X-Message-Number: 21264
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 08:31:31 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #21248 - #21262

Well well I seem once more to have awakened an urge to argue with me!
It is difficult to answer 3 different criticisms in one short message;
I hope my critics take this into account.

First, for Mike Donohue: Some very good and well-deserved points.

For Mr. Kluytmans:
There is a clear and obvious distinction between cryonics and 
respirocytes. Cryonics makes no claim about the means by which we
will be revived, it merely supposes that there will be SOME means.
Respirocytes are much more exact proposals about a future device,
and automatically (at least in my mind) raise questions about the 
real practicality of implementing them.

If you were simply to claim that we will find ways to improve our
designs, I would actually agree with you. Instead you want to 
imagine, with no actual devices or actual tests of how they would
function, one much more specific means to make such improvements
(and in addition, what you consider improvements in the first place).
I will speak here about brains, particularly because it is a subject
I have studied a good deal to deal with the problem of reviving
damaged suspension patients. The fundamental problem is that we
do not now understand how brains work in the first place. Yes,
neural nets in computing come closer than normal computers to 
working like brains, but anyone who has studied the working of
real brains would tell you how they differ and are much more 
primitive in their functions than real neurons. Real neurons have
much more connectivity; they change this connectivity all the
time (growing or removing synapses). The messages one nerve
sends to another are modified by other chemical factors, depending
on whether they are present or not. Some neurons are actually 
replaced by others. This happens particularly in one part of our
brains, the hippocampus, which plays a critical role in at least
one of our several kinds of memory. Some neuroscientists, well
regarded in the field, believe that new neurons grow everywhere
in our brain. Presently this question remains unsettled. Again, our
neurons actually USE static and low levels of randomness to send their
messages, while our computers try to avoid it.

And you now propose to make a computer form of a brain? Or are
you simply saying that one may someday be devised? Given that
the processors (neurons) and their connections (axons and dendrites)
are constantly changing, and that even their way of sending electrical
messages exploits static and randomness while our current electrical
devices try to suppress it, I'm not even sure that any device we
built able to replace a brain would fulfil the definition of a
COMPUTER (I say this not because I think such a device is impossible,
but because it may tell us that computers aren't the only way to
think).

Finally, for Francois and Michael Price:
The claim that duplication cannot be observed is very likely to be
false, for the simple reason that a third person (or a second 
person not the same as the person duplicated) can very easily
watch the entire process of duplication. 

While I would hardly deny that the PERSON DUPLICATED may not be
aware of his/her duplication, that wasn't what was claimed. Not
only that, but the person duplicated can afterwards ask that 
3rd person who was a witness to tell what he/she saw. Not only
THAT, but if X knows in advance that he will be duplicated, then
he could even set up his own machinery to record what happened
and he and his duplicate could look at it afterwards. So the person
duplicated may not know what happened WHEN IT HAPPENED, but could
easily learn about it later.

If you did not see this, I'm sorry. If you want to turn it into
a philosophical problem, I'm sure that you can set up situations
in which nobody knows what happened and nobody can find out.
Highly artificial situations. But then lots of events no one argues
about have something of that character: just read a good account of
a murder mystery (if you can stand the gore!): nobody knows what
happened or who did it there, either.

            Best wishes and long long life for all,

                  Thomas Donaldson

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