Molecular Manufacturing..... A work in progress.

[Lost Ninja]

Last time nanotech came up in these forums, I mentioned Ray Kurzweil's book: The Singularity. He spells out a lot of the potential benefits of nanotechnology including the theoretical "replacement body" that Xzin talked about. Some of the possibilities are beyond the word "cool".

Is it just me, or is the first possibility thought of with "replacement body" is a quick and easy gender change. Which I find terribly exciting.

Not the only one.

I read a while back a theory that went something like this:

Life in the universe is easy to achieve.

The fatc none of it has contacted us is a sure sign they discovered self replicating machines...

I'm unsure who came up with the theory or why. Also bear in mind the Von Neumann machines aren't certainly microscopic and could as easily be massive (or any size in between).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_machine

[Remote]

It was my understanding that the male and female brain for all *functional* purposes, are exactly the same. Wouldn't that mean with the hormonal changes of having an otherwise female body, that you would in fact be female?

[Suvega]

It was my understanding that the male and female brain for all *functional* purposes, are exactly the same. Wouldn't that mean with the hormonal changes of having an otherwise female body, that you would in fact be female?

Not True at all.

The female brain has a bigger thing in the middle connect teh left and teh right.

This means that Velani can not only play her 5 characters at teh same time, but also
1) Play with the cats
2) Listen to an audio book
3) Plan out her next mocking on realm forums
and finally for the coup degras on how better she can mutli task:

4) remind me about how I'm ignoring her, when I'm desperetly trying to concentrate on just PLAYING 5 CHARACTERS.

[Vyndree]

4) remind me about how I'm ignoring her, when I'm desperetly trying to concentrate on just PLAYING 5 CHARACTERS.

But you do this all time time *pout*

You'll be halfway thru a sentence and then realize you aggroed an elite then totally forget that you were in the middle of saying something to me

<-- sad panda

[Xzin]

There are far more differences than the corpud callosum, the part of the brain that connects the two hemispheres:

"The corpus callosum is a structure of the mammalian brain in the longitudinal fissure that connects the left and right cerebral hemispheres. It is the largest white matter structure in the brain, consisting of 200-250 million contralateral axonal projections. It is a wide, flat bundle of axons beneath the cortex. Much of the inter-hemispheric communication in the brain is conducted across the corpus callosum."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosum

"Interestingly, people who see a human brain for the first time often ask, "Is it male or female?" Yet, for many millennia no one, even scientists, thought about sex-related differences and similarities in the human brain. A brain was just a brain. Now hardly a year goes by that we don't read authoritative studies showing these differences. "

**** OUTDATED LINK REMOVED ****

"What kind of brain do you have? There really are big differences between the male and female brain, says Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University. In his new book, the Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain (published by Penguin) Baron-Cohen shows that, indisputably, on average male and female minds are of a slightly different character. Men tend to be better at analysing systems (better systemisers), while women tend to be better at reading the emotions of other people (better empathisers). Baron-Cohen shows that this distinction arises from biology, not culture.



Cell numbers: men have 4% more brain cells than women, and about 100 grams more of brain tissue. Many women have asked me why men need more brain tissue in order to get the same things done.

Cellular connections: even though a man seems to have more brain cells, it is reported that women have more dendritic connections between brain cells.

Corpus collosum size: it is reported that a woman's brain has a larger corpus collusum, which means women can transfer data between the right and left hemisphere faster than men. Men tend to be more left brained, while women have greater access to both sides.

Language: for men, language is most often just in the dominant hemisphere (usually the left side), but a larger number of women seem to be able to use both sides for language. This gives them a distinct advantage. If a woman has a stroke in the left front side of the brain, she may still retain some language from the right front side. Men who have the same left sided damage are less likely to recover as fully.

Limbic size: bonding/nesting instincts - current research has demonstrated that females, on average, have a larger deep limbic system than males. This gives females several advantages and disadvantages. Due to the larger deep limbic brain women are more in touch with their feelings, they are generally better able to express their feelings than men. They have an increased ability to bond and be connected to others (which is why women are the primary caretakers for children - there is no society on earth where men are primary caretakers for children). Females have a more acute sense of smell, which is likely to have developed from an evolutionary need for the mother to recognize her young. Having a larger deep limbic system leaves a female somewhat more susceptible to depression, especially at times of significant hormonal changes such as the onset of puberty, before menses, after the birth of a child and at menopause. Women attempt suicide three times more than men. Yet, men kill themselves three times more than women, in part, because they use more violent means of killing themselves (women tend to use overdoses with pills while men tend to either shoot or hang themselves) and men are generally less connected to others than are women. Disconnection from others increases the risk of completed suicides."

http://www.doctorhugo.org/brain4.html

Others:

http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/m...ro-homens.html

This is not to say men are superior to women or women are superior to men. What the evidence shows is that there are identified gender differences between a "male" and a "female" brain. As such in life, nothing is as cut and dry as it seems though. I wonder how much the body impacts all of this and when that influence is greatest (during puberty? earlier?).

