X-Message-Number: 11734
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 00:53:56 -0700
From: Handwerk <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #11716 - #11726
I wonder if you would either post this message or act on it. I've been
interested in cryonics for years and plan on (someday) joining a suspension
group. My concern is not if and when nanotechnology will be enabled, no
doubt it will be someday, but when will some real medical research allow
the freezing and later thawing and reanimation of several health human
beings. I realize it won't happen tomorrow, but I see from the literaue
that we are getting closer. When that happens, sick people may opt
(probably legally) to be frozen until such a future time as a suitable
treatment is available, including replacement organs, new antibiotics, or
whatever. This scientific progress is what interests me.
I have read many of those outside news groups and found the bickering
intolerable. Then I found this forum for scientific exchange and was happy
for it. Now however, it appears that this Cryonet Digest is coming to the
same end as the "sci.cryonics" news groups, at least for me. I am not
looking for a free and open forum for debate of philosophical ideas, there
are plenty of those in the news groups. And indeed there should be a place
for it, I just wish it didn't invade scientific journals and digests like
this one. I thought this digest had a moderator, who would reject articles
that would be offensive to cryonics, and return articles that are
principally scientific but refer to entities like "God", "Jesus" and
"Christ". These returned articles would be included in our digest when
these non-scientific references were removed.
Just look at the junk in the last one (below), about 75% is worthless
crap.
This is my biggest turn-off to cryonics, the ego trips of the biggots who
downgrade each other. Now can we find a moderator who will keep this trash
out of here or not? I'll give you another month or two to clean up this
digest or I'll cancel it and start searching for a more technical one.
Thank you,
Please keep my name and e-mail address anonomous.
At 05:00 AM 5/11/99 -0400, you wrote:
>CryoNet - Tue 11 May 1999
>
> #11716: Basics or highgrade? [Thomas Nord]
> #11717: Promotion [Thomas Nord]
> #11718: to Daniel Crevier [Thomas Donaldson]
> #11719: Age survey [Raphael T. Haftka]
> #11720: On Certain Irrelevant Posts [Davpascal]
> #11721: Wheels exist. Reinvention not necessary. [smithid]
> #11722: Do you believe in cryonics? [Brook Norton]
> #11723: 21CM Research And Cryonics [Saul Kent]
> #11724: thought experiment on uploading. [Daniel Crevier]
> #11725: neuroprotective factor [Jan Coetzee]
> #11726: Ugly postings [Thomas Nord]
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message #11716
>From: "Thomas Nord" <>
>Subject: Basics or highgrade?
>Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 02:20:36 +0100
>
>""Message #11693 From: "Martin S. Kardon"
>While I have the highest respect for the mental prowess and energies of
>those posting to Cryonet I confess that I have found the many discussions
>regarding virtual persons, living in side computers, etc. of minimal
>interest in the context of the cryonet publications. Those topics can make
>for fascinating speculative fiction novels but I confess to lacking the
>concentration to read and digest those discussions on cryonet. Thus, I just
>skim over and delete them everyday.""
>
>I second that and do the same when I have time, but guess CryoNet will be
>thin if we only stick to basics as I do mostly.There is also Newsgroups as
>sci.cryonics already if anyone wishes a split. Is it sci for
>science/scientific?
>I am promoting CryoNet in my homepage beneath, as is a bit edited today to
>please more if possible.
>May Jesus be a to strong word in a Template like this?
>
>
>Mvh/Sincerely
>Thomas Nord
>Stockholm (Sweden)
>
>PR:
>Would You like a better chance than Jesus to return? Click on
>http://homepages.go.com/~cryonics1/index.html
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message #11717
>From: "Thomas Nord" <>
>Subject: Promotion
>Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 03:03:40 +0100
>
>A client of mine wrote I'm very creative with many good ideas, as I also
>have for us. Is it to early to promote us all we can, should we wait until
>better methods are tested?
>
>Mvh/Sincerely
>Thomas Nord
>Stockholm (Sweden)
>
>PR:
>Would You like a better chance than Jesus to return? Click on
>http://homepages.go.com/~cryonics1/index.html
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message #11718
>From: Thomas Donaldson <>
>Subject: to Daniel Crevier
>Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 23:46:52 +1000 (EST)
>
>For Daniel Crevier:
>
>First, apologies for getting your name wrong in my subject line and not
>correcting it.
