X-Message-Number: 23676
From: "Trygve B.Bauge" <>
Subject: Answer to Charles Platt part 1
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 14:50:03 +0100


My reply yesterday to Charles Platt was a few lines too long and ended up only 
in the Cryonet archive.Here it is again split in two replies:
From: "Trygve B.Bauge" <>

Subject: Charles Platt, what is your problem? Request for a moderated and 
unmoderated version of Cryonet.
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 18:41:12 +0100

Charles Platt <> wrote:


>Usually I admire tolerance as a human trait, but not in this
>case. The greatest damage to the serious business of trying
>to cryopreserve the human brain begins with the acts of
>people who represent themselves as our friends. 

What you are saying would of course apply to your own actions as well.

You represent yourself as a friend of cryonics and then all you seem to do 
is to generate unneccessary quarrels!

I agree that the goal is to achieve not just perfect brain preservation,
but to restore brains and the body to youthful conditions.

And I do not argue that people should select straight freeze or dry ice when 
better options are available.
Whenever interviewed by the media I emphasize the need for improved methods.


And when asked about cryonics by grieving individuals who have lost a loved one,


I lett them know all the uncertainty and obstacles and pitfalls I can think of,
and ask them if they really want to go ahead,
and some like myself, selects to still go ahead. 


You on the other hand seem to want to exclude informed people who share your 
goal, and who are fully informed and who only try to do their best with their 
own available means and such volunteers that show up on their own.

The problem with your attitude is that instead of including supporters,

it is excluding, that is the way that groups are split into a series of 
unsuccessful backstabbing individuals.

My experience is that it is much better to be including, than to be excluding.

Try to find a way for people to coexist and to each do their own thing,
and then they can enjoy cooperation on the things they do agree upon.

That is the nice thing about a free society.
Each can do one's own thing with one's own time and property.


I know that I would never have been as successful as I have been in organizing 
large icebathing clubs,


if I had excluded or quarreled with everyone that didn't at all times agree with
myself on all issues.


My experience is that for each venture the best way to succeed is to focus on 
the minimum one need to agree upon to implement that venture,  


for icebathing that means just icebathing, we don't need to agree upon training
methods or politics or religion.

So let the same thing apply to cryonics:


For each cryonic related venture, it be a facility, or a festival or a parade or
whatever:

let those that want to undertake that particular venture do so,
without starting quarrels over irrelevant issues,



and above all: be tolerant and let others be free to do their own ventures with
their own volunteers.

There might be more ways to Rome, than just one.

>We are judged
>by the company we keep.


Well The  Federal government kept loosing battles in the civil war until they 
realized that

it was best  to select a general that knew how to win wars, even though he was 
less than morally perfect, and a drunkard.


>Bauge himself insists that all publicity is good publicity.
>This of course is very convenient for him, since it excuses
>and justifies anything he does, no matter how irresponsible
>it is. 

What I implied was that in the real world one does get under attack,
both just and unjust attacks,

and in a free society those attacks though annoying, 
still offer an opportunity to respond and set the record straight.

Friends are won that way.

However sometimes the false attacks become overwhelming,
and more than one can manage to immediately rebut.


The two times I got falsly arrested in cases I later unconditionally won, I 

experienced how it is to be passed through a system where many of the people you
come in contact with add a little bit of abuse and some transgression, so that 
the resulting effect is an overwhelming avalanche of abuse. 



So for the record I did not threaten to hijack any plane, I won that case, and I
did not trespass when I a few years later delivered a letter with references to
reputable cancer treatments, I won that case too. 

To read more about the times I was illegally arrested in cases I later 
unconditionally won, try this link:It leads to a lot of witty remarks and shows 
how I won the case that was brought against me after I had joked about hijacking
a plane at a US airport.Yes, cryonics is not the only fringe activity I am 
involved in, defending free speech is another. 
http://home.chello.no/~trygve.bauge/Documents%20and%20Settings/T/Favoritter/V/Write_articles/Actual_product/Articles_by_Trygve_in_English/Large/Airport.html


A few times I have also received more unjust attacks here on cryonet than I had
capacity to properly rebut at the time,

and I had to focus on what was more important: Protecting my grandfather, our 

house in Colorado, my rights, my health and what other ventures I was focused on
at the time.

