

My estimate of possible defect rates in cryonics - Allocator2008
http://blogkinnetic.blogspot.com/2009/03/cryonics-buy-stocks-but-think-twice.html

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Femur
Although the article touches on a fascinating subject, I disagree with the
analogy the author drew between neurons and C++ code; specifically the "lines
of code per Neuron." Individual neurons do not have code.

The author also advocates buying stock in Cryonics companies. The only two
Cryonics organizations I know of are Alcor and The Cryonics Institute. Neither
of these are publicly traded.

Interesting fact: Ted Williams is stored at Alcor. Paris Hilton has signed up
with The Cryonics Institute.

I personally will be neuro-suspended at Alcor. I am the #830-something person
to sign up there. For those who are interested for themselves, it is actually
rather cheap to fund with term life insurance.

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Retric
Good luck.

I suspect that a 1percent loss of neurons would probably still create a
reasonable approximation for who you where. You might forget some childhood
memory's etc, but the human brain is extremely redundant (unlike software) so
it's not a error prone as we might think. IMO, The real issue would be
avoiding creating lot's of false connections lest we wake of with even more
fake memory's.

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electromagnetic
From what I've read and understood, the redundancy of the brain has been
approximated up to 10%. It will take time to get back to being 100% normal,
but that with brain loss of 10% or lower you can easily survive and in fact
return to normality within (I assume on average) under a year.

If they ever allow the freezer tubing of conscious humans with presently
incurable diseases I believe it should be required for them to record their
daily life for between a month and a year along with daily video journals so
that they can be replayed this to prompt the reconnection of neurones.

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ricmorton
Interesting article, however I would say that five lines of C++ code per
neuron is pretty optimistic considering the amount of work going into modeling
a neuron in the blue brain project;
<http://seedmagazine.com/designseries/henry-markram.html>

Also I remember reading in Code Complete that the space-shuttle software had
zero defects per 500,000 lines of code by combining formal development
methods, peer reviews, and statistical testing. Not really sured how they
'proved' there were zero defects, but I'm sure you could get the number far
lower than 1 per 100 lines.

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donw
The basic premise of writing a model for the entire human brain in software is
bunk. The general idea, as I understand it, is to write a piece of software
that simulates the biochemical processes that happen in the brain, with the
neurons themselves being represented by some sort of graph.

Basically, the 'brain-in-a-jar', except the jar is virtualized.

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rw
Do you have any _actual_ criticisms of modeling brains in software?

Please read <http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>

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pfisch
Why is this garbage on the frontpage?

If someone does not know anything about neural networks or programming they
should not be drawing conclusions about either, and if they are doing it
anyway, it should certainly not be on the front page of this site.

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biohacker42
That was not very informative.

The problem with cryonics is the formation of ice crystals which turn all
tissue into chopped meat. That's why we don't freeze organs for transplant.

I know of no technology to counteract this.

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mope
<http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/vitrify.html>

~~~
biohacker42
Yes, frogs use sugars, arctic fish use enzymes but they all only lower the
freezing temperature. And as your link points out, they don't lower it enough.

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DTrejo
To the editors: cryonics is spelled wrong: "My estimate of possible defect
rates in cyronics"