>
>As for consciousness, we are not doing philosophy, we are doing science.
>Basically I agree with Ettinger here: it's quite clear that the ability
>to reason about one's thoughts is not necessary for consciousness. It's
>not even obvious that such an ability implies consciousness, unless we're
>extremely careful about our definitions. After all, the PC on your desk
>can be considered as reasoning about its thoughts, too --- and if you
>think it is conscious, then your notion of consciousness is so broad
>that discussion becomes impossible.
>
>I also notice that your idea of consciousness consists only of response
>of a brain to events inside it. That idea suggests that with no sensory
>input at all we might still be conscious so long as we knew what we
>were thinking. That seems to be false, as a matter of fact. If we're
>deprived of sensory stimulus, with go to sleep. Not only that, but it
>looks to me as an attempt to assimulate our thinking to that of a
>computer --- not something which is obviously worthwhile.
>
>And if you believe that a sequential computer might emulate a human
>brain (or even the brain of an octopus) then you need to think on that
>problem a good deal more. We're going to need a lot of parallelism,
>and no sequential computer, even one at the farthest reach of anyone's
>imagination, could work fast enough to emulate 1 billion neurons. But
>I may be attributing a belief to you which you do not have --- if so
>I apologize.
>
> Best and long long life,
>
> Thomas Donaldson
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message #11720
>From:
>Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 12:30:18 EDT
>Subject: On Certain Irrelevant Posts
>
>Recently Mr Charles Platt took his leave of Cryonet with, as he put it,
>"relish". His reason being that posts to Cryonet were not relevant - not
>about subjects he considered worth talking about. His relevant solution
>was to guarantee that such subjects won't be talked about, since he
>himself won't show up to talk about them.
>
>Mr Mike Darwin, after not writing for two years, elected to follow Mr
>Platt into monastic silence, but first turned up to inform us at length
>that (surprise!) brain damage from current cryosuspension is massive,
>although, "The technology to vastly decrease both ischemic damage and
>cryoinjury now exists and is implementable in a cost-effective fashion.
>It will NOT be used arguably it will not be used on anybody for a long
>while yet. My dog Cannibal may be the first to get it, and he unarguably
>deserves it more than the vast majority of the rest of you. With a
>handful of exceptions, only people such as Saul Kent, Bill Faloon, and
>the stalwarts that have worked, and supported the work, to make these
>advances are the only other people remotely deserving of benefit from
>them."
>
>That Mr Darwin may have come up with a real advance in avoiding brain
>damage to suspension patients is fine; that he won't tell anyone exactly
>what it is till the patents are sorted out is perhaps not so fine. Even
>less fine is what sounded to me like the implication in his post that
>current ischemic damage is so extensive that it can't be repaired. Says
>who? Other scientists who have examined the issue - most notably Ralph
>Merkle and Eric Drexler - believe that it can. Darwin is perhaps failing
>to make a distinction between the avoidance of ischemic damage (his
>specialty), and the repair of ischemic damage - the latter being
>(admittedly) a topic very few people indeed have worked on, Mike Darwin
>not I think being one of them.
>
>Of course that doesn't obscure his general point. Obviously it is better
>to get hit by a car in front of the Emergency Room at 21st Century
>Medicine than in the dark on a backwoods road. But the fact is, people
>sometimes get hit by cars in the dark on backwoods roads, and lie there
>for days. And nonetheless live. Medical help doesn't always have to be
>perfect, certain, and instantaneous to work -- though it certainly
>doesn't hurt, and surely is worth aiming at. But he forgets that the
>Ideal is the enemy of the Good; Mr Darwin seems to want perfection at
>once, reversible cryostasis now, not a decade from now, and sensing it
>within his grasp he seems content to imply that without his particular
>innovation (whatever it is), the current cryostasis patient has no chance
>whatsoever. That's one man's opinion; but it's not the opinion of other
>men, who are (to say the least) as expert in their fields as Darwin is in
>his.
