X-Message-Number: 11743 From: Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 14:52:48 EDT Subject: False Antitheses Regarding Eugene Leitl's response to my remarks about ischemia: First, let me start by doing what I should've done last time -- put in a good word for Mike Darwin. His contributions to cryonics are immense, wildly greater than most people who read him, certainly including myself. Trying to reduce ischemic damage is a worthy endeavor, and we should all congratulate him, and indeed cheer his efforts on. But - my post was about relevance; and while Darwin's innovations may indeed be of some help at some point when he chooses to make them public, the question is: what good does it do a cryonics member (or someone thinking of becoming a member) now? If you happen to drop dead today, and you're in a 21st Century Medicine lab next to Mike Darwin, and Mike just happens to be suited up, accompanied by a trained staff, fully equipped, and in the mood, and your legal papers and financial arrangements are in order, and the local police and medical authorities are cooperative, hey: your chances of ischemic damage are likely to be somewhat lower than the norm. Lucky boy! Most of us are not going to be that lucky. The fact is, when the average cryonics member dies, he may face minutes if not hours before being found and taken to a hospital. Once there, medical or family wrangles may waste further time, traveling teams (if you use them, and not the CI system, which I personally favor) may get tied up in traffic or airport holding patterns, an autopsy may be ordered -- in short: the cryonics member faces the likelihood of considerable ischemic damage; and indeed is probably going to face them even if Mr. Darwin's innovations prove to be all that he claims they are. That ischemia causes damage to the brain is (obviously) not disputed. The question is: is that damage absolutely irreparable? On this point Eugene Leitl - who incidentally has one of the best collections of cryonics and other links and bookmarks around at http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~ui22204/.html/hotlist.html - wrote: >>There is no question that some of damage can't be repaired -- the question is rather 'how much structural information do we need for reconstruction of a person withsufficient fidelity'. With possible exception of certain rabbits what I've seen so far is not exactly encouraging.<< The first part is, of course, a truism: if your brain is tossed at Ground Zero when the latest French nuke test hits, repairing it may prove tricky. Fortunately nuclear incineration and, say, one or two or six hours of warm ischemia are not the same thing. The question of how structural information the latter would leave us for reconstruction is easily answered: we don't know. The question of whether a radically improved future technology would salvage considerably more structural information than current technology can is also easily answered: probably, indeed almost certainly, but again we don't know how much. Should we make the assumption that enough will remain available to justify stepping into a cryostat? Of course. The alternative is certain obliteration, after all, and a gamble in which at worst you lose nothing and at best you win hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years of life - well, that's a darn good gamble. Particularly since the price of the ticket (if you're with CI, anyway) can be a bit less than the average monthly Cable bill. But saying that it's a gamble implies that's it's a wild gamble, not a reasonable one, in which the odds are on your side -- and growing. I think there's considerable reason to think that they are your side: that there's definite reason to think even severely damaged cells can be repaired. Alas, it comes from the field of nanotechnology (see below), of which Mr. Leitl remarks: >> Nanotechnology is not magick. If the information is not there, all it can do is invent a plausible fake. However, cryonics isn't supposed to be about construction of vaguely similar personalities, but reproduction of the true thing.<< Mr Leitl's second sentence - 'if the information is not there' - of course begs the question, since 'damage' and 'absolute and total obliteration' are not synonymous. I too don't think nanotech can't fix what's not there. Cryonics patients are there. The sentence following it is the sort that characteristically drags the woebegone Cryonet reader into weeks of pointless philosophical speculation about selfhood, so I am really tempted to let it go, and get on to nano. But I do not want to let go its implication: that unless we can come up with an absolutely perfect reproduction of the 'true thing' (some absolute 'selfhood' which we can't, and perhaps won't ever be able to, even define, much less offer engineering specs for), then maybe we shouldn't bother. I don't agree. We should bother. As a personality, Mr. Leitl and I may only be 'vaguely similar' to what we were as ten-year-olds; after all, we've forgotten things; we've changed our opinions; every molecule in our brain has been replaced more than once, and every atom, proton, and quark therein has shifted position for times uncounted. But if we were struck in the street by heart failure, would any sane person suggest that we should not be given CPR because we're only 'vaguely similar' to those