X-Message-Number: 2581
Subject: Canadian CRYONICS Dinner
From:  (Ben Best)
Date: 	Mon, 31 Jan 1994 02:00:00 -0500


   Twelve people -- all male -- attended the Canadian Cryonics Dinner
at Aida's Falafel Restaurant in Toronto on January 30th. This was
primarily an outreach event -- the only signed-up cryonicist in
attendance was me (Ben Best). Four people brought friends who had
no previous direct exposure to a cryonicist, and most were given
literature. One of these friends seemed serious about signing-up
and wanted information on costs and procedures. He also wanted to
know the Vatican's views on the subject because he is Roman Catholic.
(Does anyone know if the Vatican has ever made a statement about
cryonics?)

    A focus of much conversation was a University of Toronto student
named Jeff who is entering graduate school in neurophysiology for the
specific purpose of discovering ways to preserve the mind. Jeff seemed
interested in any means -- freezing or chemical preservation -- of
preserving the brain until it is possible to scan the relevant
information into a computer. The point in dispute was whether it
would be possible to determine if the computer had really adopted his
identity -- or had simply acquired the capacity of simulating his
responses -- a "Jeff imitation machine".

   A fellow named James is a comic-book author -- and he brought one of
his artists. Both seem genuinely interested in cryonics, but are not
inclined to sign-up yet. James is plotting a comic book story based on
the idea of a woman who has been frozen and brought into the future.
She is reanimated by a reconstruction based on her frozen remains, but
then the remains become public-domain software that anyone can use to
make duplicates for their own purposes.

                  -- Ben Best (ben.best%)

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