X-Message-Number: 25181 Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 07:31:04 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #25176 - #25180 To Bob Ettinger: Sorry, but the purpose of my message wasn't exactly what you may have thought. It's very easy to simply say "continuity is important", but when it comes to defining just what continuity means, that seems to be left unsaid. If you were the subject of this experiment, and were revived exactly (an unlikely possibility, I know very well) then just where is continuity lacking? You wouldn't be aware of any difference in times at all, as if you had moved instantly to a different room, or stepped through a hole in space which put you a day in your future. Yes, others would say that you had been destroyed and then recreated, but some might argue that the recreation itself had been continuous with the former person because it was like that person in every respect. Note that I followed my question with another one, asking how we knew that our QE wasn't recreated every time we went to sleep and later awoke. To Henri Kluytemann: I forgot to add to my discussion of the de Garis work that it did look like a genuine attempt to create a brain. I'll also point out, as you know yourself, that most of that attempt lies in the future, when we can make much smaller "neurons" and "neural nets". The devices actually built or even simulated in a contemporary computer were quite far from anything which might even be thought of as an insect brain. But it was a good effort, and brought more of the features of brain cells than other methods have done. Besides their major trait of growing new circuits and neurons, our brains also have more abilities at self-repair than I've yet seen in any device yet built (full stop). Suppose we created an artificial brain which thought like we do when we're healthy, but had quite different forms of breakdown than our brains do. In terms of helping us understand how we work, such a brain wouldn't be all that helpful, even though it could do some of the things we normally do. I'd probably decide that it was a different form of intelligence entirely. For that matter, a true artificial brain would also have to have its own desires and will; without these we merely have a very complex computing device able to solve (some) of our problems for us...a useful tool. Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25181