Luckily the media and the population in Colorado did not share the angry, 
backstabbing attitude that so often has prevailed here on the cryonet, or I 
would not have succeeded.



Maybe that has something to do with the main media outlets each beeing edited by
en editor, and it therefore being harder for people to carry out overwhelming 
abusive attacks in the regular media than on the internet.


Anyway I often felt that a few so called cryonisists were more enemies than 
friends.


Luckily neither they nor the INS nor the townboard had control over the regular
media or the general population.


Incidentially I would not have been deported if the right to trial by jury had 
been respected.


I have never been convicted of anything criminal what so ever, but was deported
because I on principle refused to apply for such visas and amnesties as I 
qualified for.
I refuse to ask for permission to do what others have no right to deny me.

And it is a sobering thought that very few of todays Americans would have been 
around if the native Americans had had a better border patrol, or homeland 
security force.


As to my own situation, I guess I came to the United States a few centuries too
late.
No Colorado jury would have deported me.

A journalist  in Colorado pointed this out at the time in an award winning 
article.

However the right to trial by jury has wrongfully been done away with in 
immigration cases. 


The last few years the attacks I come under here on the Cryonet has been more 
manageable: a few irrate e-mails a year, even I can manage to rebut :-)
 
However something more valuable might come from all this:


I am not saying that the federal government has planted people in our midst to 
create disunity, though they are known to have done that in many other fringe 
organizations.


I am saying that we do not as an organization have to shoot ourselves in the 
foot, by tolerating unneccesary attacks.

It is a question of civilized debate actually.


Maybe what that is needed is to split the Cryonet in a moderated and an 
unmoderated thread, so that the moderated thread is free from personal abuses 
and attacks.


>According to his theory the Ted Williams publicity
>must have been good for cryonics, even though it
>misrepresented procedures and reinforced prejudice among
>legislators who have prevented SA from operating out of their
>current facility, have imposed severe restrictions on CI, and
>would have required Alcor to follow mortuary practice if the
>organization hadn't spent money and time defending itself
>with a lobbyist. Clearly we are extremely vulnerable, and the
>wrong kind of publicity can permanently impair the ability to
>provide high-level care--not that Trygve Bauge seeme very
>concerned about this.  

Trygve's response:

But Charles, you are are turning the situation topsy turvy.
and attacking a strawman of your own imagination.



It seems to me that what you are complaining about Charles, is that much of the
media 
has treated cryonics the same way you treat others here at the Cryonet.


It is the fast uninformed attacks and the secretive and self sensoring and 
unfriendly attitude that you stand for
that have brought the cryonics organizations into the problems they have.


And it is the 100% openness with the media that I have practiced that is the 
solution out of the problems.


I have from the very beginning from long before we froze my grandfather been 
consistently 100% open with the media


about all I do. I have had media outlets come to my home and events many times a
year for more than 20 years now. Thus the media has from the very beginning 
known about all the adverse aspects of my grandfather's pilot case,
and they have time and again assisted in overcoming problems.

Noone is more aware of the adverse situation of my grandfather's case than the 

Colorado media, but it is not used against me, because they have known about the
problems and my motives including my motive of using this as a pilot case to 
improve cryonics, from the very beginning.

Most of the time the coverage has been less on problems and more on 
opportunities, simple because there hasn't been any problems.

But because of all the positive coverage of opportunities the media has also 
been there to assist when problems arouse.


As a result I have not come under attacks by the regular larger main media 

outlets in Colorado, because all the editors know enough about the case to shut

down any wrongful attacks. If they hear anything strange they just contact me to
verify what the situation is before they go any further.


The local media coverage in Colorado is for the most part correct, balanced, and
positive. 

Of course it helps that I have built a good standing in the community by 

inviting the media along on an evergrowing annual icebathing festival, and other
valuable ventures,  



I have not brought on the Ted Williams case, but I know that the Rocky Mountain
news in their annual year end survey of 2003, responded by quoting someone off 
the street in Nederland Colorado that thought Ted Williams ought to be stored 
there. I didn't see any local attacks on the suspension of Williams either. 

After having annually heard about my grandfather's case for 14 years now both on
TV, radio and in the newspapers, the local population is well enough informed 
to not panick.


Charles, there is no sense in attacking me for something that has worked out 
well in Colorado,

and for wrongfully accusing me of causing the problems you have brought on 
yourself elsewhere.


