[MURG] Future of MURG

[Joseph J. Strout]

At 5:36 PM -0400 10/19/03, Yan King Yin wrote:

>1. I think many of us here have overlooked the 'chemical'
>/ molecular aspects of neuroscience for uploading.
>The possible signaling pathways out of thousands of
>molecular species (receptors, secondary messengers, etc)
>are combinatorically explosive and we need a project
>perhaps even harder than the human genome project
>to completely elucidate those pathways.

I think you're exaggerating the difficulty here a bit.  Yes, the 
molecular pathways are complex, but biologists are making great 
progress in mapping them out already.  The vast majority of them are 
simply metabolic support, and not unique to neurons, let alone 
specific types of neurons.  Neurons (and subtypes) do have unique 
messaging systems, but I think the bulk of those have already been 
discovered and described.  It's a lot of information but certainly 
manageable.  By the time the other hurdles in mind uploading have 
been cleared, these pathways will have long since been solved.

>One assumption that everyone here (including me) has
>made is that there is no internal memories inside a
>neuron. But this is probably false, and that chemical
>information in neurons might be quite substantial. This
>also includes gene activation states as Joe pointed out.

We're not assuming anything.  But there is a large body of evidence 
that long-term memory involves structural changes, and it's the 
long-term memories that matter for identity -- a brief retrograde 
amnesia won't kill anybody.

>Unless we have a quantitative estimate of how much
>'missing information' is out there, uploading will not be
>a science and funding will be a problem.

Uploading is not a science, it is a goal.  The sciences involved are 
several (neuroscience, computer science, MEMS, etc.).  And each of 
those -- especially neuroscience, luckily for us -- has vigorous 
funding already.

>2. I think we need to talk about the financing problem
>seriously IF you guys are serious about uploading at
>all. We need to figure out the financing problem right
>now, not when we're half way into the project(s).

I disagree.  Nobody's going to finance uploading directly now; it's 
too far away.  Serious financing goes for results that can be 
obtained in the 5-10 year timescale, tops.  Uploading is more like 
50-80 years away.

But there is a whole lot of work to be done now which is perfectly 
reasonable to do for other reasons, too.  This dual-purpose research 
includes mapping out those signalling pathways you mentioned, 
developing better automated sectioning and microscopy systems, 
improving the detail and accuracy of our neuron simulators, 
elucdating the role of glia in information processing and memory, and 
on and on.  All of these basic research questions can be and are 
being funded through traditional means.  To join in, you only need to 
get a Ph.D. in the relevant field, join a lab, pick your subarea, and 
get started.  (Alas, I went in the wrong direction and hit a brick 
wall, but perhaps you will have better luck.)

>I've worked really hard on all these things and deserve
>some credits as well =(

Great!  But so have several of us.  I recommend not worrying about it 
too much; I've always found that you can get a lot more accomplished 
if you don't demand credit for it.

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|    Joseph J. Strout         Check out the Mac Web Directory:     |
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