earlier selves? Stroke victims suffer memory loss, motor impairment, loss of function - but do we simply let every last stroke victim, every victim of a blow to the head, just die because their brains are not immaculate xeroxes of what they were? Of course not. Locally I know a man who suffered a severe stroke in which massive areas of his brain were destroyed. Memory lapses, paralysis, personality change - the worst sort of damage occurred. Two years later? I'm happy (and a little astounded) to say that he's walking, talking, attending concerts, working - in fact, not only does he teach at a local university, he's even made head of the department recently. How many quadrillion nanites went about with nano-pickaxes rebuilding his cortex? None. How heavily was he vitrified beforehand? He wasn't. Yet he made an astonishing recovery -- as do many victims of extensive brain damage, and even (in drowning cases) of extended ischemia. Why should we have to rigidly assume that ischemia is in fact eternally, hopelessly irreparable, impervious to any possible scientific advance? >>Ralph Merkle and Eric Drexler are very bright men with many talents, however, I don't happen to think that their background in cryobiology and molecular neuroscience is very extensive.<< I suggest readers are plumb the depths of Mssr. Drexler's and Merkle's blithe ignorance of nanotech applications for themselves by reading Dr. Ralph Merkle's (very bright) monograph, "The Molecular Repair Of The Brain", "Cryonics, Cryptography, and Maximum Likelihood Estimation", and visiting the cryonics web site he's had up for several years. As for Dr. Eric Drexler, I do not think it is exaggerating to say that he is generally acknowledged to have not merely founded the field of molecular nanotechnology and to be the leading authority in the field, but that his (very bright) studies of biology as related to nanotech go back to the 1970's; and (having written on the application of nanotech to neurology even then) I expect he may actually have leafed through a volume of neuroscience or two in the intervening decades, as opposed to having made it all up on the wing. Tapping 'brain' into the search engine at Drexler's Foresight Institute web site will get you a sufficient number of articles to exceed the search engine's 50-file limit, so have a read; selections from Robert Freitas' upcoming three-volume work on Nanomedicine might do as a tasty aperitif. The above links (and a lot more) I believe are available via the Cryonics Institute's web site at www.cryonics.org. >>What amazes me most on CryoNet is 1) the perpetual flagellation of greasy spots where, once upon a time, there happened to lie a dead horse and 2) adamant conviction in the face of a severe dearth of data. Your mileage may vary, but I find it, what? Frustrating? Yes, but mostly boring.<< I confess I do not know what Mr Leitl is referring to when he speaks of greasy spots and varying mileage. My leaking crankcase? (OK, I'll take it to Jiffy Lube later, Gene!) But I think - maybe wrongly - that he is expressing dismay that (in the opinion of some cryonicists) ischemic damage may be repairable. He takes this to be the result of ignorance, I guess - 'adamant conviction in the face of a severe dearth of data'. Hopeful 'adamant conviction in the face of a severe dearth of data', that is, as opposed to hopeless 'adamant conviction in the face of a severe dearth of data', which is OK. Why is hopeless conviction in the face of zero data better than hopeful conviction? Well, hopelessness is more stringent, less sentimental; it sets us on a higher, harder plane than such kindly and amiable simpletons as Minsky and Drexler and the scientifically challenged in general. It's interesting to me that Mr. Leitl could write of ischemic repair, "With possible exception of certain rabbits what I've seen so far is not exactly encouraging." This could easily have been phrased as 'research done on certain rabbits has been rather encouraging!' But, curiously, it was not. Encouraging data! How gauche. Mr Leitl is demonstrating an all-too-common dance step in cryonics -- the act of slipping into a false antithesis. It is not a matter of trying to minimize ischemic damage or of hoping that any damage, however extensive, can be repaired. I confess I don't understand either such position. It seems to me one can in good conscience say: yes, we ought to try to minimize ischemic damage as much as possible; and yes, there is some evidence (Mr. Leitl's rabbits) and much reason (as the extensive analyses of Drexler and Merkle and Freitas, and some remarks by Richard Smalley and others, suggest) to believe that ischemic damage may at some point be repairable. Both these positions seem to me to be reasonable and fair-minded positions, requiring no grand leaps of faith, and not in any profound opposition to one another. What is not reasonable is to leave people with the impression that nanotechnological approaches are 'magick', that any and all ischemic damage is hopeless, or that ischemic repair is something that will never and can never take place. That, surely, cannot be what Mr Leitl believes; and it would be tragic if some browser giving his post a casual look were to decide to opt against a cryonics membership - and for his own death -- on that basis. How is cryonics served by saying to people reading about it, "No, you