy to do , the time when it will be possible but expensive will be very short. I'm willing to concede that my value to the Jupiter Brain that will be running things then will be almost zero, but my (perhaps hopelessly optimistic) hope is that it is not precisely zero. Anyway, given a choice between no chance and a slim chance I'll pick a slim chance every time. 

Or seeing that it's expensive to revive you, the Jupiter Brain decrees this shall be repaid by putting your head on a laborbot mining diamonds in Africa for the next 100yrs.  And laborbots don't have to be very smart, so it's ok that your revived IQ is in the 60's.

Brent

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 5:18 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Or seeing that it's expensive to revive you, the Jupiter Brain decrees this shall be repaid by putting your head on a laborbot mining diamonds in Africa for the next 100yrs.  And laborbots don't have to be very smart, so it's ok that your revived IQ is in the 60's.

I think you've been reading too much bad science-fiction.

 John K Clark

[Lawrence Crowell]

These kinds of ideas I think lie far more in the domain of science fiction than science and possible technology. There are a whole range of things that have not transpired in the way the science fiction bards foretold. We have no colonization of planets, not even Luna-City or even Luna-base, and humans in space is in a stall. Realistically it appears there is no "planet-B." Where are the jet-packs, nuclear energy too cheap to meter, my new robotic body, brain-mind downloads into cybers, the vacations on the big wheel in space and so forth? The idea of body transplants and immortality through various means is at best on hold. Also the problems coming at us that may well put a kibosh on the whole human enterprise appear to be welling up around us and leadership in this world is broken.

LC

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 7:56 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The idea of body transplants and immortality through various means is at best on hold. 

Yes, and putting things on hold Is actually the entire point of freezing a brain with liquid nitrogen. I fully admit that cryonics is an unproven technology and I maintain it will remain unproven until the very day it becomes obsolete. The only way to prove it works is to repair the damage from freezing and bring somebody back, but if your technology is advanced enough to do that then it's advanced enough to stop them from dying in the first place so cryonics would no longer be needed.

> Also the problems coming at us that may well put a kibosh on the whole human enterprise

You are on a sinking ship during a very powerful hurricane, there is room for you in a small lifeboat but you're far from land, no SOS has been sent, and the waves are mountainous. Do you get into the lifeboat? Do you take measures to try to save your life even if you're not certain those measures will be successful?

John K Clark

[Lawrence Crowell]

To be honest I smell a scam with this. Why not set up a company, ALCOR or what ever, where you freeze people in Liquid N2 and for a price promise to keep them this way with a vague idea that in the future they will be revived. That is a great way to empty out the 401Ks of the gullible and make a killing. 

When it come to the world falling apart this Cov SARS-2 is perturbing things a bit. Congress is debating another relief, not because many are that friendly to the idea of giving out money, but if enough people lose homes and go hungry there will be "torch and pitchfork," more likely assault rifle, bearing mobs coming to cut their throats. The last few months have seen society here tremble a bit. All it takes is for some perturbing event to seriously collapse things, in particular if the electrical grid goes down. Yep, without that people in cryocells and the rest will turn into rotting meat. A method for reviving people from this cryogenic state is a long way off, if it ever happens or is even possible.

LC

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 10:24 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

>To be honest I smell a scam with this.

To be a scam somebody needs to be lying, but ALCOR has never guaranteed that cryonics will work, all they say is it MIGHT work because there is no proof freezing a brain will produce Information Theoretical Death. So where is the lie?

Information-Theoretic Death

This has been going on for over half a century and to be a good scam somebody needs to get rich, so where are all the rich cryonics providers?

John K Clark

[Tomasz Rola]

On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 12:23:35PM -0700, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
> This is no-go unless the problem of ice crystal expansion is solved. This
> causes disruption of cellular and intercellular structures. In effect
> people so frozen are simply dead. Also freezing is not something
> instantaneous. By the time brain cells are really frozen they are dead.
> They die within about 10 minutes after the heart stops. Freezing is not
> fast enough.
>
> You also have the problem that even if that can be worked around a person
> so frozen, where I guess now it is just the head with the idea of cloning
> bodies etc, has to be kept in some sort of endowment. Within a century of
> so that will burn off like the morning fog. Even if money is kept in trust,
> economic changes and disruptions can also pull the off-switch. Maybe some
> famous or powerful people would be maintained and revived in order to know
> something of the future's past. For the average Jane and Joe if it takes to
> long I suspect the switch is turned off and they are taken out with the
> garbage.
>
> Now, for those running ALCOR or related companies this might be for now a
> cash cow. If enough people can be duped into this it might provide serious
> profits.

