X-Message-Number: 13338
From: "john grigg" <>
Subject: trying to deal constructively with the reality of our situation.....
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2000 03:22:35 PST

I wanted to share with everyone on Cryonet a good post from Robert Bradbury 
that he posted on the extro list.  He discusses ways of dealing with the 
real possibility that reanimation may leave us with less then fully restored 
memories.  His idea's range from keeping a journal to brain scans.  I think 
he makes some good points and gets it across with humor.  Considering the 
fairly weak state of suspensions now, this is a post to read!

sincerely,

John Grigg


Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 02:26:59 -0800 (PST)
From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <>Subject: RE: Why 
Cryonics

Some of the discussion between Eugene and Jim have got meto thinking...... 
Off in the distance, the Japanese vistors furiously begin to snap photos as 
the 60 meter, 10,000 ton gears of the Bradbury
Mind slowly begin to rotate, spewing out a cloud of idea dust....
Godzilla was fiction, but this is *real*...

Now, lets assume that nanobot enabled freezing damage repair
is imperfect.  But lets assume that they repair process can
produce a *functional* breathing human being (that seems
pretty doable, even if you have to regenerate every neuron).
So the real question is how much of your "mind" is left after
the reanimation process?

Presumably there could be states
that lie between complete reanimation (i.e. memories intact)
and clean-slate reanimation (functional w/o memories).
The question becomes, *what* could people do while they
are still alive to assist your reanimated self to be "reborn".

These have a wide range.  They include NMR scans of the neural
activity of the brain -- e.g. Doctor says "Think about ice cream",
scan, "Think about love", scan, "Think about snakes", scan, etc.
These images of mental activity could provide "clues" as to how the
nanobots should re-wire things (so your reanimated neural activity
matches your pre-cryo activity).

At the non-medical level, there are presumably many things you could do to 
provide information to oneself about who you "were".  (Financial records, 
diaries, etc.) Now, if you only get partial functional reanimation these 
"hints" could prove very useful for recovering or restablishing those 
connections that produce a satisfactory reflection of ones former self.

So, lets assume reanimation is imperfect -- What can we do to augment
the process and what are the relative costs and benefits?
And now the $20 question -- how many people would be happy without
any direct "recall" of their former selves, but only a warm and fuzzy
"recognition" (deja vu) feeling, of "yes, that was me"?  Or would it be ok 
if you "know" your stories because you read about them (in your diary) but 
you don't actually "remember" them.  Finally, would you be unhappy if the 
nanobots can't "recover" things and so they engineer in either the 
"memories" or "recognition" based on your pre-suspension recordings.

I think these questions are quite significant, because in the reanimation 
era, who you are could quite probably be "synthesized".  I believe too few 
people are specifying the detailed conditions under which they wish to be 
recovered (do these things, but don't do those...).

Anders might want to comment on individuals who undergo similar
disconnects due to mental illness or trauma that could be representative of 
the types of losses that might occur during freezing/reanimation.

Who are we anyway???
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