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Karma: 291

pre Feb 8, 2010, 6:41 PM
1 point
in reply to: Paul Crowley’s comment on: A survey of anti-cryonics writing
Yeah, I can’t help on finding stuff written on cryo though I’m afraid. That’s the topics it’d have to address to have much meaning to me: Whether or not the distribution of those proteins in the cell membrane are stored or destroyed. It might still not work even if it saves those things, but if it doesn’t save those things it’s not got a chance.

There’s some kinda cryonics UK meeting next month which I’d half planned to think about going to. Will give it more thought when I get back from a work-trip next week.

{EDIT: Actually, I’ll email ’em now and see what the score is]

pre Feb 8, 2010, 5:43 PM
3 points
on: A survey of anti-cryonics writing
I’m a long way from being an expert neuroscientist, but as far as I can tell the mechanism under which neural change happens essentially involves a few physical changes:

1) Myelination—the Myelin coating over the Axon of a neuron grows, making the Axon conduct it’s signal more powerfully and quickly

2) Change in number and distribution of neurotransmitter receptors in the dendrites of the neuron. Obviously the more of them you have, the more likely the neuron is to fire in the presence of the transmitter which fits that receptor.

3) Change in the number and distribution of vesicles which release neurotransmitters in the Axon Terminal. When the neuron fires, the vesticles in it’s Axon terminal’s release their load of neurotransmitters. Again, the more of them you have the stronger the signal to make the neuron the other side of the synapse fire.

4) The actual path the Axon’s and Dentrites take, snaking from one cell to the next. Litterally the ‘wiring’.

There may well be other changes to the neural structure which change the way it behaves, but these seem to be the major mechanisms. Interestingly, a neuron firing tends not only to release neurotrasmitters from it’s vesticles, but also to change the structure of the neuron, make it grow more receptors etc

So does Cryonics actually preserve these things?

I’m not in a position to tell. If the cell walls were really being burst, then no, I doubt that the number and distribution of vesticles and receptors would be preserved since those things are built into the cell walls. My impression was that proper cryopreservation did indeed store the cells intact though.

If the cells are stored intact, including the position of the receptors and releasors in the cell walls at each end of every branch of the axons in the neurons, then I think this seems likely to be where the brain’s long-term state is stored.

There’ll doubtless also be short-term memories which are just feedback loops of signals travelling around the brain. They’ll be lost, I would think, just as they were lost in my brother when he spent a few weeks in a coma and remembered nothing until the day before he got beaten up.

Course, I’m nowhere near qualified to really judge either. All I’ve done is read a bit.

I signed up for the Alcor UK mail-list at the beginning of the year. It’s pretty much silent though. As far as I can tell, shipping your dead body to the US is the only way it’s really gonna work. I fear that makes it much less viable here than there.

pre Nov 20, 2009, 9:24 PM
2 points
on: Request For Article: Many-Worlds Quantum Computing
Thanks folks, sounds like the entire point of quantum computing is to avoid the kinda differences in interpretation that Copenhagen/MWI are concerned with, so my suspicion that a MW computational image would help is mistaken. Which is good, read around some Quantum Algorithms a bit. Have a better grasp of how that actually works than the terrible “explore all possibilities and pick the best” line that seems to come up so much.

Still leaves me a bit at a loss with these quantum effects in photosynthesis though:

We have obtained the first direct evidence that remarkably long-lived wavelike electronic quantum coherence plays an important part in energy transfer processes during photosynthesis,” said Graham Fleming, the principal investigator for the study. “This wavelike characteristic can explain the extreme efficiency of the energy transfer because it enables the system to simultaneously sample all the potential energy pathways and choose the most efficient one.”

Seems likely that line about “simultaneously sampling all the potential energy pathways and choosing the most efficient one” is just as misleading as the similar line in explaining how to quantumly factor a number.

Humm. Oh well. Can’t expect to clear up all my confusion in one day. It’s Friday Night, I should go find something fun to do.

pre Nov 20, 2009, 8:09 PM
0 points
in reply to: HalFinney’s comment on: Request For Article: Many-Worlds Quantum Computing
Interesting. Sounds like you’re saying that the entire process of quantum computation aims to keep the system coherent, and so avoid splitting the universe. Which make sense. They tell me the difficulty, in an engineering sense, is to stop the system de-cohering.

