X-Message-Number: 16815 From: "Trygve Bauge" <> References: <> <> Subject: Re: Trygve's response to Billy Seidel. Part II Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 15:21:37 +0200 Thanks Billy, for your reply,. You did not tag it as confidential, and I think the letter and my response might be of general interest, thus I am posting my reply to Cryonet and the European cryonics list. (Do I really have to include this explanation each time I post a response to a private letter, isn't the above self-evident?) "Billy H. Seidel" <> wrote: > You present a few situations that could occur. The probabilities of dying > that one could imagine are unlimited and so would my response be to any of > the situations that one could come up with. There are two types of > death. One is physical death in which your body quits working and current > science can't get you working again. I believe this is the death that we > will be reanimated from in the future. The other is biological death and > your atoms are all rearrange for some reason. I do not believe that any > science will be able to reanimate a person from this form of death. > I can think of several ways: We could possibly systematically recreate all the gen combinations that have ever existed. At some point in the future it might be possible to chemically create any gen combination from scratch, from its chemical formula. Future computers might have the capacity to map not just one persons genome, but to map the genome of an unlimited number of people, down to each atom, knowing the genome of existing people over several generations, we might find ways to interpolate backwards to validly find out the genome of long dead people, this might be tested against fragmented DNA gleaned from long dead corpses. Fragmented DNA from long dead corpses might also be used to decide in what time frame specific genetic combinations have actually lived. We could thus create clones, and recreate in these whatever historical knowledge we have from the time that someone with the same DNA structure actually lived. It might not be you, but if we get good enough at it, no one will be able to tell the difference. Would there be over population if we try to recreate as live human beings the gen combination of large number of dead people? Not necessarily. In a few generations we might lack enough people to colonize the Universe. What is then more practical than shipping out the gen formulas, and recreating human beings from these at some far away planet? Maybe comets could be seeded with genetic material that we want to spread around the universe? Maybe they already are? (Not by us, but by other civilizations? Maybe that is how life got here in the first place?) I hear you all protest against being cloned, and saying that the clone is not you. But what if we try to link up the brains of a donor and its clone, so that they share the same consiousness. Do we really know enough about consiousness to rule out the possibility of such a scenario? If your experience of being alive and being yourself can be brought to include the consiousness of the clone. Then losing the original might be no worse than losing an eye or getting a stroke. If your experience of being can be brought to reside simultaneously in both you and your clone, as one entity, then all that is needed for your experience of being to go on, is for the clone to survive. I am not saying that todays clones or one egged twins share the same consciousness, I am just saying that from the point of individual longevity, anyone trying to survive, might benefit from trying to develop a scenario where one's consciousness and sense of being is expanded to include and dwell simultanously in both the original and selected clones. An intermediary stage might be to find out what that constitutes one's sense of being oneself, and how one can expand what one experience as being oneself, e.g. how would improvements to a persons senses or brain have to be engineered so to be experienced by the same individual as being a part of oneself? This might be highly valuable for blind and deaf people that thereby could gain or regain sight and hearing, in such a way that they would experience such sense input, and the results of processing such sense input, as part of themselves. We think in sounds or pictures, much of what we experience as being ourselves is expressed in our consciousness in sounds and pictures. Of course we still have the question of continued uninterupted survival of one's own sense of being. That could be accomplished by linking the consiousness of a live donor to the consciousness of a live clone, before the donor dies, in such a way that we get the experience of one consciousness. But the uninterupted survival of one's own sense of being will be broken when a clone is created from dead cells or from one's genetic molecular formula. Well the uninterupted sense of being oneself is broken in any frozen human being, it is even broken when you sleep at night. But does one have to wake up in the same shell so to speak, in order to be oneself? Religious people might claim that we are speaking about a different soul in the clone. But do we really know all there is to know about what that constitutes consciousness? If consciousness is just a feedback reaction in our system of nerve cells, and not a separate entity or soul, then we could possibly recreate an identical or similar feedback reaction in the clone's system of nerve cells. Even religious people open for that souls can pass on to new bodies (reincarnation). Why shouldn't cryonisists at least acknolwedge that it could be an entrepreneurial challenge to find a way to make one's sense of being move to and continue living in a clone? The future will probably be able to make much more of clones and consciousness, than we possibly can imagine today. And I for one would like to bet on the future , when it comes to what that can be done to restore me and other human beings. Maybe you can be brought back through a clone, or at least, maybe it is premature to rule it out? > For me, I still feel that if my original memories could not be restored > than it would not be me that had been restored. Oh, I know that a cleaver > restoration of implied memories might make a clone believe it was me, but > it would not be me. You mentioned mental content. I am currently keeping > a log book of as much as I can remember about my friends, relations and my > thoughts and feelings, all of which boils down to mental content. But it > will never be enough. Implied mental content is not the same as real > memories. I believe that reanimation will be possible, but to what > percentage will it be me? I'll take almost any percentage. My log book is > to help my restored memories to recall my original memories and not implied > memories. So again, don't dig me up if it can't be me. > No one is forcing you to be cloned or to store cell samples of yourself, just don't try to stop those of us that like the idea of being cloned. There are lots of challenges, Just making it common to create genetic twins with separate consiousnesses, is just the first step, towards a future that might make it much easier to continue as an uninterupted experience of being oneself. Sincerely, Trygve Bauge > Thanks again Trygve, for your response, and good luck with your projects. > > Billy H. Seidel > > Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16815