X-Message-Number: 25210
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 07:57:36 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #25202 - #25209

To RBR and Valera Retyunin:

Going backwards, first to Valera. If asked seriously about whether or
not I want to be uploaded or otherwise recreated, I would say that
at least for now and for an indefinite time in the future there's
virtually no hope that we could duplicate someone closely enough
IN PRACTICE for anything like uploading to work.

Moreover, suppose that someday we really can continue ourselves by
uploading. If that turns out to be true, you may even come to agree
that it's true yourself, and happily accept it as a form of revival.
For that matter, why would cryonicists want to FORCE anyone to accept
a form of revival they did not want? The only circumstances I can 
imagine are emergencies of some kind, in which (re uploading) the
choice is between your complete destruction and your preservation 
by uploading ... so far as that is a form of preservation.

I was not advocating uploading now or then, I was raising some cases 
which touched on just what RBR was claiming. 

and for RBR:

Okay, you haven't used the word "continuous". You still haven't 
defined adequately just why some hiatus of existence prevents
the continued existence of the same QE. Sure, you present me with
"theorems". What I'm asking for is the underlying physics and 
biology (and physiology, biochemistry, etc). As you yourself know
very well, we change all the time: from psychologically to biochemically.
So, in the case of one possibility I discussed, how is it that
becoming a record which is then used to recreate me destroys my QE?
For that matter, as I described in my last message, just what 
difference does a span of time in which we don't exist make to the
presence of the same QE in us? It's not enough here to define the
continuation as new. If a QE is physical, then it should be quite
possible (in theory) to make an exact copy of it and destroy the
previous version. If not, why not? Remember that I'm discussing an
exact copy. So how is that EXACT copy not essentially the same?

And here's another way to look at it: our QE must itself change, for
otherwise how could we experience anything at all? And if you say that
it never changes (except by destruction) then what is it doing in the
first place? Even our experiences would not change it ie. we have a 
QE which sits there doing nothing. So what changes are acceptable
and which are not for our QE?

You probably have never heard of my newsletter PERIASTRON. I'm working
on the next issue right now, and all this discussion of QEs has led
me to look at what neuroscience can say on this issue. Some of my
comments in my last message come from thinking about medical conditions
which raises issues about the notion of QEs in the first place.

To Coetzee:

Looking at the papers suggested by Henri Kluytmann raised strong questions
in my mind on the issue of whether or not current hardware comes 
anywhere close to an ability to produce anything like a human brain.
Neural nets in computing are very pale, weak versions of the neural net
which is our brain... even if you add the ability to grow new connections.
A real neuron alone would take a complex computer neural net to even
imitate for a short time.

In any case, I'll look more for the book you suggest. If I have to buy it
myself, there may be economic problems too: I don't wish to pay $150 for
a book which on reading clearly doesn't produce any more than a theoretical
version of a human brain. I will see if Interlibrary Loans are possible.

                Best wishes and long long life for all,

                   Thomas Donaldson

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