don't have a chance. Eat, drink, be merry: Darwin's mutt may make it, but as for you, your wife, your children, your friends -- tomorrow you die. Sorry!" If that were a rock-like certainty, then I'd say: OK, let's face it. But it isn't. When Dr. Richard Smalley, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, goes on public record saying that he believes cell repair devices will be developed as early as 2010; when, according to a British parliamentary report, eighty billion dollars will be going into nanotechnology research by the year 2000; when 'very bright' mainstream scientists examine the question and find reason for optimism - well, why not say so, while working to minimize ischemia at the same time? Mind you, I think Mr Leitl's position (not only his, alas) is admirably and not basely motivated: he knows very well that ischemic damage is terribly destructive and mind-bogglingly difficult to repair, and he suspects that if people in cryonics think it can be fixed up with a snap of the fingers a decade after Y2K, they'll court such damage cavalierly. They ought not to do that; ignoring the problem will not lead to solutions of it, and Mr Leitl's cautions are well worth airing. But I don't think it needs to go beyond that. There is one thing that will definitely make ischemic damage irreparable: not making any effort to repair it. And if we assume it's irreparable, that's what's likely to happen. I suggest we try to keep it from happening in the first place, and try our best to figure out how to fix it up as well. In these efforts, I wish Darwin well and I wish Drexler well; and I hope and believe - in the face of a severe dearth of data - that their parallel lines will meet in the not-terribly-distant future. Regarding religion: Daniel Ust pointed that a recent post with a (very mild) chide regarding Christianity aside was from Sweden, hardly a Fundamentalist enclave, and that the number of atheists in America might in fact be larger than the U.S. statistics I quoted. Right enough on the first point. (And I should add that the remark in question was rather more of a good-spirited joke than a serious put-down, and I'm sure not intended to wound). Mr. Ust was too mild on the second: beliefs are fluid, and just as many an archbishop has his moments of doubt, many an agnostic and atheist too wonders now and then if there might not be something in religion after all: people on both sides of the question change hats more often than either side likes to concede. Still, though, I think my point was worth making. By and large, the net is English-speaking and most of those logging on are Americans. And since most Americans claim to be Jews or Christians (of however concise, confused, or tepid a brand), one corollary is that Cryonet's potential readership, and indeed the cryonics movement's potential membership (given that the major cryonics organizations are US-based), have to be assumed to be pretty much Judeo-Christian. That being the case, I have to wonder -- why do we go out of our way to mock such peoples' views and step on their toes? I don't happen to be a Moslem. But if I were posting about cryonics to a mailing list in Arabic, I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to say something like, "Hey, better join up fast, cuz 'Allah' (*stifled chuckle*) certainly isn't going to get you into Paradise!" I wouldn't say that partly because Allah doesn't favor me with his confidences; but mostly because if I were trying to make a case for cryonics to a Arabic audience, getting a dig in at Allah while doing so would be counterproductive at best and suicidal at worst. In fact, if I were a Moslem - indeed a hyper-orthodox Ayatollah (or even, for the matter, a rabbi or a Jesuit or Pat Robertson himself) - I would certainly be far more inclined to put in two or three centuries of proclaiming my particular faith and serving my particular God, via cryonics, than the two or three decades currently allotted. I confess to feeling like a minority of one on this point, but not only don't I see a conflict between religion and cryonics, I see the latter as flowing quite logically and seamlessly from the former. One of the great twentieth century philosophers, Ernst Bloch (atheist, Communist, and Stalinist) continually studied and praised religion, not because he thought it was true, but because he claimed that religious ideas offered technocrats like himself utopian goals, arching humanist perspectives and blueprints: the Heavenly City, Confession, and the Resurrection foreshadowed, as it were, the welfare state, psychotherapy, and cryostasis. Like Goethe's Eternal Feminine, it 'leads us above'. True? Beats me. I don't know. I do know that this attitude enriched one atheist's thinking immensely, and is no poor model for anyone encountering another's system of thought. Nor is thought isn't the only level on which religion and cryonics have some common ground. Grievous historical blips aside, religion has generally been actively on the side of preserving and extending life. Suicide is not one of the sacraments, nor euthanasia one of the Commandments. Consider. Recently I read about a case in England where some British medical organization decided to destroy some few thousand embryos. The Catholic Church vigorously protested. Indeed a Franciscan, Pietro Faggioni, published an article in L'Osservatore Romano