X-Message-Number: 14145 Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 19:38:41 -0500 From: Cynthia and Kevin Spoering <> Subject: Identity Greetings, I have been following the discussion on identity here for a long time and have thought about the problem myself long before I joined Alcor in 1996. These are my personal thoughts on the subject, and I do mean PERSONAL, as opinions vary widely on the identity problem. First, I am signed up to be a whole body suspendee. At one time I did believe that downloading, popularly known as uploading now, was the way to go, have your frozen brain scanned and neatly place your consciousness in a body equal or superior to your old one, artificial and nearly indestructible. But I just can't get away from one big problem with this scenario, as I believe that the consciousness that would reside in that new body is just a copy of the original and not really me. I know that many of you have posted very elegant arguments that this is not the case, but I remain unconvinced. So this leaves the problem of being reanimated someday, but still be in an organic body, thus very suseptible to irretrievible accident, as no backup would exist for someone who does'nt believe in uploading. I read a book a couple of years ago titled BEYOND HUMANITY: CYBEREVOLUTION AND FUTURE MINDS, by Gregory Paul and Earl Cox. In it, these authors have a solution to my dilemma, which is that you keep your organic body but have it connected with high bandwith to possibly several mind equivalent computers as a SHARED consciousness network. You would perceive your consciousness centered in your body, but if your body and brain were destroyed, the external computers would be your backup. Then a new body would have to be made of course but as these external computers are part of your consciousness, it gets around the problem of "is it a copy or not?" question. I like my hormones and being an organic human, and don't want to be downloaded. The idea of computers hooked up to your brain and it's implications were also long ago explored by Ettinger in his first book, and briefly also touched on by Halperin in his novel, but Halperin did not take this idea to it's logical conclusion. The technology of melding external computers to a person's brain is a long way off, I know. We first have to be suspended in a timely manner very soon after our death, and hope the damage from all of this is minimal. But if this is achieved, it seems to me that the nanotechnology we all talk about is nearly inevitable, and then we all should find our safe haven in the future we all long for. If I did'nt believe this, I would not be a cryonicist. Best Regards, Kevin Spoering "If we can dream it, we can do it"----EPCOT, Florida, Horizons exibit Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14145