What you and others ought to do is to try to figure out how you can build the 
same community support for cryonics elsewhere in the world
that we now have in Colorado.


>His own father is "preserved" at a
temperature which allowed damage that I would argue was
irreparable years ago.


Look my grandfather had what you will call "irreparable" damage even before we 
froze him.

He died at home in the Winter, and by Norwegian law he was kept in an unheated 
basement morgue for 3 days before he was released.


Then because my sister objected to his suspension it took a few more days to get
the go ahead to have him frozen.

Then it was a lot of back and forth with C.I. about how to freeze him, and 
whether or not we should try to wash out the blood or embalm before the 
freezing.

All in all it took about 8 days before he was frozen, and then at a straight 

freeze to minus 18 degrees at which he was stored 3 months before he was packed
in dry ice and shipped to California. The people at Trans Time were afraid of 

picking him up at the airport, (It was at the time of the Dora Kent controvercy,
but I  had called some congress person from Colorado who new some congress 
person in California and we had no problems what so ever with the state health 

authorities in California. But since the people who were to pick him up got cold
feet, he was stored at the airport, and almost all the dry ice had evaporated 
when he was picked up a date later.

So even at that point some of his finger nails had become black. He otherwise 
looked good, but that is cosmetic.

So why did I still freeze him?


Well someone has to be frozen for procedures to be established and improved, and
obstacles identified and overcome.

It is an experiement not just in science, but in organization, and political 
acceptance and logistics on more topics than most people would ever start to 
think of.

So is there no hope then for my grandfather?
Rather to the contrary.

He is still frozen, he is better off than the 4000 year old person that was 
found in a glacier in Austria a few years ago,


his situation is actually better than several of the people suspended at C.I and
Alcor, people that were in much worse condition when they were frozen then my 
grandfather was in when he was frozen. Alcor has frozen a person without a 
brain, and C.I has frozen a white person that had turned completely black.

Nothing wrong with that, as long as one is open about what one does and admits 
all the adversity of the situation up front.


Of course no one expects that we can just thaw out my grandfather and have him 
up and going.
But his case is not based on any such misrepresentation either.
I have consistantly told the media that we look forward to cloning him,
and this I have done since long before the appearance of Dolly.



I want to make one thing clear: Some media in Norway did at some point make the
same error as Charles, they created a strawman:


Making a big fuss about present cryonic suspensions being futile because people
get so harmed by present freezing delays & freezing techniques that they won't 
be alive when thawed out.


But the main media in Colorado has not done the same error because they know 

that my objective has never been a belief that he would  be up and walking when
thawed out.


I have painstakingly pointed out how the question is one of survival by degree,

and that what we are searching for are means of securing individual continuity,
to the largest extent. and that the starting point is full annihilation, and 
that anything else is an improvement.

Offspring provides some level of survival, cloning provides even more, cloning 
combined with conventional teaching techniques provides even a larger 
continuity,

etc. etc. and I don't think Charles has delivered any proof that we never will 
be able to clone dead human beings, we don't need a preserved brain for that.
And most mental content can be restored to a clone from external sources.


Of course, such a trained clone would not be my grandfather, but it would be 
pretty close to being a younger version of him,

and by pursuing such techniques for still higher degrees of continuation, we 

would hopefully come up with a lot of knowledge that would enable the rest of us
to not be dying in the first place.  We might even in the process improve the 
techniques and availability and political acceptance for reversible suspension 
of animation.   


Only the future will tell if we also are able to repair and restore individual 

cells and tissues, and how much of such that really has to be restored for it to
be the same person.


e.g. are you the same person after a stroke? Not fully, but a person repaired by
nano technology might be more itself than a person that survives a stroke, and 
that is good enough for me.



If the idea is to have still more cells survive with the same awareness of being
alive, then the challenge regarding those already dead, is how one can repair 

still more of the original cells and tissues. But to the extent consciousness is
an effect of how cells are linked to one another, then this opens up for life 
as being a process in change, that acceptably can continue in a changing cell 
culture.


We are not the same person at 70 as we were at 10, but we still find it to be an
acceptable continuation of ourself, so maybe we will find a future clone with 
some original cells that have been restored and transplanted in, as being an 
acceptable continuation of ourself too, or better than full annihilation, at 
least seen from the point of view of the clone?  



