X-Message-Number: 11011 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: Unreachable Cryonets & importance of Identity Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1999 23:38:41 +1100 (EST) Hi everyone! Yes, I did have trouble getting the remainder of last nights message. Whether this was individual to me I don't know, but I suspected strongly otherwise. I am using a Unix shell account, not a PPP account. It brings me ascii text perfectly well, but starts to either break down or become unreadable if I am sent anything else. Perhaps the problem lay with the internet system I was accessing. For what it's worth, it's a Linux system. And if Kevin or others thought I was being unusually cranky, I apologise. I'll add that a local friend (cryonicist) who was NOT using the same net access sent me a copy of the entire Cryonet posting. I also got a friendly message from John Clark sending me his posting, in ascii so far as I could see. And I want to thank both people who helped. As for crankiness, I felt that it may be a more general problem than Kevin realized. And merely storing an inaccessible Cryonet does not make it any more accessible --- though that might depend on just how it's stored. As for more pertinent issues, I strongly agree with Mike Perry, though I will add that after 15 years of work on brains we understand both memory and even self-awareness much better than before. The issues and questions involved with identity are important because NOT ALL SUSPENSIONS WILL BE TOTALLY SUCCESSFUL. I see no reason to believe that they will ALL be totally successful even if we have full suspended animation: there will remain unfortunates who are reached very late (you get to define "late", and it will certainly vary with our technology), or have been severely damaged by some event, even if reached soon after that damage. Naturally no one intends to be such an unfortunate, but any serious attempt at cryonics will have to take into account the fact that not everyone will be reachable in time or while they are still in good condition. I personally think this is one of those irreducible features of the Universe --- though we can make it happen more and more rarely as we work on it. Right now it remains very important, simply because we do not presently have any technology which promises even undamaged preservation of brains. It may even remain important with full suspended animation, for one simple reason: if we do not die from aging, then we may well die from accidents. And those accidents may very easily occur in circumstances in which .... you guessed it, you are not reachable "soon enough" for suspended animation to assure your preservation. Yes, we'd live for much longer, but then just how we felt about our (semi-)ultimate end will very likely remain similar to how we feel now. We won't want it. AT ALL. Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11011