Is that remotely accurate?

pre Nov 20, 2009, 7:43 PM
1 point
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Request For Article: Many-Worlds Quantum Computing

Saying that a quantum algorithm is “simultaneously sampling all possibilities and choosing the best one” has always been, I’ve found, a strange way of putting it,

Indeed, misleading and annoyingly common and the kinda thing that’s always encouraging my more cosmic hippy friends down blind alleys. I’m hoping to find a better way, it seemed to me that MWI might have done that.

Maybe it doesn’t, I’m certainly not an expert, hard for me to tell without being able to read a good one :)

This is better, certainly:

A quantum algorithm such as Grover’s algorithm simply works by changing the probability amplitudes … in such a way that the probability of the desired answer is much higher than the probability of any other answer.

Not far off my assumptions in the original request which is always encouraging.

pre Nov 20, 2009, 9:06 AM
0 points
in reply to: mormon2’s comment on: Request For Article: Many-Worlds Quantum Computing
Vague grasp of what the maths is supposed to do, without ever having actually worked through most of it. More than just SA and Eleizer, but mostly pretty much around that level.

The trouble with the explore-and-prune way of describing these things is it automatically makes people fall into speculation on what’s doing the choosing, how maybe ‘consciousness’ is picking the ‘best’ of the results and shaping the universe.

Understand enough to know it ain’t that, and that the maths tells us the probabilities of the outcomes, there’s no 3rd party ‘picking’ the one most advantageous to ’em.

But it’s hard to get people to understand that without a good intuitive picture of what’s really going on, just seemed to me that the problem was probably the ‘collapse-like’ system which everyone seems to fall back on when trying to produce this intuitive picture.

Personally I should probably work through the maths at some point. It’s on the list. The list is long though and I have a goddamned job so I never seem to get proper time for stuff.

Not sure that having done that would help to convince people who certainly won’t be working through the numbers that there’s no special consciousness effect going on though.

pre Sep 11, 2009, 4:05 PM
4 points
in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: The Lifespan Dilemma
Oh no! Does just mentioning the problem cause people to notice dust-specs that would have otherwise gone unnoticed? If we ask 3^^^3 people the question are we in fact causing more trouble than torturing a man for 50 years?

If you ask one person and expect them to ask the advice of two others, who do the same in turn....

Seems best to stay quiet!

Pre..........

pre Jun 11, 2009, 4:30 PM
0 points
in reply to: hrishimittal’s comment on: London Rationalist Meetups bikeshed painting thread
Thanks, I think it shall be one of the best End Of The World Shows we’ve ever done. And this is at least number twelve :)

For anyone who’s never done it, I thoroughly recommend climbing on a soap-box in silly clothes and ranting a load of nonsense at speakers corner like you’re an insane nutcase. Liberating for it to be so obvious for a change.

pre Jun 11, 2009, 7:48 AM
1 point
on: London Rationalist Meetups bikeshed painting thread
One, probably not very useful, possibility is of course to turn up at the Subgenius party I’m running. It’ll be loud and noisy and not particularly rational (after all, most of the point is to highlight irrationality by mocking and exaggerating it), but fun and weird.

Personally I’m far too busy to meet anywhere else before that though. And indeed, I’ll be busy all night long at the show too, up on stage for five minutes out of every hour introducing the acts etc.

Still. You’re all invited anyway.

pre Apr 20, 2009, 1:35 PM
7 points
in reply to: Emile’s comment on: The ideas you’re not ready to post
Oh, so we’re just using techniques which win without being sneaky? Isn’t ‘sneaky’ a good, winning strategy?

Rationality’s enemies are certainly using these techniques. Should we not study them, if only with a view to finding an antidote?

pre Apr 20, 2009, 10:03 AM
1 point
on: The ideas you’re not ready to post
memetic engineering

The art of manipulating the media, especially news, and public opinion. Sometimes known as “spin-doctoring” I guess, but I think the memetic paradigm is probably a more useful one to attack it from.

I’d love to understand that better than I do. Understanding it properly would certainly help with evangelism.

I fear that very few people really do grok it though, certainly I wouldn’t be capable of writing much relevant about it yet.

pre Apr 20, 2009, 9:45 AM
7 points
in reply to: Paul Crowley’s comment on: Spreading the word?
That’s almost exactly the phrase I used when I pointed this place out to my friends. I added one word though: “I’ve joined another cult.” I said.

