X-Message-Number: 32899 From: Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2010 11:48:51 -0400 (EDT) Subject: various Edgar Swank wrote in part: >Information is exactly what the contents of a brain is. This is just hand-waving, and assuming the consequent. Daniel Crevier said we will eventually have experimental evidence about some of these questions. Of course I agree, and have offered conjectures that are in principle testable. Mike Perry talks about a distinction between a description and an ongoing process. I think this is a false distinction. One can describe a painting, and one can also describe a movie. Bob In a message dated 10/2/2010 5:00:07 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, writes: CryoNet - Sat 2 Oct 2010 #32891: Mad Uploading [robomoon] #32892: RE: Reasons Why Uploading Is Unlikely, Ever [Jonano] #32893: Reply to Brook [Ettinger] #32894: One of the greatest TED talks ever, includes cryonics. Your'e... [Rudi Hoffman] #32895: experimental validation of uploading [Daniel Crevier] #32896: Re: Reasons Why Uploading Is Unlikely, Ever [Mike Perry] #32897: Cryopreservation of periodontal ligament cells with magnetic ... [oberon] #32898: Reply to Ettinger Reasons Why Uploading Is Unlikely, Ever Rea... [Edgar Swank - ACS President] Rate This Digest: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32891%2D32898 Administrivia To subscribe to CryoNet, send email to: with the subject line (not message _body_): subscribe To unsubscribe, use the subject line: unsubscribe To post a message to CryoNet, send your message to: from the same address to which you are aubscribed. Send questions, comments, or feedback to with "CryoNet" or "cryonics" somewhere in the Subject line. Message #32891 Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 12:41:50 +0200 (CEST) From: References: <> Subject: Mad Uploading In case there's no example from a movie or TV series popping out like Jack-in-the-Box with an uploading plot about a feedback against copies, how about a comic? Espc. a comic for females! Since C. Loveday didn't respond to my comic idea on Cryonics Europe, I wonder if a copy of her couldn't be doing it. Perhaps they are afraid there will be a copy of Proofessor RoboMoon from the Artifishial Unteligenz Labratory, a tender romance with AU devoted to AI, umph! Lovely she will be on BBC WM radio today. >From the final part of Message #32887 by John de Rivaz: > One way one might look at it is via the idea of feedback. If you tell > someone how negative feedback improves the quality of the information coming > out of an amplifier [send the signal through the amplifier and then subtract > the difference between the input and the output divided by the gain, ie the > error and feed that back to subtract from the input] that may well conclude > that you are mad. It seems like going back through time to correct a mistake > in life. Nevertheless it works if you get it right. If you conclude that > people are ultimately information -- which is clearly what uploading and > duplication does, then feedback considerations apply. The duplicates will > conspire together against the duplicator to stop more being made. A time > must come when the duplicator would be overwhelmed, leaving a finite number > of duplicates. Come to think of it, I think this is the plot of a film or TV > series, but can't recall the title. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32891 Message #32892 Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 13:19:17 +0200 Subject: RE: Reasons Why Uploading Is Unlikely, Ever From: Jonano <> Uploading technologies will be very easy in the future, people will be able to change their identity, memory or personality as easy as changing a radio channel. And I think it's a good thing for cryonics patients, if we know alot about identities, and how to manage them, we will do less errors in correcting & repairing them, but before we need to be able to create them easily. Maybe in about 1000 years, not 200 years from now. We will also be able to select and experience alot of pre configured emotions that we will be inserted in our brain and interact with the personality that we choose. We will have a better liberty that way. The experience industry will be large and flourishing. We will probably lost ourselves in it. We will control alot more than today all identities, personalities changing and memory management. I'm not expert but I love to speculate. --Jon Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32892 Message #32893 From: Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 10:45:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Reply to Brook In #32889 Brook Norton suggests a "cache" giving rise to an illusion of time span. However, I claim that there is (probably) a literal, physical span of time (and also of space) for any condition or event, the reason being that (probably) nothing can exist at a moment of time (in a zero interval) or at a point in space (in a zero volume). For whatever