X-Message-Number: 16147
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 08:53:12 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #16136 - #16143

Hi everyone!

Basically the discussion of duplicates tells us virtually nothing of 
use now or ever. That it isn't of use now should be clear; however
the basic problem of this discussion so far is that it does not 
really attempt to confront the problems of duplicating an INDIVIDUAL
PERSON at all. We'll need to know a good deal more about how brains
work to do that, probably more than we'd need to know if we merely
wanted to create an intelligent machine. I've already raised one
problem: that despite our feelings that we really did experience
an event, often our memories of it are provably wrong ... they get
affected by subsequent experience. So is there ANY way to get two
people-duplicates to have the same memories?

If you subscribe to PERIASTRON you'll note that the latest issue
actually discusses other issues relevant to this duplication. Our
ideas about how memory actually works may well change a great deal
in the relatively near future. Just how they will end up remains
unknown...it may turn out that the observations don't really affect
the current basic theory of how human memory works, though I personally
suspect that they will change it. (Our synapses may not be stable
at all; and we clearly grow new neurons which would naturally become
involved with our memories). 

And for Mike Perry: yes, seeing our relatives die doesn't feel good,
even if they rejected cryonics. My stepfather (I never knew my father)
apparently tried to contact me when he was dying, but other relatives
(whom I still have not forgiven) stopped him. Even worse, I have a 
younger sister who died of neglected breast cancer, and once more
refused cryonics (her husband did not like the idea at all). The
funerals, if you can attend them, are really the worst part of all:
you can't help but think of how it might have worked out otherwise.

I may well have been primed to feel this way before I ever got involved
with cryonics, but even so, my feelings about death and funerals are
different enough that it's impossible for me to speak about such
issues to anyone who isn't a cryonicist. Sure, I can speak in the
abstract, but when it gets personal how do I explain myself to
someone who hasn't caught on?

		Best wishes and long long life,

			Thomas Donaldson

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