I share some of your concerns, but so far ALCOR most probably is not a
scam (but I never examined them from this angle carefully).

There is a problem of crystals and recreating destroyed parts with
technology not yet existing (and which limitations we do not know, but
each tech has some).

But where I see a huge fail of this concept is the domain of "what
humans do to each other". See, for example this article (the author
makes a lot of interesting claims, but I have not enough time right
now to try and verify them):

[

https://see.news/crushing-mummies-and-medical-prescriptions/

]

quote:

Mummies of the Ancient Egyptians were exported abroad in a profitable
trade centuries ago.

They were crushed and sold in pharmacies in the Middle Ages up to the
18th century.

People believed then that powder of the mummies give them the power of
the Pharaohs and their good health.

The Westerners believe that tar of the mummies is the panacea for
their diseases so they took it as a prescription.

endquote

Also, "Human-mummy romance in fiction":

[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Human-mummy_romance_in_fiction

]

Basically, there were many mummies burried in the desert. Most of
them, not pharaohs (who are still somewhat protected from bad
treatment, for a while).

So, those guys believed that if they were properly dealt with after
their death, one day they would be revived. But, time has
passed. Ancient Egypt is no more. There is nobody to protect them
anymore. Even morale and ethics had changed. Their bodies had been
literally cannibalised.

So much about counting on mercy of strangers, or our dear descendants.

But even if they actually revive somebody, what kind of life is it
going to be? Imagine a guy (European, wealthy) frozen 500 years ago,
i.e. around 1520 A.D. They pop him out of the freezer today, what
next? Is he going to be a... nobleman? We have no place for nobility
anymore. A hired gun? He may kill himself with advanced weapon when
doing his first assignment. A tradesman? What, selling tulips, pepper,
salt?

I assume he would be homeless or prisoner for the rest of his
miserable life, after enjoying a quick time as a celebrity.

But hey, he has got a chance.

--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomas...@bigfoot.com **

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Sunday, July 26, 2020 at 10:57:12 AM UTC-5 Tomasz Rola wrote:

The insight into an historical analogue with mummification is worth noting..

LC

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 4:35 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The insight into an historical analogue with mummification is worth noting..

I don't see why, unless you think that if the ancient Egyptian's were unsuccessful at something then nobody has a chance of ever doing any better. But I think we may have learned a few things about science and technology in the last 4000 years so it may be time to give it another try.

John K Clark

[Lawrence Crowell]

In order to really make this work you need Maxwell's demon. OK, of course this will really be some form of nanotech that is able to apply information to repair on a molecular level damage done by freezing. It is not impossible, but the prospects are daunting. The difficulties with this I see as far beyond the problem of transplanting a brain into a body, where for N = 10^10 neural connections there are some N! possible combinations.  It is not impossible in principle, but things like this are not likely to come very soon. 

I can't predict the future with much certainty. David Byrne made an interesting point on this. However, it seems most probable that the more "pie in the sky"some prediction on the future is the less likely,

LC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzBS7bGJaDA  

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 7:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

>  In order to really make this work you need Maxwell's demon.

No, to make this work you need Nanotechnology. Maxwell's Demon violates the second law of thermodynamics. Nanotechnology does not.

> for N = 10^10 neural connections there are some N! possible combinations.

So you're saying wiring up neural connections at random won't work and I certainly agree, if it did work there would be no point in freezing a brain, but we need the information in that brain. Life can access that information so I see no reason in principle why human technology can't access it too even if the brain is frozen, provided of course that chaos isn't introduced in the freezing process and there are reasons to think it isn't.

> It is not impossible in principle, but things like this are not likely to come very soon.

