X-Message-Number: 3761 Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 22:00:58 -0800 From: John K Clark <> Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Uploading -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- "Bruce Zimov" <> Wrote: >Getting your understanding of physics from popular books >borders on the fallacy of appeal to authority. Being accused of making an appeal to authority is a very serious charge in my book ,so I hope I'll be forgiven for responding at length, some may want to skip this section as it has little to do with Cryonics. You may indeed know more physics that Heinz Pagels ,or anybody else , but my problem is I have no way of knowing that when you don't say one word refuting the facts. If you've found that The Principle of The Identity Of Indiscernibles is not true or Exchange Forces are not important don't keep it a secret ,tell the world! Then rent a tuxedo for the ceremonies and buy a ticket to Stockholm. I post to Cryonet to learn, if I've made an factual or logical error point it out ,the education would be worth the brief embarrassment and I'd thank you for it. Taking a reputation into account is about induction, an appeal to authority is about faith, there is a difference and its much more than a rhetorical distinction. Faith makes you believe in something even if there is absolutely no evidence. For reasons I have never understood most people think this is a wonderful virtue; if you actually have overwhelming evidence AGAINST something yet still believe ,it's even more wonderful. Induction is not like that, people can live without faith, I do, so do most (all?) on this list , but nobody could live without induction. The inductive principle simply stated is " The more often things are found together, the more probable it becomes that the same things will be found together in the future ". I can't prove this, it seems to work very well but that proves nothing because we can't use induction to prove induction ;so that leaves deductive reasoning but I wouldn't know how even to begin to prove it with deduction and I don't know anybody who can . We just have to accept it as an axiom of existence. I say "have to" because it's even more basic than logic and it would be impossible to function without it. It's not a question of having faith and deciding to believe in induction, we have no choice, that's the way our brains work, it's hard wired. Of the 100 million species of life on this planet only a few hundred vertebrates and maybe a few of the higher mollusks (squids) are capable of any deductive reasoning at all ,but all animals, even a few micro organisms ,are capable of some simple induction. Will the laws of physics remain the same tomorrow as today and so allow the sun to rise? Very probably, because they have remained the same for as far back as we can go ( ignoring the first nanosecond of the Big Bang), but inductive reasoning does not engender certainty just high probability. A chicken expects benevolence from the farmer because he has always acted that way but one day he will chop his head off. Induction is about probability and using a process to gain information. Faith is about certainty and beliefs regardless of the evidence pro or con.. Induction tell us that when somebody has been reliable in the past they probably will be in the future too, that's why I usually believe what I read in Nature or Science even when I have not personally done the experiment. That's also why I never believe what I read in The National Inquirer or The Weekly World News. OK, I feel much better now, back to Cryonics. >If you understood Bell's theorem you'd know that the 2 items >influencing each other at such a distance are "strongly correlated". Agreed . Some have suggested that all particles became strongly correlated during the big bang before the inflation phase started when everything was less than a Planck distance away from each other, this has not been confirmed experimentally so I don't I don't know if it's true or not and again, I think this has little or nothing to do with the question at hand. >Even though the brains and senses could be separated by >telepresence and distributed, this is TOTALLY irrelevant Strange, I would have thought it very relevant. You argument is that two identical brains somehow produce different subjectivity because the brains are in different positions but a brain can't detect it's position. A brain without senses can't detect anything. Senses can certainly change subjectivity so the position of the sense input is of paramount importance but the position of the brain is TOTALLY irrelevant. >Brain 1 located at A does subjectivity A. Brain 2 located at B >does subjectivity B. Terminating Brain 1 will cause the end >of subjectivity A. If two phonographs are synchronized and playing the same symphony and you destroy one machine the music does not stop. >subjectivity B is not numerically identical to subjectivity A Well, that's the question isn't it, I maintain they are numerically ( feel free to place a similar adverb here) IDENTICAL , remember were talking about subjectivity here, not about brains or bodies or some other object. It's really not that difficult, if two brains are doing the same thing then the thing their doing (mind) is the same. If a small car and a large truck are traveling at exactly 60 mph then their speed is identical, numerically and every other way. The objects are quite different but what they are doing , moving at 60 mph, is exactly the same. If the truck comes to a stop and then accelerates back up to the original speed, it is moving at the same 60 mph not a different 60 mph. >Brain 1 is not just the material at A, but the organization of >material at A. The material can change, but the organization is >stable enough to continue to produce subjectivity A. >When that organization is lost, then subjectivity A is lost. We >freeze heads to stop the degradation of that organization, the >actual material involved is secondary, and will be repaired and >swapped out somewhat >in any nano-reanimation scheme. Surprisingly I find myself agreeing with every word. Yes, a brain can produce subjectivity but a brain is not subjectivity, a car can produce speed but a car is not speed. I'm glad you used the word "organization", preserving the organization of the brain means preserving the structural information in it so you can arrange the parts into a functional whole. It might not be necessary for the parts to be as small as molecules, as small as neurons or a bit smaller might be good enough, but you could if needed. Once the information is recorded the original brain is no longer needed . I agree with you that the actual material involved is of secondary importance, at best . John K Clark -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.i iQCzAgUBLyiHDX03wfSpid95AQF/RgTvW1Z1GyVZnfDmF8I/Ss5Dz9AIAg4S3zUL zAnaGqGeN/3TD1ViLathysP3uWdQOmJraIwRMlxjBZE7qpS/oTrLdbqBzRBeWsyu PDk0bquYoLA8KqVkg46waaca+q0eqqLrTZPQWlRreITocXCJ3itCyUJLzxC4V9kq JgHTV3E2hRT6zCxrvwwbWYfHy7H42FyaaVHgRgNV9pIqclIgvNk= =+ikk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3761