X-Message-Number: 13017 From: Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 18:16:57 EST Subject: null hypothesis Stasys Adiklis writes (#13014): >Hope this will change your mind, Ettinger. I hope your neural net is still capable to >change I change my mind fairly often, and of course make my share of mistakes, often before breakfast. But it is the uploaders who are PLAINLY wrong when they are dogmatic about their proposition. The essence of the uploader's position is captured in Mr. Adlikis' statement that >It's information, NOT matter [that] is important. This is the same as Moravec's frequently reiterated statement that "you" survive if your "pattern" survives. But this position is not an empirical observation, nor is it a logical conclusion from an accepted set of premises. If you want to dignify it, it is a postulate. Or we could just call it a speculation or assertion. Repeating it a zillion times doesn't make it true. And it is clearly unscientific to adopt a position (other than tentatively) merely for the comfort it brings you. Uploaders represent a small minority of people today, but my skepticism is not based on that, nor on meat chauvinism. In fact, I acknowledge the possibility of something even less popular--that there may not be any such thing as survival, that we are all ephemeral, lasting only as long as a single state of consciousness; that our continuers, as well as any duplicates, are different people. But this also is just speculation at present. We have much, much more to learn about physics and biology. I have been through the thought-experiment mill as much as anybody, and a lot more than most, and there are no clear answers there yet. The real lab experiments, such as those kindly mentioned by Mr.Adiklis, may eventually be decisive, but we are not close yet on that front either. The game begins with data gathering and conceptualization, and continues with calculation of probabilities and allocation of resources. In the information-overload era, the former are sometimes easier but the last much tougher. Rotsa ruck. Robert Ettinger Cryonics Institute Immortalist Society http://www.cryonics.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=13017