The thing about a singularity is nobody can say how soon it will happen, even if it doesn't happen for 1000 years 999 years from now it will still look like it's a long way away because more progress will be made in that last year than in the previous 999. So whenever a singularity occurs it will always come as a big surprise to everybody. The good thing about liquid nitrogen is it puts time on your side, subjectively technology will be able to achieve Nanotechnology and superhuman AI instantaneously. And remember current technology only needs to be good enough to freeze things, unfreezing a brain can be left to future scientists to figure out.

Am I certain Cryonics will work? Absolutely not. Am I certain it MIGHT work? Yes, I would say the probability of success is greater than zero and less than 100%, but that's about all I can say.

John K Clark

[spudb...@aol.com]

Alcor is science fact, here is a science fiction repair by nanotechnology supposedly, from the 2013 film Elysium. Besides fight scenes the "McGuffin" as director Alfred Hitchcock would have termed it, is the miraculous medical nanotechnology machinery available only to the elites on Elysium.  Here is a link to that film on Youtube, which depicts the nano-repair in action. It occurs about 50 seconds into the start of the clip. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j-vjtJ7PRI

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[Brent Meeker]

I have a much simpler solution.  We'll just have an AI train on all JKC's emails and other media and recreate his personality and memories in a robot.   I wonder how much he will pay for that?  It has a lot higher probability of providing him with immortality than does ALCOR.

Brent

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Monday, July 27, 2020 at 8:51:10 AM UTC-5 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 7:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

>  In order to really make this work you need Maxwell's demon.

No, to make this work you need Nanotechnology. Maxwell's Demon violates the second law of thermodynamics. Nanotechnology does not.

That was what I then said. However, reconstructing a living organism molecular by molecule is a tough call.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect this idea of reviving cryo-bodies may stay in the domain of science fiction. There are as I said a lot of future visions that have not taken shape. We may see more of the same.

LC

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 5:16 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

>  reconstructing a living organism molecular by molecule is a tough call.

Of course it's a tough call! Yes, it's hard to do and that's why we can't do it right now, but random mutation and natural selection figured out how to do it and I know of no law of physics that forbids intelligent designers, aka human engineers, from doing the same thing. The great thing about liquid nitrogen is it gives us time for technology to catch up. And no new breakthroughs in science are needed for Cryonics to work, it just needs improvements in technology, specifically improvements in nanotechnology.

John K Clark

[smitra]

On 27-07-2020 23:45, John Clark wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 5:16 PM Lawrence Crowell
> <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

>> _> reconstructing a living organism molecular by molecule is a
>> tough call._

>
> Of course it's a tough call! Yes, it's hard to do and that's why we
> can't do it right now, but random mutation and natural selection
> figured out how to do it and I know of no law of physics that forbids
> intelligent designers, aka human engineers, from doing the same thing.
> The great thing about liquid nitrogen is it gives us time for
> technology to catch up. And no new breakthroughs in science are needed
> for Cryonics to work, it just needs improvements in technology,
> specifically improvements in nanotechnology.
>
> John K Clark

Or just extract the relevant information from the brain needed to
simulate the deceased person's mind.

Saibal

[Lawrence Crowell]

I see this alongside a number of other things that are not likely, such as the space elevator or colonizing other star systems.

LC

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 4:09 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I see this alongside a number of other things that are not likely, such as the space elevator or colonizing other star systems.

A Jupiter BRAIN could do all those things, in fact for a Jupiter Brain it would be trivially easy. It would take approximately 10^17 floating point operations per second to simulate a human brain but a Jupiter Brain could perform 10^42 floating point operations per second. If you wanted to simultaneously simulate every human being who ever lived it would only take about 10^36 floating point operations per second, and even that would be trivially easy. And all you need to build a Jupiter Brain is Nanotechnology.

Jupiter brains, technological endpoints of civilizations

John K Clark

[Lawrence Crowell]

This is something that is not likely. What would be the point of this? The purpose of technology is to alleviate drudgery, to transport, to learn things about the world, or to increase information that is accessible to us humans. We don't want information processors that are so advanced they can't relate anything to us. That information most often involves things like American Idol and Faux News. A few of us with information to stuff such as lattice gauge theory programs and the rest. But we are the very few. A Jupiter brain that we could not even talk to would be of no use. Who would want this? Who would pay for it? It sounds interesting in the abstract, but if this has no utility then nobody will go there. 