>
>And so I would rank the relevance of Mr Darwin's as below even that of Mr
>Platt's non-posts. How relevant is it to tell people their efforts to
>live are useless? 'One day' Mr Darwin & Company will shower their
>blessings on us; but anyone who dies prior to that day has no chance
>whatsoever. Small comfort to Dora Kent, eh? No, that sort of post has
>little relevance indeed; its pessimism isn't proven or provable or
>supported by a number of other cryonics writers with extensive
>backgrounds in cryobiology and nanotech. Let's cryopreserve those whom
>we can, and give Moore's Law another thirty or fifty years, and see what
>things looks like then.
>
>Regarding the Turing Test: yes, it matters not a bit to cryonics, but
>(like mind uploading) as long as talk about it does no damage to the
>movement or turns no one off about cryonics, why not talk about it?
>I've always thought of it as the Turing Female Impersonator Test, myself.
>The T.F.I.T. asserts that if a female impersonator can convince you over
>a glass of port for ten minutes that he's a girl, then by God he is a
>girl! This proposition must make for surprising honeymoons. I think the
>real question is an anti-Turing Test: can a computer that is not
>conscious in the least convince a human being that it is? I think the
>answer there is a clear yes -- that Turing's Test (in short) is not about
>machine consciousness but about human gullibility. But its secret appeal
>is that it's also a sly form of (Blaise) Pascal's Wager too, and that's
>the real problem - if a machine were to say to us, "Wait! I'm as
>conscious as you are! Please: don't turn me off!", would we feel
>obliged to give it the benefit of the doubt? I have to admit I would.
>
>Nonetheless, the person to read on consciousness is not Turing but the
>(alas, nearly unreadable) G.I. Gurdjieff, for his insight that
>consciousness is not a digital either-or phenomenon, but one of grades,
>shades, and degrees. We aren't very conscious when we're asleep or dead
>drunk or just waking up; we are conscious (some of us) when we post to
>Cryonet, read a book, philosophize. We run the spectrum from stupor to
>alertness, and to call it all 'consciousness' is like calling the
>infinite gradations of color in the sea 'blue'. That's both true, and
>terribly inaccurate. My own view is that a form of machine consciousness
>will eventually develop for a simple reason -- neural implants. If
>machine awareness requires a biological component, I expect they'll get
>it - a bit of cortex for a spiritual hearing aid, not unlike the
>technological one we meat puppets sport.
>
>One last remark on relevance:
>
>Thomas Nord (perhaps quoting someone else - it wasn't entirely clear from
>the quote) concluded his post with:
>
>>Would you like a better chance than Jesus to return? Click on
>>http://homepages.go.com/~cryonics1/index.html
>
>Now this is the sort of thing that really is depressing about Cryonet.
>Implying that only Mike Darwin can give us the Holy Grail of reversible
>cryosuspension is tolerable; hearing Charles Platt bitch is amusing;
>discussing Turing and mind uploading is not terribly relevant but does no
>actual damage; but what good does making cracks about Christ do anyone?
>Is anyone really going to sign on to cryonics because he believes
>TransTime gives him better odds than God? This is the sort of gratuitous
>remark that does the cryonics movement no good, but that can and does
>offend readers and potential members, and makes potential enemies. And
>all those in no small number.
>
>The fact is that (according to the World Almanac) there are roughly
>301,000,000 people in North America and Canada, and only slightly over
>1,000,000 of them are atheists - ie about 0.3% of our potential
>membership. Nonetheless we go out of our way to aggravate the 99.7% of
>our population that belong, however tentatively or foolishly, to some
>form of organized religion, usually Judeo-Christian.
>
>Now a reasoned criticism of religious views can certainly be given (on a
>more appropriate list, preferably); just as a reasoned defense can.
>Believers such as Aquinas and Teilhard, Pascal and Descartes, Mendel and
>Newton, Polkinghorne and Tipler and even Mrs Moravec, are not quite the
>gibbering cretins some of us like to think. But one-liners about
>Christ's resurrection rating a smirk are not reasoned criticism; they
>just offend the sensibilities of potential members, friends, and allies,
>and they do it unnecessarily. Is this what we need to see on this list?