To the degree basic awareness is the same in any individual cell, to that extent
your basic awareness would continue in a clone.  To the degree your mental 

content is an effect of how nervecells interact, to that extent the same impact
can be restored onto the cloned cells.


What I am saying is that it might not be necessary with more than one of your 
cells to survive and be cloned into a full human being, for your awareness to 
survive.


And that with the right conventional teaching techniques, the nerve cells in the
clone might all experience the same awareness as you do.

Ok. so it is not the same as preserving the brain, and its awareness,


but isn't it possible to have two ideas in the head at the same time, and pursue
both, so that one has something to fall back upon if the best approach fails?



I think one of the reasons I have got some acceptance in that part of the media
that knows me well, is that I have a sliding approach to survival, trying to 
implement survival as a continuation of oneself to a still higher degree, and 
that I am not just focused on a black and white approch: preserve the brain 
intact or get lost!

Many people can identify with a search for still better techniques for 
individual continuation, though they still don't see any way to preserve the 
brain intact.



Though I share the objective of full brain preservation and restoration, I think
it is important to also pursue lesser options in order to reach the ultimate 
objective.
  
  
Charles Platt vwrote:  
>I think what he really means is that all publicity is good
>publicity *for him,* because he just loves publicity. His own
>CryoNet post revels in it. 


You claim to know my case good enough to attack it, but still you repeatedly 
(once above and once below), claim that I have frozen my father 


when in fact it was my grandfather. That you repeatedly err on such simple facts
as this,

shows me that you have no concern about the fact of the case but is rather out 
to attack for some ulterior motive of your own, 

or just as a kneejerk reaction with full disregard for the facts of the case, 
much like you complain that the media has done in the Ted Williams case.

Or maybe you are just scared as hell for publicity. And misguided thinks that 
there is safety in self-sensorship.


But then rest assured that the buraucrats that want to crack down upon cryonics
are even more scared about publicity, and rightfully so.

To have their victims show self-censorship on the other hand, gives the 
transgressors a free hand.



Do not misunderstand me, when I advocate full openness I advocate doing so in a
cultivated and civilized fashion without the use of four letter words or 

unjustified attacks. And be sure to advocate solutions that let people be free 
to do their own thing with their own property and with such people that 
volunteer to come along.


Openness and tolerance goes hand in hand, if you are not tolerant, your openness
will only lead to you attacking others for doing their own thing. Thus 
something can be said in favour of intolerant people showing some 
self-censorship. :-)  But usually they will be put in their place by others 
defending civilized behavior.

By the way tolerance doesn't mean to tolerate everything, it only means to 
advocate solutions where people are free to do their own thing with their own 
property and with consenting adults.

For the record then: 


Negative publicity and unfair attacks can be rebutted and turned into something
positive if one has the habit of doing and strength to do this,

but it requires a society where populistic lynch mobs are outlowed or at least 
checked and balanced.


The fact that many forums on the internet are uncivilized brawls, doesn't mean 
that we have to let Cryonet be such an uncivilized forum.
   

Publicity has never been a goal for me. I am not an actor seeking the applause 
of others, and has never been that.


My motivation is my own joyful life-extension and I am autonom or self governed
and only concerned with my own approval of what I am doing.


I am actually as happy on my own in the wilderness, or drawing some state of the
art blast shelter, with the phone unplugged,
being alone for months at the time, as being out among other human beings.


I have however discovered that publicity is a side effect of much of what I have
been doing,


and that one can use publicity to overcome negative obstacles including negative
publicity.


If you have more than one foot to stand on, If the media knows you from valuable
work in several fields, then you won't fail or succeed based on some unjust 
attack over one particular venture.


If cryonisists and cryonic organizations excelled in several other areas than 

just freezing heads and bodies, they would easier stand the attacks they get for
these activities.


Maybe if you froze cell samples, and blood,  and assisted in blood and organ 

collections for transfusions and transplants, you would be a trusted part of the
local community, and people would stand up and defend you when someone attacks 
you. 


Or if you just joined the local chamber of commerce and took your turn having 
one of the annual business after hours at the cryonic facility,
that too would help.



Or if you encouraged people to proudly stand up during a kind of a cryonic pride
week :-) that too would help.


but of course then one might end up being part of Mardi Gras like carnivals, and
heaven forbid! :-)



Sincerely,Trygve Bauge

 Content-Type: text/html;

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23676