X-Message-Number: 26604
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 11:52:10 -0700
Subject: Not Again: Sleep for the Sleep Deprived
From: <>

The Otter wrote:

> Yeah, but so is going to sleep. The loss of
> consciousness is the real divide when it comes to (the
> illusion of) 'personal survival'.

The good ol' standby of the battered and cornered patternist: 
'Survival is an illusion, so we don't have to worry about it!' Such 
sentiments may comfort your desire to survive, but are betrayed by 
your actions, which are inconsistent with a belief that survival is 
an illusion.

If you truly believed survival were an illusion, you would take no 
course of action, and would die soon from starvation or thirst. At 
the very least (assuming your belief could not override your basic 
insticts), you would not sign up for cryonics or practice life 
extension. 

I have never come across anyone who denies survival who actually 
believes what they espouse. Which is consistent with my hypothesis 
that the denial is, in fact, a form of denial---a way to comfort 
someone who not only believes in survival, but earnestly desires to 
survive.

Be that as it may, let me address your sleep = annihilation 
argument, since you may have missed (or forgotten) the many times I 
have addressed this same argument before.

I am a materialist. I don't believe in an immaterial 'self'. I 
don't believe in a 'personal essense'. I believe in exactly one 
thing: a brain. Therefore, it is quite clear to me, and anyone else 
who considers themselves a materialist, that inasmuch as the brain 
does not cease to exist during sleep or other periods of 
unconsciousness, I survive all of these phenomena.

The question of whether a brain survives cryonic preservation is a 
different matter altogether. I don't have much hope for straight 
freezing, but vitrification is promising and will no doubt improve 
to a point where I can say with some certainty I will survive 
cryonic suspension. Until then, I regard cryonics as a 'best shot'.

> Only as a last resort.

A last resort? Excuse me, but you just said sleep was equivalent to 
annihilation. If that's true then there is no use in planning for 
your own life beyond the hours remaining in the day. There's no 
need for a first resort, let alone a last resort. It's astounding 
to me that you cannot see your own manifold inconsistencies.

> However, ultimately
> plastination, permafrost burial, freeze drying,
> regular cryonics and vitrification are all just
> different flavors of the same ice cream.

Umm, no. The latter attempts to preserve a brain (even if there is 
some question as to whether or not it is successful). The former 
attempts to preserve enough information---within a hunk of matter 
that formerly was a brain---to create a new brain. The distinction 
is fundamental. Waving your ice-cream soiled hands will not make it 
go away.

> None of them
> can truly save the essence of self (only mind
> uploading or sleep-eliminating drugs/genetic
> modifications could do that); all they can do is offer
> some religion-free peace of mind.

Essense of self? Please don't forget that you're speaking to a 
materialist here. I don't believe in 'essenses'. I believe in 
brains: something you can examine under a microscope.

And as for mind uploading, not only is mind uploading equivalent to 
annihilation, but it is not at all clear that the hardware on which 
a 'brain program' would run would experience the subjective inner 
life that I experience. So not only will an upload not save you, 
but it may not even result in an experiencing entity, but only in a 
zombie---no more capable of consciousness than a stock investing or 
sports simulation program.

> Oh, and guess what? Free will and even time itself are
> almost certainly just subjective illusions. No one
> ever really lives, and no one ever really dies.

Thanks for sharing your hopes and dreams.

> But, again, who cares? I sure don't.

Whatever makes you comfortable...

Richard B. Riddick.

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