>
>
>Say you're an average person, a father or mother with a sick child that
>looks as though he won't make it; you believe in God and hope for an
>afterlife, but nonetheless you'd like to see your child grow up, marry,
>have a career and kids and a good long life; and somewhere you hear about
>cryonics. So you log onto Cryonet, and what do you read? That Mike
>Darwin's dog rates good medical treament, but not your dying child; that
>you can pop your brain into your PC fifty years from today but not now;
>and your religion is a joke, and you're a fool. Yes, we'll certainly
>save lots of lives with an approach like that!
>
>Sometimes I think the only excuse for reading Cryonet is Robert Ettinger.
>But then that's reason enough. If there is an argument for God, it's
>that He saw fit to give this crabby back-biting movement an originator of
>sufficient grace to keep bringing issues back down to earth. Ettinger's
>posts, really, are the only ones on the list that consistently (or at any
>rate, often) address the real-world issues of cryonics - how an average
>person can afford it, how to actually get it done under tough if not
>appalling conditions, why one should hope rather than despair. But this
>father of the cryonics movement must at times view his adolescent progeny
>with real grief.
>
>David Pascal www.davidpascal.com
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message #11721
>From:
>Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 12:30:00 -0500 (CDT)
>Subject: Wheels exist. Reinvention not necessary.
>
>In Message #11710 Thomas Donaldson wrote to Robert Crevier:
>>
>>One quite critical issue which your little story slides over is that of
>>just how well we will ever be able to simulate a world. I am doubting that
>>our simulations will do very well; sure, I believe in using them for
>>various kinds of training, etc --- but the idea of living in a simulation,
>>given the weakness of such simulations compared to the real world, seems
>>quite ridiculous.
>>
>Your attention, please.
>
>We ALREADY simulate worlds which are indistinguishable from this one.
>
>The usually poorer simulations are commonly called "dreams". Most people
>assume this is as good as it gets and dismiss dreams as "not real enough".
>
>The indistinguishable versions are called "lucid dreams". These CANNOT be
>distinguished from the experience you are having as you read these words.
>In fact, to recognize that one is dreaming is often quite difficult as the
>experience is indistinguishable from the waking state in quality, complexity
>and content.
>
>There is no need to reinvent the wheel nor debate whether or not wheels will
>ever be buildable. The ONLY question is will THIS wheel be better ACCESSED
>FOR USE ON DEMAND in the future.
>
>Again, the lucid dream is not speculation but demonstrated fact. If you
>wish to review the literature, no problem. If you wish to directly upgrade
>your experience of dreaming to personally verify these facts, the door is
>always open.
>
>We already have the wheel. Now we simply need to get better axles.
>
>If you prefer, we could call it BVR for Biological Virtual Reality to
>distinguish it from computer-generated versions.
>
>The fact remains BVR already exists.
>
>This is not debatable.
>
>Am I being clear?
>
>-George Smith
> CI member
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message #11722
>Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 16:34:18 -0400
>From: Brook Norton <>
>Subject: Do you believe in cryonics?
>
>Thomas Donaldson wrote:
>
>>To Brook Norton:
>
>I must point out that even though YOU consider the possibility of a
>
>Programmer controlling your life to be plausible while you do not agree
>with the possibility of God controlling your life, the intellectual status
>of your belief remains the same. Not only that, but on what GROUNDS do
>you believe one idea is stronger than the other? No scientist I know of
>would claim that a scientific proof of the nonexistence of God has been
>attained. Not only that, but a God could control our lives exactly like a
>Programmer could control our lives: hence if you believe in one, you have
>reasons to believe in the other.
>
>Ideas which BY THEIR NATURE fail to be subject to any empirical proof are
>useless subjects of conversation. If you want to believe in a special
>
>computer theology, go ahead. Just don't confuse it with anything experi-
>mentally valid.
