X-Message-Number: 12026 From: "Peter C. McCluskey" <> Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 07:52:02 -0700 Subject: Re: Why Cryonics Isn't Popular (Maybe) References: <> (CryoNet) writes: >Message #12014 >Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 11:00:48 -0700 >From: (Pat Clancy) >What reasons? I think that the possibility of uploading a brain in 40 years >is about as likely as the possibility that we'll have HAL in 2001. (And I'd >put the possibility of either happening _ever_ at less than 50%.) In fact >I'd be willing to make a rather large wager on the matter. Science has no >idea of what the underlying basis of consciousness is, and I think it's >doubtful that in a mere 40 years that little problem will be solved. And It is sufficiently hard to pin down what other people mean by the word consciousness that I don't have any way of predicting when, if ever, what you are referring to will be uploaded. What I am claiming will probably be possible in 20 to 40 years is that digital intelligences will be created whose behavior can resemble those of the wetware brains they were created from as much as a normal human's behavior resembles that person's behavior a few years earlier. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Critmail (http://crit.org/critmail.html): http://www.rahul.net/pcm | Accept nothing less to archive your mailing list Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12026