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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3033