X-Message-Number: 26643
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 19:42:13 -0700
Subject: The Other Side, to Mike: Part 1/2
From: <>

> I wrote in my last posting that response "has been encouraging to 

> the idea of setting up a brain chemopreservation operation." This 

> was not meant as any slight to Richard B. Riddick, who chose the 
> same day to air his objections.

Keep in mind that by promoting chemopreservation or other 
preservation methods of reduced (perhaps non-existent) integrity, 
you may cause some people to signup for these methods who would 
otherwise have opted for cryonics. This is the reason why your 
'something is better than nothing' line of reasoning will not 
necessarily produce the best outcome (as judged by total number of 
reanimated patients).

Cryonics is by no means guaranteed to work; in fact, most 
scientists say it won't work. While I do not share their degree of 
pessimism (or their ignorance regarding current practices), I think 
caution is in order. Remember we are dealing with something that 
currently does not work, and has not even been shown to be possible 
within the known laws of physics. Therefore, in my view the proper 
response to chemopreservation, freeze drying, and plastination is 
skepticism. Publicly, I believe cryonicists should denounce these 
methods as crackpottery.

> First, a general comment. I don't think Richard is questioning 
> that a chemopreserved brain may be restorable (unless I am 
> using a term he doesn't like; I hope *my* meaning in what follows 

> will be clear).

For sake of argument, I am granting that a chemopreserved brain may 
be restorable. Do I actually believe that? Not at all. But I grant 
it for this reason: my fundamental objection to the technique is 
that the damage inflicted to a chemopreserved brain is so great 
that the brain is not functional in even a structural sense. A new 
one will have to be built largely from inference. While this is all 
well and good for people who want a similar brain (e.g. friends and 
family of the deceased), it does the original brain (i.e. original 
person) no good at all.

> His objection would then be that this is no better than a copy
> (or maybe just is a copy), hence not the original--who therefore 
> has perished, and can never be recovered.

That is correct. A brain reconstructed from inference---even if 
using the same atoms as the 'original' brain---is in fact a new 
brain (person), and is not useful to the survival of the original 
brain (person).

I will snip your summary of my view since it accurately reflects my 
views (albeit, using slightly older terminology).

> This, as I see it, begs some important questions, such as just 
> when do we say that the QE is dormant versus when is it 
> nonexistent and unrestorable. I can see, for example, ground for
> opinion that even a chemopreserved brain still has the original 
> QE, it is just "more dormant" than in the cryopreserved case. 

I would say, this is not a matter of opinion, but of fact: either a 
chemopreserved brain has the property that it can change in certain 
ways correlated with subjective experience, or it does not. A 
sufficiently advanced science of experience will be able to settle 
the issue.

I myself cannot imagine that a QE could survive such trauma as 
membrane dissolution, synapse destruction, etc., which are all 
common place in chemopreserved brains (which, microscopically, do 
not even look like brains anymore, after a short period of time).

> Instead, I now want to focus more generally on the issue of why 
it 
> is that the original QE must stay in existence, which is the 
first 
> of Richard's three points I refer to above. I contend that really 

> this is not important.

Your argument proceeds as follows:

1. Reality may be splitting into multiple copies.

2. If (1) is true, the original QE does not survive from one 
instant to the next.

3. If (2) is true, any physically possible definition of 'survival' 
does not require 'sameness of identity' (as I have previously 
defined it).

4. If (3) is true, then any objection to chemopreservation on 
ground that it violates sameness of identity is invalid.

Note that your entire argument is predicated on (1). I do not grant 
(1), nor do many of the posters and readers of CryoNet, so if you 
want us to accept your chain of reasoning, you will first have to 
demonstrate the truth of (1). Good luck.

Even the truth of the multiverse hypothesis does not imply (1). Let 
me explain.

In your conception of the multiverse, the universe splits into 
copies for every possible quantum mechanical outcome. This is a 
mechanistic way of thinking about things that comes perfectly 
natural to engineers. But to imagine the universe has some 
mechanism for producing a copy of another universe (possibly with 
error correction and associated timelags) is a bit naive. Likely, 
the correct paradigm for this is not copying but something 
different entirely, like the splitting of a wave travelling through 
two slits. 

In particular, this raises the possibility of sameness of identity. 
You may have just come into 'existence' as a result of a new branch 
point, but you will have sameness of identity for as long as you 
live.

Therefore, even those who believe in the multiverse need further 
arguments to accept your particular 'mechanistic' interpretation of 
it. Only then will they be persuaded by the chain of reasoning that 
ultimately ends in (4).

> Lose the QE-soul, as might suddenly happen (if the splitting 
> did occur, or by some other means entirely) and you don't 
> feel a thing, or at least, nothing that depends specifically 
> on the loss itself.

The defect in your argument is evinced by your use of the word 
'you'. You are imbuing the new brain with a property it does not 
possess---the identity of the original. That is to say, you are 
associating the word 'you' with the old brain, and then re-
associating it with the new brain, thereby entangling a property of 
the old brain (identity) with the new brain. Otherwise known as, 
Fallacy of Equivocation.

If we correct for this defect, your sentence will read as follows:

"Lose the QE-soul [in the old brain], as might suddenly happen ... 
and the new brain doesn't feel a thing..."

Doesn't sound as appetizing, does it? In fact I am quite certain if 
I were to go through your book and correct for every instance of 
equivocation and redefinition, your promised afterlife for everyone 
would look a lot less appealing.

This is something that puzzles me about you: you can plainly see 
your view is incompatible with survival of identity, but you speak 
as if it isn't (by redefinition and equivocation, depending on the 
circumstance). Moreover, you *live* as if you do believe in 
survival of identity.

From these observations, I conclude the following:

a) You really do believe in survival of identity;

b) You want to believe in an afterlife for everyone;

c) To believe in an afterlife for everyone, you must abandon (at 
least, publicly) survival of identity.

d) To make this 'afterlife' appealing to the general public, you 
have to use the same terms that people like me use (who do believe 
in survival of identity).

The result is that you have amassed a following of individuals who 
are themselves not smart enough to see (c), and who are mislead 
because of (d) into thinking that your promised afterlife is of 
significance to them. This gives them warm fuzzies inside, but 
these feelings of happiness are misplaced.

[Continued in part 2.]

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