X-Message-Number: 11281
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 00:30:15 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #11273

Thomas Donaldson writes,
...> I do
>not see the morality of resurrecting (or creating?) purely hypothetical
>beings to which we have no special ties. For instance, if Lucy (the
>early hominid which MAY be an ancestor of everyone now living) could be
>resurrected, I see no special reason to do so.

Once you got to know this being, I think you'd see it differently. Same with
other beings.  

> Sure, we could go back
>and resurrect every creature that ever existed or might have existed,
>but the more distant they become from us and our associates, the more
>that seems to be only a meaningless expression of technical ability.
>

Again, you get to know a family of beings, then it becomes "family". And, by
a reasonable extrapolation, no being is fixed at a particular level but
capable of advancing--I would conjecture--to arbitrary levels. Resurrection
would not be the real aim but immortalization, which requires, not just
reinstating some past being but having that being progress endlessly. (You
might help initially with this, but eventually each being would stand on its
own and direct its own progress.) All beings, then, are "seeds" for
developing into advanced immortals. A lot of possibilities there.

>As for whether the multiplicity of versions of ME (or Mike Perry) can
>be expressed digitally, I continue to be doubtful. Our brains are not
>(at least obviously) quantum devices

Since they are made of interacting particles that behave according to the
laws of quantum mechanics, it's clear that they *are* quantum devices, same
as everything else.

>, nor is it true that even if they
>were they could be assumed to be describable digitally --- especially
>since quantum mechanics would give most subatomic parts not a fixed,
>digital location but a continuum of possible locations.

The locations are not really significant for what goes on, but the
intersecting world-lines of particles, which involve a discrete set of
events, i.e. digitization. This is what, as far as I can see, the Bekenstein
bounds are all about.

Mike Perry

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