X-Message-Number: 11453
From: 
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 09:44:32 EST
Subject: information conservation

Jeff Davis (#11451) writes

>memory and personality may be broadly distributed
>across the cortex and cerebellum (and elswhere?), that such distributed
>expression is arguably inherently robust,

and more along these lines.

While we cannot justify complacency on the basis of speculation (or on any
other basis), I agree that there are reasons for optimism that may be too
often overlooked. In fact, although I can't prove it (maybe I could if I were
smarter or/and had more time available), I tend strongly to think that
information is conserved in the universe, and approximately conserved in any
reasonably large and nearly closed system. 

The contrary thesis, that information is not conserved, and the related
contrary thesis, that there is no unique past or history, are based on
premises that seem flawed. One portion of the contrary thesis is that a given
present state of a system is compatible with more than one past state. But I
think this is only true when we limit our attention to a small part of the
system, or to a small system. On a global scale, there are so many "anchors"
of historical fact, so many interrelated developments of events, that the
postdictions, or possible inferences about the past, reduce to one. 

I don't claim that the practical importance of such ideas is great, but it
isn't zero either. Morale is significant, and anything that reasonably  tends
to support morale has some significance too.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org 

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