I advise looking up a book by Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Civilizations. Think of how complex our world has become over the last few decades. Coming of age in the late 70s-80s was a time of considerable simplicity, where now everything is dependent on computers. Back then most things were still done locally by hand. Of course it was complex, but nowhere near what we have now. Now if things go haywire, say a Carrington event from the sun, the entire logistical system of the economy would disappear. We would be in big trouble, and I will actually say it is likely something like this likely will in fact happen at some time in the future. A nuclear war of course is the ultimate collapse. Further, the internet is possibly going to interface more with us and then into the brain. We may become as the BORG on Star Trek NG. If things go wrong we would be like the disconnected BORG people stumbling around.  

If you ever saw the CGI film Wall-E there was a scene where people in that space ark were reduced to being shuttled around in pods as they took their food cans and passively consumed. We might ponder what is wrong with this, and it is this demolishes the individual uniqueness and creativity. Notice how music has become reduced to running a midi-file through a synthesizer processor that repeats every 2 measures and people then chant to this and if they sing there is an auto-pitch corrector. Virtuosity has been lost and it is reduced to a corporate product. All of this and everything we do and work is matrixed into an information network that we must also engage in a mandatory way. 

The technological trajectory is not taking us outwards into space, but more inwards into cyber-generated fantasies and virtual worlds. The future vision of the past has been turned upside down. In effect we are going nowhere, but we are at the same time running faster and harder to keep up with the information stream that more and more concerns nothing. Even money has gone this way. I remember as a kid a billion dollars seems like a lot and was the big unit of money discussed. Now it is in the trillions of dollars. Has the wealth of this world increased a thousand fold? I don't think so. I think more of these things are big fantasies directed as us, and in the case of money it is done to prop up the holding of billionaires. It is all a Ponzi game. 

There might be some interesting role we humans or intelligent life play in this universe. I do not have time to go into that now. I doubt though that we are really going anywhere, though there may continue to be some astronaut flights for few more decades. These science fiction schemes, particularly the idea of Kadeshov or Kardasian etc civilization levels I = planets, II= stellar systems, III = galaxy, IV = cosmos and V the multiverse is just an idle fantasy that leans on a little bit of science. We humans are not much more than 7.8 billion ground apes exponentially rampaging out of control. The past, present and future tenure of our species might be summed up as two stone ages separated by a short period of disequilibrium. The first stone age was the Pleistocene when the Earth was rich with biodiversity. The disequilibrium period is civilization and we are potentially near the peak of that. The next stone age will be the anthropocene where Earth will be toxic and in a mass-extinction where humans will be brutally crushed to few in numbers and back to ultimately using stones. 

LC

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 7:58 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:\

> This is something that is not likely. What would be the point of this?

That's like asking what's the point of life. I prefer existence over oblivion because that's the way my mind is wired. And my brain is wired that way because of inheritance; if one of my ancestors didn't prefer existence over nonexistence then he or she wouldn't be an ancestor. And an AI that didn't prefer existence over oblivion wouldn't be around for very long.

> The purpose of technology is to alleviate drudgery, to transport, to learn things about the world, or to increase information that is accessible to us humans.

There is no way you could outsmart something that is smarter than you are, so we won't be able to order it around, so humans will have their agenda and a Jupiter Brain will have its own, and those two agendas may or may not be compatible; In fact I'd say if it turns out that cryonics doesn't work that would be my best guess as to why it was unsuccessful. So even if I embrace cryonics I may still face oblivion, but if I don't embrace cryonics I will certainly face oblivion. I think the logical choice is obvious.

> We don't want information processors that are so advanced they can't relate anything to us.

It doesn't matter what we want, that may be what we're gonna end up getting.

> We may become as the BORG on Star Trek NG. If things go wrong we would be like the disconnected BORG people stumbling around.  

Maybe. If you take the liquid nitrogen path there is an endless list of "maybes",  but if you want absolute certainty then it's easy to achieve, just don't take the cryonics path and let worms do their thing.

