It seems from the comment that he does understand information theoretic views of death- after all he is talking about preserving the information via thin slices and EM scanning.
To get good vitrification results, enough to preserve the synaptic structure, his claim is that you have to take mm thin slices of brain and preserve them at nearly 2000 atmospheres of pressure. This is obviously not what current cryonics procedures do. They shoot you full of cryoprotectants (which destroys some chemical information in the brain at the outset), and then freeze the brain whole (which will lead to a lot of fracturing).
To attack his point, I think you’d need to claim that either:
he is technically wrong and current vitrification does decently preserve synaptic structures.
mechanically scrambling synaptic structures via cracking is a 1 to 1 process that preserves information.
(2) is the interesting claim, though I’d hardly trust his word on (1) since I didn’t see any especially alarming paragraphs in the actual paper referenced. I’m not an expert on that level of neurobiology (Anders Sandberg is, and he’s signed up for cryonics), but I am not interested in hearing from anyone who has not demonstrated that they understand that we are talking about doing intelligent cryptography to a vitrified brain and potentially molecule-by-molecule analysis and reasoning, rather than, “Much cold. Very damage. Boo.”
Unless someone spells out exactly what is supposed to destroy all cues of a piece of info, by explaining why two cognitively distinct start states end up looking like molecularly identical endstates up to thermal noise, so that we can directly evaluate the technical evidence for ourselves, all they’re asking us to do is trust their authoritative summary of their intuitions; and you’d be just plain dumb to trust the authoritative summary of someone who didn’t understand the original argument.
I’m trying not to be impatient here, but when I actually went to look at the cited paper and it said nothing at all about damage, it turned out this eminent authority’s original argument consisted merely of, “To read off great synaptic info with current big clumsy microscopes and primitive imaging processing, we need big pressures. Look at this paper involving excellent info and big pressures. Cryonicists don’t have big pressures. Therefore you’re dead QED.”
I suspect the basic underlying premise that causes this difference is that you believe that strongly superhuman AI will exist at the time of unfreezing, whereas most people either disbelieve that thesis or do not take it into account.
So say something about it. Your whole comment is an attack on 1, but regardless of his word on whether or not thing slice vitrification is currently the best we can do, we KNOW fracturing happens with current brain preservation techniques. Liquid nitrogen is well below the glass transition, so fracturing is unavoidable.
Why should we expect fracturing/cracking to be 1 to 1?
If you’re worried about the effects of cracking, you can pay for ITS. LN2 is only used because it is cheap and relatively low-tech to maintain.
If you ask me it’s a silly concern if we’re assuming nanorepair or uploading. Cracking is just a surface discontinuity, and it forms at a point in time where the tissue is already in a glassy state where there can’t be much mixing of molecules. The microcracks that form in frozen tissue is a much greater concern (but not the only concern with freezing). The fact that vitrified tissue forms large, loud cracks is related to the fact that it does such a good job holding things in place.
I mean, it is either his authoritative summary or yours, and with all due honesty that guy actually takes care to construct an actual argument instead of resorting to appeals to authority and ridicule.
Personally I would be more interested in someone explaining exactly how cues of a piece of info are going to be reassembled and whole brain is going to be reconstructed from a partial data.
Proving that cryo-preservation + restoration does indeed work, and also showing the exact method as to how, seems like a more persuasive way to construct an argument rather that proving that your opponents failed to show that what you are claiming is currently impossible.
If cryonics providers don’t have a proper way of preserving your brain state (even if they can repair partial damage by guessing), than I am sorry to say, but you are indeed dead.
It seems from the comment that he does understand information theoretic views of death- after all he is talking about preserving the information via thin slices and EM scanning.
To get good vitrification results, enough to preserve the synaptic structure, his claim is that you have to take mm thin slices of brain and preserve them at nearly 2000 atmospheres of pressure. This is obviously not what current cryonics procedures do. They shoot you full of cryoprotectants (which destroys some chemical information in the brain at the outset), and then freeze the brain whole (which will lead to a lot of fracturing).
To attack his point, I think you’d need to claim that either:
he is technically wrong and current vitrification does decently preserve synaptic structures.
mechanically scrambling synaptic structures via cracking is a 1 to 1 process that preserves information.
(2) is the interesting claim, though I’d hardly trust his word on (1) since I didn’t see any especially alarming paragraphs in the actual paper referenced. I’m not an expert on that level of neurobiology (Anders Sandberg is, and he’s signed up for cryonics), but I am not interested in hearing from anyone who has not demonstrated that they understand that we are talking about doing intelligent cryptography to a vitrified brain and potentially molecule-by-molecule analysis and reasoning, rather than, “Much cold. Very damage. Boo.”
Unless someone spells out exactly what is supposed to destroy all cues of a piece of info, by explaining why two cognitively distinct start states end up looking like molecularly identical endstates up to thermal noise, so that we can directly evaluate the technical evidence for ourselves, all they’re asking us to do is trust their authoritative summary of their intuitions; and you’d be just plain dumb to trust the authoritative summary of someone who didn’t understand the original argument.
I’m trying not to be impatient here, but when I actually went to look at the cited paper and it said nothing at all about damage, it turned out this eminent authority’s original argument consisted merely of, “To read off great synaptic info with current big clumsy microscopes and primitive imaging processing, we need big pressures. Look at this paper involving excellent info and big pressures. Cryonicists don’t have big pressures. Therefore you’re dead QED.”
I suspect the basic underlying premise that causes this difference is that you believe that strongly superhuman AI will exist at the time of unfreezing, whereas most people either disbelieve that thesis or do not take it into account.
So say something about it. Your whole comment is an attack on 1, but regardless of his word on whether or not thing slice vitrification is currently the best we can do, we KNOW fracturing happens with current brain preservation techniques. Liquid nitrogen is well below the glass transition, so fracturing is unavoidable.
Why should we expect fracturing/cracking to be 1 to 1?
If you’re worried about the effects of cracking, you can pay for ITS. LN2 is only used because it is cheap and relatively low-tech to maintain.
If you ask me it’s a silly concern if we’re assuming nanorepair or uploading. Cracking is just a surface discontinuity, and it forms at a point in time where the tissue is already in a glassy state where there can’t be much mixing of molecules. The microcracks that form in frozen tissue is a much greater concern (but not the only concern with freezing). The fact that vitrified tissue forms large, loud cracks is related to the fact that it does such a good job holding things in place.
What’s “ITS”? (Google ‘only’ hits for “it’s”) How much more expensive is it? Is it offer by Alcor and CI?
Short for Intermediate Temperature Storage.
Oh ok. Thank you.
I mean, it is either his authoritative summary or yours, and with all due honesty that guy actually takes care to construct an actual argument instead of resorting to appeals to authority and ridicule.
Personally I would be more interested in someone explaining exactly how cues of a piece of info are going to be reassembled and whole brain is going to be reconstructed from a partial data.
Proving that cryo-preservation + restoration does indeed work, and also showing the exact method as to how, seems like a more persuasive way to construct an argument rather that proving that your opponents failed to show that what you are claiming is currently impossible.
If cryonics providers don’t have a proper way of preserving your brain state (even if they can repair partial damage by guessing), than I am sorry to say, but you are indeed dead.
I don’t know why you’d say he gets it—he explicitly talks about re-animation. If he addresses the actual issue it would appear to be by accident.