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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25210