X-Message-Number: 25442
From: "Valera Retyunin" <>
Subject: To Scott Badger 
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 16:15:09 +0300

You wrote:
"So given that the brain is clearly incapable of experiencing qualia in the
cryonically preserved state, does that mean we are all lost? These brains
are significantly damaged and will need repair before they are capable of
generating a QE again. In addition to being damaged, one would have to admit
that, given the cracking that takes place (less now than before), the brain
has been at least partly disassembled. Have the identities of these damaged
and partly disassembled brains been destroyed for all those currently in
stasis?"

All those who are currently in stasis may well be lost. It's quite likely
that within minutes after a person dies their self is destroyed. If, for
example, electric activity in the brain is critical to the continuation of
the self, then the self simply cannot continue in a dead brain. If that is
the case, even a perfectly preserved brain will produce another self (i.e.
another person) after reanimation. The new person will be very similar to
the "old" one, yet it will have another sense of self and, therefore,
identity.

If the self is, at least primarily, a result of the brain's more permanent
features so that it can continue in some idle state even after some of the
processes happening in the living brain stop, then it has a chance of
surviving death followed by freezing or vitrification. I believe that it is
extremely important to know how the self is produced by the brain before any
attempts to reanimate cryonic patients are made, otherwise you couldn't tell
who exactly you would have brought to life.

You wrote:
"I maintain that it doesn't matter how many pieces a frozen brain is broken
into if those pieces can be properly reassembled through some future
technology......... And when the machine is switched back on, we expect the
original (though possibly somewhat damaged) self to reappear."

You once agreed that building a person from arbitrary atoms using a
blueprint (pattern) of a dead person would not resurrect that dead person,
but create a new one. You now maintain that breaking a brain into separate
atoms and putting them back into the same positions will recreate the
original self, which effectively means that individual atoms are somehow
unique to the self (since you agreed that the self is not defined by the
pattern alone). I.e. if the atoms you use for reassembling a person are that
person's "unique" atoms, the person can be resurrected. But you also said
you believed that atoms in the brain were interchangeable. A contradiction,
isn't it?

You wrote:
"Are you going to draw a line somewhere among those 130+ patients, insisting
that some will have their original QEs while others won't? It seems to me
that it doesn't matter how damaged the brain is if it can be restored to
it's original form."

There is no line only if the brain processes that stop after death are
essential to the continuation of the self. In that case none of the patients
can be reanimated simply because they don't exist anymore. Once the self is
gone, it cannot be restored. If the processes are not as important, there
clearly is a line. The fact that
you don't know where the line is does not mean there is no line. The more
you meddle with the brain, the higher is the chance that the self has
disintegrated.

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