X-Message-Number: 4650 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #4642 - #4645 Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 13:24:22 -0700 (PDT) Hi everyone! Re: Bob Ettinger's posting about probability Sorry, Bob, but I think you are quite quite wrong. Not about cryptanalysiss, nor about the "great sweep of history" (though I will say that history contains not only successes but ruined, blasted hopes and countless failures). In order to apply any sort of probability analysis, we must first know what the possible outcomes ARE. If we know we are flipping a 12-sided die, then we can begin to think about probability. If we have no idea whether the die has 2 sides, 20 sides, or 200, our probability calculations based on an ASSUMPTION that it has (say) 12 sides will generally be way off when we actuallyobserve the die. The empirical test comes not when we apply our ideas about probability to estimate the chance of one outcome or another, but when we figure out that there are 12 sides in the first place. Not only that, but even your example is faulty. It is tests of that nature that can tell us, in a gambling house, that the odds are rigged and the die is weighted. If you mean by your example that someone tests a die previously found to be true, and finds that it isn't, and then tests many others and finds the same thing, then you are right that many people may ignore his results. They ARE on the boundary of those things to which we pay attention. Yet think: suppose that others can duplicate his experiments, and get the same results. If duplications were to happen frequently, it would be foolish for us not to conclude that something strange may be happening to cause this result. What changes in the experiment cause this deviation NOT to happen? Imagine that we lived in a society which did not understand electricity or magnetism, and we made part of our dies out of iron. The odd fact that they acted strange in this experiment but not in others might tell us something ultimately very important. (Again, I'm well aware that even most scientists don't normally study phenomena for which they have no idea of an explanation at all). And so back to cryonics: do we understand brains, and the damage caused by different varieties of cryonic suspension, well enough to just do probability calculations on them? I would say that we do NOT. And both sides would need study: how our brains work (which will tell us just what information and features of our brain we will need to recover) and just what damage occurs. As of this instant in 1995, even though neuroscientists have begun to get an idea of how memory is stored, that idea remains incomplete and uncertain. Not only that, but cryonicists have only just begun to explore the damage which suspension (and remember that not everyone gets a "perfect" suspension, too) causes. This is true despite the fact that a number of cryonicists have been jumping up and down for years asking for studies of the effect of suspension ON BRAINS. (And I personally am profoundly glad that you are doing the work you are doing with Pichugin). If we don't KNOW how our memories are stored, and don't know just what the damage is, then when we start talking about probability we're exactly in the position of someone who wants to use probability to predict the fall of dice without knowing how many sides each die has. Think carefully about what you're saying here. Without any kind of empirical handle on the events discussed, we can argue that we will someday accomplish virtually ANYTHING AT ALL. Not only that, but we will do this relatively soon. An argument that can prove anything at all is a very weak argument, not a strong one. I took up cryonics, years ago, because it seemed to me that it was the best option out of a bunch of bad ones. And yes, because your book, and other thinking, convinced me that it had a serious chance of working (but note that you didn't just give the argument you've outlined in your message, but other facts and figures too). And I definitely believe that with effort we can MAKE it work. Yet that is not the same as believing that it will ALREADY work, at all. I even believe that it is possible to progress on virtually any question. But I very much do not believe that progress is inevitable or need not be worked for. What would the dinosaurs have said to that, just after the asteroid hit? And one major path to progress in cryonics is not just to make theoretical arguments about its success, but to actually demonstrate by experiment that it works. Such experiments aren't so far away: if we really believe, as we claim, that preservation of information is the important issue, then we can come close to demonstrating preservation of information very soon, even though actually reviving someone and making them young again will still remain a long time off. As I said at the end of my second message about Merkle's posting, one major empirical event has begun to set my mind to rest about whether or not the information (which is our memories) really survives. Biopreservation definitely needs to follow up on that experiment --- among other things, to verify that similarly good preservation continues at LN2 temps, or else to show a way to vitrify brains. And of course, to explore the reasons why glycerol at such concentrations is toxic. The problem isn't solved, but now it has a big dent. And your own work shows a similar effort to progress. All that is great! But those facts don't make fallacious arguments any less fallacious, and I do not believe that basing our arguments for cryonics on fallacies will help us at all. Best and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4650