proposing that frozen embryos which the English clinics were about to destroy, be implanted. A number of Italian married couples even offered to have the wife accept such a pregnancy. Said Gonzalo Miranda, secretary of the Bio-Ethics Center of the University of the Sacred Heart in Rome, and professor of Theology at the Pontifical Athenaeum, Regina Apostolorum, " If we chose the alternative which is death, it would mean we are not convinced that we have before us an individual who has the right to live. This is the case of a human individual who exists but whose development has been arrested in time. Such an individual has the right to continue developing in the best way possible." Now we cryonicists are a handful of organizations whose members number in the bare hundreds. Here on the contrary we see an organization with a membership of over a billion, a communications network spanning the globe, coming out in its official newspaper and stating in effect: individuals in cryostasis should be not be considered corpses or frozen meat, but potentially living beings who deserve legal protection and indeed should have the support of the Church and its (vast, wealthy, and prominent) membership. You would imagine that Cryonet readers would be leaping into the air clicking their heels, if not queuing up for the Host. At the very least, you would think that someone would come look at this potential membership of a billion individuals and say to a few of them, "You know, it seems we may have something in common. Would you like to find out a little more about what we're trying to do?" Nope. The incident passed without mention. Why? It seems to me that there is an obvious compatibility between the position taken by this one particular Church (at the very least) and the views held by most of the people involved in cryonics. So why isn't it mentioned, much less explored? Well, because most people in cryonics aren't about to convert: they have their own views, often a hard-science agnostic perspective, and they don't want to buy into a whole other vast metaphysical system which they're unfamiliar with. No problem there: there's no reason why they should. But we forget that people outside cryonics don't want to go through any major metaphysical revolutions either. They have their own beliefs. And if they felt that cryonics were compatible with those beliefs (which I think it is) and even a step suggested by and encouraged by those beliefs (which I also think it is) then they'd be much more likely to consider joining or supporting cryonics. The problem is, we don't give them any reason to think that. On the contrary: we seem to go out of our way to antagonize. What on earth for? If we continually snipe at the views of the overwhelming majority of society, we'll remain marginal. And we'll remain that way deservedly, so long as we don't get away from the notion that Christians and Jews and other believers are necessarily our opponents and necessarily dumb. That simply isn't the case. Granted, there are dolts in every faith, and dolts of no faith, but the fact is that Christianity and Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, can be held in a sophisticated and rational manner. I suppose Frank Tipler is the most spectacular current example known to this list, but (to restrict the list to physicists alone) there are also Paul Davies, John Polkinghorne (an Anglican priest!) -- Newton himself! Why not work on the assumption that the person we address is not terribly less intelligent than we are? Even if that's not the case, surely it's only common courtesy not to be blunt about it. Now I'm not suggesting that Charles Platt scramble up onto the nearest cross (despite many a loud cry for his crucifixion on this list), nor am I suggesting that the Chamberlains be packed off to the nearest convent, like Abelard and Heloise. I am saying that common sense and common courtesy suggest that we should not go out of our way to antagonize people who could and should be our friends and allies. I seems to me a cryonicist can in complete good conscience walk up to a pro-life Christian fundamentalist and say, "I'm pro-life too: that's why I think we should try to protect people in cryostats as well as wombs". And he can also walk up to a pro-choice Reform Jew and say, "I'm pro-choice too: I think you should be able to do what you want with your body, including assigning it to a cryonics organization without legal interference." This isn't hypocrisy: it's an honest search for commonality and consensus, for a genuine harmony between the views of people who support cryonics and people who make up the majority of our society. Such a harmony is actually there. Why not point it out? The case for cryonics is generally made from a hard-science perspective, not a moral or religious one. 'It's technically feasible," we keep repeating, "We can", we say, rather than "we should". But again, it's a case of false antitheses: we can, and we should. Our position has a moral strength and an ethical rigor, as well as scientific ones. And we are missing a tremendous opportunity if we don't reach out to people who could very easily share that perspective. Let's stop calling people fools. We have better things to say to them - such as 'Welcome'. David Pascal www.davidpascal.com www.cryonics.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11743