X-Message-Number: 10506
From: 
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 12:31:14 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #10497 Death and Certainty

In Message #10497 Thomas Donaldson in part wrote: 
>
>In response to George Smith and Kellie Smith: I will state unequivocally
>that if the only thing we have of you is your skeleton, you are DEAD.

<snip>


With all due respect (and I DO respect you) even this is a 1998 
current-technology opinion which 
extends only to personality.


IF DNA is recoverable, it is not beyond even the current technology's 
projections to imagine 

that we could clone your body.  You are making the still-popular assumption that
personality and 

mind are nothing more than an epiphenomenon of a physical brain.  There remain 
paradoxical 

evidences which challenge this perspective, of which I am certain you are 
already aware.  (For 

readers not so aware, the popular book "Goodbye Descartes" is an introduction to
only a few of 
these issues.  There are others as well).  


My point here is that even from this "Dark Ages" pre-scientific era, we simply 
DON'T KNOW.

It may be that a future technology WILL be able to restore your memories, your 
personality, with 

the clone of your body. We already can already extrapolate as that being a 
not-unreasonable 
possiblity.

Thomas Donaldson also wrote:
>
>Yes, these are extreme cases, but I doubt very much that any future
>technology will be able to bring you back if the only remains of you
>it has to work on is your skeleton. The fundamental point of cryonics
>is not philosophy alone: if you want to do philosophy you can postulate
>all kinds of things which would allow us to revive your skeleton and 
>have it be YOU. 


I am not discussing philosophy (although find me something not subsumed by 
philosophy and I will 

fall over in shock!).  I am speaking of the importance of not making the SAME 
error the 

opponents of cryonics share.  We should NOT ASSUME that the future CANNOT solve 
problems which 

we CURRENTLY believe to be unsolvable.  (If you get this completely, you don't 
need to read any 
further).


I would submit that we have no more right to declare someone "dead" based on ANY
CRITERIA, than 

the modern neanderthals who want to give everyone "a decent Christian burial" 
because they fit 
current legal/medical definitions of "death".


If we are discussing probability (and I believe we are) then all probabilities 
must add up to 1, 

a finite measurable potential.  Then we can say, "The chances here are one out 
of three, or 

one out of a billion", etc.).  In an UNKNOWN future period of time, we cannot 
assess probability 

to rule out anything.  We cannot know what a future technology may be able to 
do, nor when they 

might be able to do it.  WE DON'T KNOW.  We should not be willing to ever "pull 
the plug" on 
anyone pretending that we do know.  


As has been pointed out before, humankind has been notoriously poor at 
predicting the trend and 

breakthroughs of future technology.  The tendency is usually to assume that the 
future will be 

like the present, only bigger and better.  That tendency is almost always wrong.
Again, WE 
JUST DON'T KNOW.


I call the supposition that we DO know, that we are certain of our projections 
on the future, 

"hubris".  Scientific arrogance is the norm for EVERY era since at least the 
Renaissance.  All 

of the current experts are always so certain that their paradigm is absolutely 
correct.  Then a 

generation or two later, these omniscient experts are dead and so are their 
views.  But, no 

problem.  A new crop of also equally hubristic experts rise to take their place.


The willingness to admit that we can MAKE MISTAKES, that we DON'T KNOW WITH 
CERTAINTY the 

details of the future before it arrives, is intellectual honesty.  Based on that
honesty I 

support what I view as "staged cryonics".  The first stage is save what you can 
of a person the 

best way you can.  The second stage is to NEVER ASSUME that the future CANNOT 
restore that 
person to life.


As long as those two stages are not violated, we can attempt research to get to 
that future.  

However, again, we should NOT ASSUME that ANY of our current research will 
actually contribute 

anything to a final solution.  Again, WE DON'T KNOW.  It may turn out that ALL 
of our current 

technological research will prove to be a waste and irrelevant.  That doesn't 
mean we shouldn't 

try.  I does mean that we should not substitute staged cryonics for research, 
and hubris for 
intellectual honesty.


Look, it MAY be that preserving the human body is irrelevant entirely and that 
some future 

technology which we cannot even guess at will be able to restore you based on, 
say, your 

fingerprint!  I DON'T KNOW.  However, as I can at least imagine that a body once
alive could 

live again, I SUSPECT that preserving that body might achieve the end result 
more easily.  

HOWEVER, to abandon the body in favor of hubristically pursuing "modern" 
biological research 
seems to be relying on an even greater leap of faith... or hubris.

-George Smith
("It is always too soon to despair." -Robert Ettinger)

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