I find that if I talk as though all my groups of friends are cults of various kinds that it takes the “You’re in a cult” wind out of their sails.

“Yes, I’m in lots of cults, including this one here with you in it too.”

Don’t think any of the members of my other cults have wondered in this direction yet though.

pre Apr 16, 2009, 4:25 PM
5 points
in reply to: dclayh’s comment on: I Changed My Mind Today—Canned Laughter
No need to remove it, just don’t put a mic on the crowd.

My suspicion would be that the actors would appear to be reacting to something which didn’t exist, and that it’d be even worse than no audience at all.

We’d have to do some experiments to check though.

pre Apr 10, 2009, 12:42 AM
20 points
on: The uniquely awful example of theism

Anyone got any other examples of things just about everyone here has seen the folly of, even though they’re widespread among otherwise-smart people

The idiocy of the drug war tends to be my own favourite example.

The so-called terrorism threat? I did a count the other day on how many civil liberties had been removed by the terrorists vs those removed by the government.

Nationalism in general?

I guess you’d claim that things like forwarding chain letters, belief in homoeopathy or healing crystals or orgone guns, the ‘nature is good’ fallacy and whatnot aren’t common enough.

pre Apr 9, 2009, 10:55 PM
0 points
on: [Error communicating with LW2 server]
Seems that talking about favourite games that you think really judge how to judge nothing but skill is good, and apparently we should be talking about things which others may not have experienced so I thought I’d waffle on about Dip for a bit.

It’s a great game. I wish I didn’t have a job or something so I had time to play again really.

pre Apr 9, 2009, 12:01 AM
2 points
in reply to: MBlume’s comment on: Mandatory Secret Identities
The first thing that comes to mind is maybe she’s able to teach students how to practice more in their youth than she did.

That’d work at least.

pre Apr 5, 2009, 11:07 PM
12 points
on: Real-Life Anthropic Weirdness
So if you find you ARE that friend, presumably you’d have no fear of stepping in front of that gun barrel yourself for a few million flips right afterwards. I mean it’s pretty convincing proof. Then you get to see the confusion in each other’s face!

Though you’re both more likely to end up mopping your friend’s blood of the floor.

On the whole, I think a good friend probably doesn’t let a friend test the Quantum Theory of Immortality.

pre Mar 30, 2009, 10:54 PM
3 points
in reply to: SarahNibs’s comment on: Akrasia, hyperbolic discounting, and picoeconomics
“why certain ideas are communicated only indirectly for good reasons” by Pre.

Rather than use an obscure example like Zen, we’ll use a fairly simple idea: Learning how to catch a ball.

Now I can directly explain to you how a ball is caught. I can describe the simultaneous ballistic equations that govern the flight of the ball, instruct you on how to alter your idea of where the ball will land based on Bayesian reasoning given certain priors and measured weather conditions.

These things are almost certainly needed if you’re gonna program a computer to catch a ball.

If you’re gonna teach a human to catch a ball though, you’re just going to have to throw a lot of balls at them and tell ’em to keep theirs eyes on it.

I suspect most Zen koans are just poor jokes, but if there’s a point to ’em it’s the same as the point of throwing those balls at a student catcher.

Just to get you to practice thinking in that way. Because you, as a human, will become better at the things you practice.

If the thing you are practising is spouting existential bullshit this may or may not be a good idea. ;)

pre Mar 29, 2009, 1:32 AM
1 point
in reply to: Loren’s comment on: Church vs. Taskforce
I quite like the idea of infiltrating some religion and taking over. I doubt the christian ones would be the best bet, but it’s a nice plan. One of the newer religions may be more corruptible.

It’s a fantasy though, not something that I think could actually be orchestrated.

Karma here is pretty simple: You get a point for every upvote, and lose one for every downvote. You automatically upvote your own comments (unless you deliberately cancel it).

So make 20 posts that don’t get voted down and you’re there.

pre Mar 28, 2009, 5:02 PM
3 points
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Church vs. Taskforce

There’s any number of movements whose adherents have a priority of spreading the word, and right now I can’t think of a single such movement I’d want to be associated with.

Innit. Personally I think I get more out of a community with a wide range of views anyway.