X-Message-Number: 9230
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #9214 - #9221
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 1998 23:52:11 -8000 (PST)

Hi everyone!

Well, I have a lot to comment on, this time.

To Charles Platt: I'm currently in the middle of the INSTITUTE OF NEURAL
CRYOBIOLOGY, so I can say a bit more about what is happening. As I understand 
it, both of the Hardys resigned from FLLT, mainly because of questions
raised by several people about them.

I'll have to say myself that the Allen Hardy who has been making comments about
God's corporations and God's law makes me happy that they haven't got any
more connection with Prometheus than as supporters. I will even go so far
as to say (I am an atheist) that governments are involved in too many things
and it would be nice if we could simply set up a corporation without going
through various government agencies. In that sense I even agree with Allen 
Hardy. But I hardly want to mix up political or social activity with
Prometheus! That would make the whole thing fail. As someone who has actually
set up a nonprofit corporation, the current laws do make an exception for
churches, but unless you hold regular services you're not considered a 
church. And I don't want to mix up social or political advocacy with 
Prometheus --- it's hard enough already, and adding on all that extra
baggage would make it bound to fail. 

If you want you may wish to talk a bit with Peter Gouras, who is now one
of the Directors of the Institute.

As for identity, there is another way to look at it, long term. Yes, I do
want to be revived with my identity intact, and that means that many of
my memories will survive (if I get what I want). But there is much more:
we can remember when we were children, and lacked a lot of the experience
and knowledge that we have now. Say we think of someone as they were at
age 8, and later at age 80. One is a continuation of the other, but more
than just a continuation: the personality of the 80-year old had already
been formed in the 8 year-old, but the 80-year old has far more to draw on,
in knowledge, feeling, and experience. And so when I am 800, if I ever make 
that age, I will have a far richer experience and memory to draw on than 
I could ever have done at 80. Part of that experience, of course, consists
of experienceS, but another part is behavior and activities. And at 8000
I would be richer still ... We will try out all kinds of acts which we
would not do now. And even our personalities are shaped by our experience:
we think of ourselves now as fixed in ways which after hundreds of years we
may well discover we were not fixed at all.

But whatever we choose to do with ourselves will come out of our own 
individual pasts, even a change in "personality". In that sense we would
become like trees: no one claims that the mature tree isn't the same as
the seedling, or (as trees already live for thousands of years) that one
living 1000 years is not the same as that seedling. One grew from the other;
in our case the continuity may come not directly but by passage of memory
and genetics, but there will still be a continuity. 

			Best wishes and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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