X-Message-Number: 5449
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: Clark and Turing, BC, BPI suspension
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1995 10:31:59 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

This may be my last message for a while. I will soon leave for Australia. But
still:

1. To Mr. Clark: 
   I would certainly agree that we use actions, including what someone says,
   to decide whether or not they are conscious. HOWEVER a reading of the 
   Turing test shows that it does NOT do this. It only uses one subclass of
   actions, verbal responses (or written responses, as over the net) to 
   conversation. Not only does this leave out any nonverbal action, but it
   also leaves out some verbal actions to boot: particularly those which
   would require physical actions to give a correct answer. (Suppose you are
   a human being trying to test another with a Turing test. Explain to your
   counterpart --- computer or not --- that you have placed a colored light
   on top of some flat object both of you should be able to view, and ask
   it or him or her to tell you the color of the light).

   This is the main reason why many people object to the Turing test as a
   test of either intelligence or whether or not there is a human being on
   the other end. Since the Turing test never leaves the verbal arena, and
   (as you yourself mention) words can only be defined verbally in terms of
   other words, you don't even know whether or not your counterpart, if it
   is a robot, can do something so simple as to get up and walk to a window
   without running into a wall or otherwise getting into trouble. You just
   know that it can convincingly play with words.

2. If BC officials genuinely want to protect people from fraud, then one 
   strategy in trying to get that regulation (or law) overturned is to 
   explain all the ways in which cryonics organizations have tried to 
   put together their signup papers and everything else to make fraud 
   difficult or impossible. If nothing else, that would show that protection
   from fraud isn't their REAL reason.

   Moreover, here is a case much closer to home in which the issue of 
   how to regulate events which haven't yet happened might be put. Right now
   in CA one AIDS patient has allowed his bone marrow to be replaced by 
   that of a baboon (as a different species entirely, baboons don't get
   AIDS). This process may kill him, or it may cure him. NO ONE NOW KNOWS.
   Do these Regulations in BC prohibit such medical research, even with the
   consent of the patient? If not, WHY not (we can't let them just get away
   with turning a blind eye to one class of cases while bearing down hard
   on another!). And if so, then what is it about cryonics which makes it
   unacceptable, why the above experiment remains acceptable?

3. I want to congratulate Mike and Steve on their work towards a suspension
   which certainly looks to be an improvement in its earlier stages. To an
   unknown degree, that may turn out to be important. And we should all
   recognize the technical superiority of BPI in this area.

   As all cryonicists should know, that is only the early stages. NO cryonics
   society yet has really managed to go farther than that. I do hope that
   the skills and understanding needed to do this will bear ultimately on 
   how to improve the total process of a suspension. Right now, we are all
   in the position of trying to climb some of the lower hills, while the 
   mountain before us remains almost untouched. It's time to look at this
   mountain. Depending on the technology needed to climb that mountain, what
   we do in these early stages may turn out to be quite critical --- or 
   quite meaningless. (Since we don't know, it IS better to still try).

   As for BPI, I understand that BPI has started to work on the mountain, too,
   and that is VERY important. I hope that all cryonics societies will do
   the same. And the mountain is our real problem, which none of us should
   forget.

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson


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