From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Jul 07 2003 - 03:57:17 MDT
Brett Paatsch wrote:
>
> What it the state of the art currently in scanning? Its been my
> impression that the atomic level granularity of a scan that I
> imagine to be necessary can only be done by destroying each
> layer in reading it. Is this the case currently?
It *makes no difference*. The universe doesn't *care* which particles you
use. The product equivalency notice is guaranteed by the basic structure
of quantum physics. Two states with two bosons interchanged are not just
similar states but IDENTICAL states - their complex amplitudes add, just
like cases where the same photon takes two different paths to arrive at
the same final point.
> It would seem to be a relatively simple exercise to drop a
> sheeps brain (comparable in size to the human brain into liquid
> nitrogen) and then see what sort of freezing damage arises
> givin an indication as to whether the information can be
> extracted once we have something approaching the scanning
> technology required. Obviously the data storage requirements
> are going to be a challenge could we now scan non destructively
> say any 5 millimetre cube within a frozen sheep brain and
> store the data?
If you are doing a cryonics revival, you are doing it after the
Singularity. This is what I meant when I spoke of people being killed by
underestimating post-Singularity capabilities.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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