[Doubleo7]

This stuff scares me and excites me at the same time. Technology is a double edged sword, often wielded by people that don't have humanities best interest in mind. For that matter the average person doesn't have humanities best interest at mind... just numero uno. This particular sword would have to be controlled. Imagine the security threat when someone could concievably send instructions to distant nano-factories for just about anything... Imagine a world where consumption (and waste) is limited only by desire. This kind of threat would require that we give even more power to governments to save us from the wack jobs among us.

Humanity isn't ready for the implications of this. It likely never will be. We will handle this like everything else: reactively; and suffer the consequences.

[Manaburner]

Being a physician I'm interested in this thread but I can't help but to question the feasibility of a "brain transplant".

Something as simple to all of us such as vision is so complex an action that reproducing the connections from the occipital lobe (vision centers) to the optic nerve/globe would be so odious that it would most probably be unfeasible.

As an example, trying to pinpoint seizure centers in a human brain by probe (there are intracranial stimulators that target seizure foci and silence them with low level current) requires weeks to months of trial and error using biofeedback or just plain "guessing" as where they are. The same technology is used in Parkinson's Disease patients and requires complex programming and incredible patience on the operator's part and the PATIENT's part as well.
And this is for a single focus in the brain.

Now imagine how many connections there are for human vision. To map out a millimeter of the retina to it's origins in the occipital lobe, yank out the connections (axonal trauma would probably kill neurons altogether) and place them in another body, preserving the exact mapping of that visual center.... you get the idea.


Technology is unlimited, yes. But humans themselves have their limitations. The brain, for how wonderful it is... is severely limited in it's organic form.

[Skuggomann]

Id print my self a spaceship for a hamster and then id find anoter word for it than printing XD

[Gallo]

Being a physician I'm interested in this thread but I can't help but to question the feasibility of a "brain transplant".

Something as simple to all of us such as vision is so complex an action that reproducing the connections from the occipital lobe (vision centers) to the optic nerve/globe would be so odious that it would most probably be unfeasible.

As an example, trying to pinpoint seizure centers in a human brain by probe (there are intracranial stimulators that target seizure foci and silence them with low level current) requires weeks to months of trial and error using biofeedback or just plain "guessing" as where they are. The same technology is used in Parkinson's Disease patients and requires complex programming and incredible patience on the operator's part and the PATIENT's part as well.
And this is for a single focus in the brain.

Now imagine how many connections there are for human vision. To map out a millimeter of the retina to it's origins in the occipital lobe, yank out the connections (axonal trauma would probably kill neurons altogether) and place them in another body, preserving the exact mapping of that visual center.... you get the idea.


Technology is unlimited, yes. But humans themselves have their limitations. The brain, for how wonderful it is... is severely limited in it's organic form.

Who says a "brain transplant" has to be a physical one? At some point in time, technology will be to the point that nanorobots inside of the brain could effectively transmit a "copy" of your brain at incredibly high resolution to some sort of digital form. It brings up the philosophical question of "what exactly is consciousness?".... If we can digitally copy my brain and put it in a robotic body, and no person could tell the difference between my real brain and the copy, which one is "me"? Many people will argue that the physical brain is in fact a large part in the consciousness of a person and if you change that, you change the person. Studies have shown though that every cell in your body, including your brain cells, actually are replaced by newer cells once every few months. So, is the "you" today the same "you" as it was a year ago? Certainly not physically. Does that mean you're not the same person? I don't think it means that.

Either way... it boggles the mind.

[Lost Ninja]

The other thing to think on is that Brain transplant isn't that essential anyway. If you could create a nano-machine that was capable of creating from the raw materials a whole body. Wouldn't it not be quite a bit easier to set said nano-machine going on the existing body? After all you aren't really changing that much. How the person the change is happening to might think on it would depend on who they were.

If it were happening to me I'd be fairly ecstatic, even as part of an experiment that might lead me to being a puddle of pink goo, hey at least I'd be pink.

There are a huge number of people around the world who for one reason or another want to be able to change their bodies, not just those with gender related issues. But anyone who has a body that is damaged in a fairly major way, paraplegics for instance or amputees.

Nano-machines of the type Xzin is describing could have a massive effect on humanity as a whole, its isn't something we should be going into lightly. The future evil of the sixties was UFOs; in the seventies it was radiation; the eighties was nuclear war; the nineties artificial intelligence; now we should really be thinking about a thimbleful of grey dust that can dissolve someone into their component parts. Or do the same for our whole world...