X-Message-Number: 5122
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #5108 - #5115
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 1995 13:46:40 -0800 (PST)

Greetings again!

Some comments:

1. (Maybe most important, though hardly the deepest). If Greg Fahy could 
   actually vitrify kidneys as Mike says, and the chief problem was that of
   warming them up again, then we are really really close to being able to do
   the same with brains. And of course, as cryonicists, we don't insist that

   we can be brought back immediately after our freezing (or vitrification) ....
   
   A point which should definitely be mulled over if you are the least bit
   interested in contributing to cryonics research.

2. I am glad to know that Dr. Stodolsky has found someone willing to argue that
   none of us is conscious. Or does he wish to claim that the concept is 
   "meaningless" instead? 

   I have sometimes wondered if there is a third solution to the problem,
   which no one mentions: not ALL people are conscious, but only a FEW. That
   might actually explain a good deal. It does leave us with the question of
   whether or not Dr. Stodolsky is conscious. Of course, those who deny that
   it exists, or deny that the concept has meaning, can be looked at with new
   eyes if this proposal is true.

   Unfortunately, those who are conscious have no good tests (yet) to tell
   the difference. Perhaps with all the work on the human genome?...

4. Yes, if their economy had not collapsed, the Soviet Union might well have
   been ahead of us. But then after all, if the Chinese had advanced faster
   than they did through all those thousands of years of Chinese history,
   perhaps they would have been ahead of us. And if civilization (allow me
   to speak loosely) had come to the Congo before it came to Europe, perhaps
   they would be ahead of us. And were it not for the fact that Mars quickly
   became uninhabitable, perhaps the Martians would have been ahead of us ...

   A country which cannot even support its own citizens will not go anywhere
   at all, even if lots of those citizens win Nobel prizes right and left.
   The smart ones will leave ASAP. The less smart ones will remain. It is
   foolish to suppose that either science or art can exist independently of
   the economy. If the economy of a country cannot run well, its scientists
   and artists will go elsewhere, to countries which can support them better.
   Or, of course, they will be put into camps where (de facto) they cease to
   practise either science or art.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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