X-Message-Number: 14259
Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2000 19:14:58 -0500
From: david pizer <>
Subject: Survival

>From: 

Pizer said
>>What I am looking for as a marker is a thing about selfhood that doesn't
>>ever change, what thing remains constant, what is that thing that we can
>>identify that makes us us?? 

Dormammu said
>d:  you-1 are you-1 right now.  tomorrow you-2 will be you-2.  what does it 
>matter that you-1 is not the same as you-2?  enjoy each moment.

Survival of the self is of utmost concern to any serious cryonicist.  It is
survival that we hope to achieve with cryonics.  In trying to discover the
correct steps to take to try to survive death, we (those of us cryoncists
that are working and posting on the subject and helping to flush out new
paths of thinking) must first try to know what "survival" is AND what a
"self" (the thing we want to survive) is.   


********It is critical to redesign our thinking and definitions, as the
present definitions we have, and the present thinking we hold are NOT
persuading the masses to help develop science and technology to save
themselves and help save us, even though cryonics has been getting lots of
publicity. ******** 


It is important to discuss these things here in this forum among ourselves
first.  In a few years there is going to be a community where cryonicists
will live together and work together in a mass public relations campaign to
try to change the way the world thinks about death and life.  If we cannot
convince others that survival is important and describe the self to them in
a successful way, we may not be able to survive ourselves.  While we are in
the planning stage of the new community (as we are now) and even when the
early construction stage starts, we can be doing our preparation work in
this forum.  

Back to the concept you mentioned above - and since that problem may occur
to the newcomers we will be trying to bring in - we need to address it
here, first. 

If a person does not even survive from moment to moment, or day to day,
then there would be no reason to be frozen since the revived persons also
would not survive but for a moment, or for a day.  So I think it is
fundamental to establish a definition that permits dailey survival given
that there will be some who will complain that the memories and atoms in a
person are constantly changing and so a person does not survive each day.
If we first know that we do survive these changes as the same person
throughout our lives, only then can we know that further efforts are
worthwile.

I am convinced that any workable description of a self must include the
concept of a continuing process to account for the continuing changing.  A
"process" can be a continuing natural phenomenon marked by gradual change,
but remaining the same thing throughout.

In conclusion, I think a definition that best describes a self is something
in a constant state of change (as you point out), while being the same
self, (as I contend).  My working definition, (right now), that seems to be
the most explanatory for a self as we know it is "Unique, Self-Aware,
Continuing-Process."   I like to think of a self, or a person as a "USACP."
 
Dave Pizer

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