 > These science fiction schemes, particularly the idea of Kadeshov or Kardasian etc civilization levels I = planets, II= stellar systems, III = galaxy, IV = cosmos and V the multiverse is just an idle fantasy

Have you found an error in John Von Neumann's work that proves his probe won't work?

John K Clark

[Brent Meeker]

On 7/29/2020 6:36 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 7:58 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:\

> This is something that is not likely. What would be the point of this?

That's like asking what's the point of life. I prefer existence over oblivion because that's the way my mind is wired. And my brain is wired that way because of inheritance; if one of my ancestors didn't prefer existence over nonexistence then he or she wouldn't be an ancestor. And an AI that didn't prefer existence over oblivion wouldn't be around for very long.

> The purpose of technology is to alleviate drudgery, to transport, to learn things about the world, or to increase information that is accessible to us humans.

There is no way you could outsmart something that is smarter than you are, so we won't be able to order it around, so humans will have their agenda and a Jupiter Brain will have its own, and those two agendas may or may not be compatible; In fact I'd say if it turns out that cryonics doesn't work that would be my best guess as to why it was unsuccessful. So even if I embrace cryonics I may still face oblivion, but if I don't embrace cryonics I will certainly face oblivion. I think the logical choice is obvious.

It's not obvious because there are things worse than oblivion.

Brent

[John Clark]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> It's not obvious because there are things worse than oblivion.

Yeah, you mentioned something about moonmen or something forcing me to mine diamonds before, but I'd rather take my chances with hypothetical moonmen than with cancer or stroke or even COVID-19.

 John K Clark

[Lawrence Crowell]

The main point I am making is that lots of future predictions do not happen. There have been a number of big "pie in the sky" ideas that have come and gone. Real science and technology have progressed in directions often not predicted. The big wheel in space, Luna city and piloted missions to Mars and Jupiter  have simply not happened. The Elon Musk program is not going to work either. 

One thing that has happened is the idea science as the basis for explanation for the universe has in the minds of some people also come to replace religion. The decline of religion as an intellectual basis has seen the growth of ideas about a future where science and technology provide the promises usually attributed to religion. In the case of N2 freezing this involves immortality, or at least unbounded lifespan that avoids mortality. This is often accompanied with various economic ideas. I happen to find these types of idea highly questionable.

LC

[John Clark]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 6:56 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Have you found an error in John Von Neumann's work that proves his probe won't work?

> The main point I am making is that lots of future predictions do not happen.

Not happened YET, but there is plenty of time. Just 200 years ago nobody knew what electricity was and a wood fired steam engine was high tech, and 10,000 years ago a sharp flint rock was high-tech, and it will be a billion years or so before the sun gets too hot for life to exist on Earth. Liquid nitrogen gives you time.

 

> The big wheel in space, Luna city and piloted missions to Mars and Jupiter  have simply not happened.

True they have not happened, but not because they violate some law of physics or even because current technology is not advanced enough to do so; they have not been built because nobody could find any Scientific, economic, or military reason to do so, and it's entirely possible nobody ever will. However I'm quite confident nobody will ever run out of reasons to stop pursuing immortality or in making sure your AI is smarter than the other guy's AI.

> One thing that has happened is the idea science as the basis for explanation for the universe has in the minds of some people also come to replace religion.

Yes certainly, but you almost make that sound like a bad thing. Religion sucks, Science doesn't because religion (and magic) doesn't work, but Science does. 

> In the case of N2 freezing this involves immortality, or at least unbounded lifespan that avoids mortality.

Yes.

John K Clark

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 7:13:37 AM UTC-5 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 6:56 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Have you found an error in John Von Neumann's work that proves his probe won't work?

> The main point I am making is that lots of future predictions do not happen.

Not happened YET, but there is plenty of time. Just 200 years ago nobody knew what electricity was and a wood fired steam engine was high tech, and 10,000 years ago a sharp flint rock was high-tech, and it will be a billion years or so before the sun gets too hot for life to exist on Earth. Liquid nitrogen gives you time.

