X-Message-Number: 3033
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: CRYONICS: Re: cryonics definition and memory capacity
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 19:06:45 -0700 (PDT)


To Paul Wakfer and Ralph Merkle:

Paul is quite right that proof of the survival of essential substrates of 
memory doesn't presently exist. This remains true even if lots of individual
parts of our neurons survive. One major problem with such proof, of course,
comes from the fact that even though we have plenty of well founded theories,
we don't actually understand long term memory in all its details as yet.
It's difficult to prove survival of something you know exists if you have
no firm idea of just how and where it is. 

Of course, a lot of work is going and has gone into that question and we
MIGHT just get that proof as a simple result of that work. Given the ripping
pace of research specifically into cryonics, :-) that may turn out to be the
means by which we provide that proof (though I suspect some extra work would
still be needed ... though not as much as reviving a whole person, or even
a brain).

Finally, about memory capacity of our brain: I recently reviewed an interesting
book for CRYONICS, titled THE INVENTION OF MEMORY (by Israel Rosenfield) which
argues that that question is meaningless: we do not store memories in the sense
that a computer does. (Do I believe it? No, I'd simply say that we don't yet
know ... but it IS a point to remember).

			Long long life,

			   Thomas Donaldson

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