>
> Best and long long life to all,
>
> Thomas Donaldson <
>
>I truely thought I addressed all these issues in my prior message but let
>
>
>me just reask this part... Do you believe that cryonics has a significant
>
>
>chance of succeeding? There is not an empirical PROOF that it will
>succeed; there can't be until someone is revived. Nevertheless, I think
>it can be scientifically argued that cryonics has a significant chance of
>success. The same type of arguements can be used for a Programmer, but
>not for God.
>
>Brook Norton new CI member
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message #11724
>Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 18:49:36 -0400
>From: Daniel Crevier <>
>Subject: thought experiment on uploading.
>
>To Thomas Donaldson: thanks for answering my post, even if my name
>is neither David nor Robert : ). You write:
>
>>One quite critical issue which your little story slides over is that of
>>just how well we will ever be able to simulate a world. I am doubting
>>that our simulations will do very well; sure, I believe in using them
>>for various kinds of training, etc --- but the idea of living in a
>>simulation, given the weakness of such simulations compared to the
>>real world, seems quite ridiculous.
>
>The question we are addressing is: can a mind simulated in a computer
>be conscious? Now, I can look at a lousy simulation of the world, and
>be conscious of it. I believe the answer to the question lies much more
>in how well you simulate the mind than on how you simulate the
>world. Likewise, I believe that your objection about SHRDLU not
>getting around in the real world misses the point. If SHRDLU had
>very little consciousness, which I readily concede, it was because its
>internal structure was too simplistic, not because of the quality of
>the world simulation it lived in.
>
>To Robert Ettinger: I had asked what you would think of
>the thought experiment if the circuits emulating the brains were
>replaced by a serial computer. You replied
>
>>This is not completely clear, but I take it to mean that, instead of
>>the robot surgeon gradually replacing brain parts with inorganic
>>substitutes, the robot removes the brain parts and at the input and
>>output ends sends signals from the remaining brain to the computer and
>>from the computer to the remaining brain.
>
>Right. However, the brain parts wouldn't be taken away before the
>subject had had a chance to evaluate the quality of the simulation.
>Further, as the process continues, the terminals of the simulation
>would move inwards in the brain, so that the original simulated
>piece would become part of a larger simulation.
>
>>Well, first of all, the signals in the brain are not all
>>electronic; some are chemical, and the computer cannot produce chemical
>>signals except indirectly, which would require an ersatz brain part
>>after all.
>
>Well, this objection also applies to the electronic circuit version
>of the thought experiment. So by that reckoning the resulting circuit
>would not be an emulation after all.
>
>But in fact the presence of neurotranmitters in the brain does not
>affect my point. What does matter, I believe, is that the
>simulating circuit, or program, be able to behave, from the outside,
>like a web of neurons using neurotransmitters to influence
>each other. That should be possible because the neurons are
>physical objects that a computer can simulate. In order to preserve
>the gradual nature of the experiment, we can assume that at any stage,
>the terminals between the rest of the brain and the simulation are
>able to generate neurotranmitters, so that the simulation can
>communicate with the rest of the brain. This kind of interfacing is,
>I believe, an ongoing research topic in neuroscience.
>
>>More generally, if in the end nothing is left but a computer, it
>>probably fails because it cannot bind time and space the way a
>>physical brain can. The "information paradigm" is only a conjecture,
>>not a proven principle.
>
>Here you are rejecting my conclusion out of general principles: the
>simulation has to fail because it's a computer. But we said that at
>any stage of the experiment, the subject could verify the integrity of
>his/her consciousness. In this case, how could he/she be unconscious at
>the end? In order to justify that conclusion, you have to assume that
>consciousness is gradually lost during the experiment. Yet,
>if at every step the added simulation performs exactly the same
>functions as the removed brain material, and if the subject therefore
>reacts exactly as before, how can that be?
>
>Daniel Crevier
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message #11725
>Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 19:50:51 -0400
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message #11726
>From: "Thomas Nord" <>
>Subject: Ugly postings
>Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 23:35:15 +0100
>
> is the man who can help you who have ugly looking postings
>here, as I did once but we solved together after complaints from Keith F.
>Lynch as seem reluctant now. It's simple done in the settings, in respect of
>others and seems obstinate if not done.
>
>Mvh/Sincerely
>Thomas Nord
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>End of CryoNet Digest
>*********************
>
>
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