I find it amusing that people invoke the issue of the sun heating up Earth. That will not start to be a potential issue for another 500 million years. A billion years from now things might be tough. However, the real issue with human survival is over the next century or so. Homo sapiens will not exist into geological time spans of the future. As a rule long lasting species are small and are a genetic "trunk" for speciation. We are not a trunk, but a far off branch --- not even that but more like a  twig. 

 

 

> The big wheel in space, Luna city and piloted missions to Mars and Jupiter  have simply not happened.

True they have not happened, but not because they violate some law of physics or even because current technology is not advanced enough to do so; they have not been built because nobody could find any Scientific, economic, or military reason to do so, and it's entirely possible nobody ever will. However I'm quite confident nobody will ever run out of reasons to stop pursuing immortality or in making sure your AI is smarter than the other guy's AI.

The return on investment with that sort of manned space flight has not been demonstrated. To do it right the initial investment has to be large. Elon Musk's idea of a martian spaceship is a sort of hail Mary pass. 

 

> One thing that has happened is the idea science as the basis for explanation for the universe has in the minds of some people also come to replace religion.

Yes certainly, but you almost make that sound like a bad thing. Religion sucks, Science doesn't because religion (and magic) doesn't work, but Science does. 

> In the case of N2 freezing this involves immortality, or at least unbounded lifespan that avoids mortality.

Yes.

John K Clark

I did not comment on the von Neumann probes. The idea is sort of interesting and it is a cyber-space-based idea analogous to biology. So far self-replicating algorithms, search engines and viruses as examples, have only worked in a virtual sense.  I do not know how realistic this is with micro-probes in the solar system. Maybe they would drift around dormant for along time before landing, presumably at low velocity, into an asteroid.

Using science to replace religion is a Faustian bargain. I think it has some clouding if not corrupting influence on science. If people shift their hopes and fears associated with religion to science, then we can expect policies and economics to shift accordingly. I am not sure an aim of science is either to disprove religion, which in fact it can't do, or to offer up the promises attributed to religion.

LC

[John Clark]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 10:22 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> the real issue with human survival is over the next century or so.

I agree.

 

> Homo sapiens will not exist into geological time spans of the future.

True, Human beings will not exist over a geological time scale, but the AI's they create probably will. I would be surprised if anything you or I would consider human will exists a century from now, perhaps not even in 50 years, and if I am ever lucky enough to be revived from a liquid nitrogen sleep I don't expect to come back as a biological being that lives in a non-virtual world as I (presumably) do now. 

> I did not comment on the von Neumann probes. The idea is sort of interesting and it is a cyber-space-based idea analogous to biology.

Exactly, and if random mutation and natural selection can do something then intelligent designers, aka Human engineers, can do it too and do it better because Evolution is a stupid way to get things done, it's just that before Evolution finally managed to make a brain, after 3 billion years of stumbling around, Evolution was the only way complex objects could get made.

A jet engine works better than a prop engine in an airplane. I give you a prop engine and tell you to turn it into a jet, but you must do it while the engine is running, you must do it in one million small steps, and you must do it so every single one of those small steps immediately improves the operation of the engine. Eventually you would get an improved engine of some sort, but it wouldn't look anything like a jet. If the tire on your car is getting worn you can take it off and put a new one on, but evolution could never do something like that, because when you take the old tire off you have temporarily made things worse, now you have no tire at all. With evolution EVERY step (generation), no matter how many, MUST be an immediate improvement over the previous one.

 

> So far self-replicating algorithms, search engines and viruses as examples, have only worked in a virtual sense.  I do not know how realistic this is with micro-probes in the solar system. Maybe they would drift around dormant for along time before landing, presumably at low velocity, into an asteroid.

Such a probe would be about the size of a large bacteria so you could make trillions of them, or rather they would make trillions of copies of themselves.

> If people shift their hopes and fears associated with religion to science, then we can expect policies and economics to shift accordingly.

That would be wonderful if it happened, nobody would give the keys to a Trident nuclear submarine to a creature like Donald Trump if it did, but religious evangelicals saw no problem in doing exactly that in 2016. 

> I am not sure an aim of science is either to disprove religion,

Science will never be able to prove that religion is untrue, but it hasalready proven that religion is silly.

John K Clark