X-Message-Number: 23374 Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 06:57:22 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: Re: Paul Wakfer's reply To Paul Wakfer with a little bit for Mike Perry: I agree that some kind of reconceptualization has become appropriate. However I think we need to go further than just redefining "death" (and with it, "life", and the various other subparts you presented in your message). If you listened to what I was saying about Tupac Amaru you will notice that I was doing exactly that. To repeat, he was revived with very little memory of his past. He WAS given the information he needed to make his way in the society in which he was revived, together with whatever was known about the people from which he came. A person came into existence (yes, I would agree that people can exist or not exist, but watch out: Peter Pan does not exist; we're not talking about life or death here). By meeting others who have completely forgotten years out of their lives (particularly the years in which we now spend our whole lives --- unless we live to more than 100) he came to see that he was no more a person revived with little information than they were. And people can learn and have experiences. That learning and those experiences are important but make them no more a person than someone who lacks any such previous experiences. People do not "die" or come close to it, nor do they become especially alive depending on their experiences. Yes, there is a range of experiences that people can have, and usually we don't want to lose them. But even if you lose ALL your experiences (say through a bad failure of your suspension which forced you to be recreated from whatever information remained) you become a live person after your re-creation. And so far as you retain any fragments of information at all about your past, you are the SAME person. If someone else is created with even more of your past memories (not that a humane society would do that) then you become a kind of second-order version of the original, but still remain a person. What would a HUMANE society do? If they somehow found out how to discover further past memories you had, they would offer them to you rather than create someone different. I will note here that I am not discussing any subjective continuity you may feel with your past versions. I would hardly deny feelings of such continuity, but I can only point out that if you're recreated with some of your memories you're going to feel that continuity. At one point you say that doing such recreation from the memories of others and any other signs of your past which remain would use only a minuscle part of the information in your brain. I agree that it would not match the amount of information you have about your past life, but at what stage does its LOSS imply that you have not been revived? I'm saying that there is no such stage. You and others can rightly regret that loss, but you remain a person and the survivor of your original. And of course is someone is created (as I would expect someday) with NO memories of their past, but as an adult (babies here come into existence as instances of this, save that they're not adults) then you are a new person. Welcome to the club. Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23374