it is worth, current quantum physics includes a spread of being. It is certainly true, as Brook says, that we have been shaped by evolution and accident to tend to treasure unfounded beliefs. Brook says that logically it shouldn't matter to you whether you live or die, but I don't think his argument holds. R.E. In a message dated 10/1/2010 5:00:09 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, writes: CryoNet - Fri 1 Oct 2010 #32889: "Survival" possibilities [Brook Norton] #32890: Reasons Why Uploading Is Unlikely, Ever [Ettinger] Rate This Digest: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32889%2D32890 Administrivia To subscribe to CryoNet, send email to: with the subject line (not message _body_): subscribe To unsubscribe, use the subject line: unsubscribe To post a message to CryoNet, send your message to: from the same address to which you are aubscribed. Send questions, comments, or feedback to with "CryoNet" or "cryonics" somewhere in the Subject line. Message #32889 From: Brook Norton <> Subject: "Survival" possibilities Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:00:43 -0700 Content-type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Norton: We can "continue" (in large part, never 100% unchanged) but not "survive". And we can "continue" as a corpse, as an upload, as a duplicate, whatever - all equal options as continuers - but there are no survivors. And so concern over which is the true way to survive is misguided concern. Ettinger: Equal options? Surely not. In my view, a survivor is a continuer. Continuers (in particular your qualia) overlap each other in space and time, which allows partial identification of later and earlier versions, and we must settle for that. The fact that duplicates or whatever would seem "as good as" to outside observers is irrelevant. Norton (this post): I'm calling a survivor one who advances through time, bringing along some special identity-critical quality that makes the later person the "same person" as the earlier person. I'm calling a continuer one who advances through time, changing in accordance with the laws of nature, such that the later person is changed (at least in small part) from the earlier person and has no claim to be the "same person" because there is no identity-critical quality that goes along with the person through time. If there is some identity-critical quality, name it. Ettinger posits that that quality is the qualia because the qualia of the earlier and later (a fraction of a second later) person overlap in time. The same qualia existing at different times. Ah ha, the special-quality that the person takes with him through time. It is tempting to see the qualia as spanning time because the qualia integrates our past states in the last fraction of a second with our current state at time = now, resulting in an awareness of who we are and what we are doing at present. But there is no need to invoke new time-spanning physics to explain how the qualia integrates internal and external sensory inputs over time. I image the brain has a "cache" where it stores the sensory inputs from last few moments, then either forgetting the data or moving them to the next brain section for integration into longer term memory. The qualia integrates the current sensory inputs with the near-past "cache" and results in awareness. Caching takes the place of time-spanning. So we are again left with no special identity-critical quality that moves with the person through time. Ettinger objects that continuing as a corpse is certainly not equal (in preference) to continuing as a healthy person. Well, if one comes to accept the above argument that a future person is not "the same person" as an earlier person, then, logically, one is left with the conclusion that it does not matter what becomes of future continuers. I can't see any grand design or grand purpose to the universe, and so the universe does not care what happens to me. Gravity will just as happily redirect my motion in a beneficial or a harmful way. I think that approach extends to the personal level as well - there is no better or worse future for a continuer. All that REALLY matters is how I feel NOW. Sorry if that's a disappointing view of the meaning of life, but I didn't design the whole thing. What? I don't care if I live or die in the next minute?? This is where I'll invoke the evolutionary-mirage. As described in a prior post, evolution makes us feel good when we envision a healthy future, and feel bad when we envision a future that threatens our continuation. My fear in the face of imminent death is an evolutionarily ingrained emotional reaction without logical consistency. Like being frightened of flying when you are in a good airplane. Were I able to fully accept, at a visceral level, that my continuer is not the same person, then I would not care if I died or lived in the next minute. Brook Norton Content-type: text/html; CHARSET=US-ASCII [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32899