X-Message-Number: 8848
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #8828 - #8839
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 00:35:29 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

To Paul Wakfer: I've already contributed my $1000, and intend to keep it up
(and if not promise to tell you why).

And yes, complete suspended animation would provide a big advance in cryonic
suspensions (given that everything needed is set up in advance). I too want
that to happen, as fast as possible. 

HOWEVER we have no more reason to believe that we will survive sleep (ie. 
we'll have the same sense of identity) than we have to believe that after
lots of highly advanced repair we will survive cryonic suspension. Sure, we
can do lots more neuroscience to explain a sense of identity FROM THE OUTSIDE,
but what it feels like to be the same person as you were yesterday, and 
FEELING THAT, is quite different. I can only look at you from the outside,
and the same is true about you. The most we'll ever be able to do is to 
show that our restored patient has the same continuity as someone who 
awakens after sleep... as seen from the outside. 

One major problem cryonicists have with "death" comes exactly from this.
Most people do not think it is just a physical condition, they think it is
metaphysical. And if we tell them we'll be able to revive them "after they
have died", then they may even agree --- but add that the person revived
is not and cannot be THEM. Certainly there are cases in which destruction
has been so very great that whatever we revive may only resemble them in 
so a fuzzy way that even we, from the outside, would say that at best we
have an approximation; but the possibility of much more perfect revival
and repair remains, too.

In practise, such problems are ignored once we know how to do the repair.
Right now doctors are learning how to revive someone after 15 minutes
rather than 5; no one claims that people revived fail to be the same person.
Yet when we raise the possibility of a FUTURE time in which such abilities
extend up to several hours, and can involve considerable damage due to 
freezing, then it's easy for people to fail to make the leap. If you are
"dead", your "soul" is gone. Metaphysics cannot be answered by science, it
can only become outmoded.

As an instance, I remember vividly a big accident over 15 years ago. It was
winter, in Washington DC, and a passenger aircraft failed to take off, 
crashed into the icy water, with only a few survivors. Yet many passengers
were floating amid that ice. How many might have been rescued if more of their
rescuers understood the effects of cold, we'll never know. You see, they
were all "dead" already. Why bother to revive them? 

I personally want to see improved cryonics technology (which would go so
far as suspended animation, if we can) not because I doubt the eventual
possibility of revival, given that I have been rescued from total destruction
of my brain, but because of the dangers of helpless waiting that cryonics
involves. I'm not referring to any world catastrophes at all, simply to the
plain fact that accidents and political events can greatly affect my 
personal preservation during my suspension. If I must be preserved for 
10,000 years there's a lot of dangers I will unknowingly face. Some people
may actually remain in suspension that long, but most would not, by simple
random attrition. Whatever shortens that period is worthwhile.

And I'll add that I take the same viewpoint towards the Prometheus Project
itself. It very well MAY "fail" in the sense that we don't learn how to 
preserve brains perfectly in 10 years; but we will also do a great deal
to improve our suspensions. A way of preserving brains which left fewer
areas as apparent tangles on electron microscopy --- that is an improvement.
We won't be done until we leave NO such areas, but the less brain damage
we cause now the easier it will someday be to work out how to fix that 
which remains. And please understand: I want Prometheus to succeed. But
I also think that Prometheus CANNOT fail... though I'll add that I also 
think, with the people we've got, tht it has excellent chances of success
in finding out how to preserve brains. 

To Saul Kent: First of all, I am very grateful, and I hope others are,
of what you have done to push along research both in life extension and
in cryonics. Of course I know you do it for yourself, also, but I remain
grateful.

However in your posting you seem to think I was directing what I said at
you. I don't recall mentioning your name. As for arguments about the best
way in which we can make cryonics grow, no one says you have to work
that out TOO. In the long term, yes, research will be a very good way,
particularly since I actually believe our research is likely to succeed,
even in the basic simple sense of learning how to cryopreserve brains
with no significant damage.

Yet fundamentally I think the best of all reasons for research is how
it benefits US. And I was directing my comments to others, who seemed to 
feel that its merits in recruitment overshadowed that fundamental benefit
to US. 

To Will Dye: Glad to see you on Cryonet. I personally don't see anything
wrong with simple "immortality". Isn't that what we really want? So why
not say so and leave others to twist themselves into knots about it as 
much as they wish. Anyone who refuses to join because of the words we
use has a much deeper problem (incidentally, you're far from alone in
proposing we use a new word. I remember lots of such proposals. Somehow
none of them ever stuck).

and to all,

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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