X-Message-Number: 16731 From: "Trygve Bauge" <> Subject: Cloning, uploading and repair, what constitute survival of oneself? Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 21:17:21 +0200 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0063_01C0FF4E.8D6C7080 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Premise: Several people positive to cryonics have stated: a) That a dead and burried corpse can't be used to restore their personality and sense of being themselves. b) That a dead corpse at the very best can be cloned (though it can't even that today) c) That a clone would not be them. d) That they do not want to be cloned,- and then drawn the conclusion that therefore there is no reason to preserve any dead corpse. Most non cryonisists seem to think the same way about cryonics. I, however, disagree whole hearthedly. And for the following reasons: I haven't seen conclusive proof yet for the above premises. Let us assume we have a healthy brain, with synapses etc. organized in such a way as to remember a specific incident like the track and field at the Sydney Olympics. Then this brain gets a stroke, and doesn't remember the track and field event any longer. Today the same person could through retrainining programs watch videos in 3d or in virtual reality, and recreate a sense of having watched the same track and field event. This would then be stored in one's memory, through the use of differenet cells, synapses etc. In the future it might even be possible to recreate the memory of the track and field event by nanotechnology etc. But for the sake of this argument we do not have to be that sophisticated. Wouldn't the ensuing person still be you and a continuation of you? Let us assume that it is still more of the memory that get restored the same way. Ultimately, we are faced with a situation where all memory is restored this way, that your other healthy cells are called in to action, but the memory is added from external sources like 3d virtual reality animations. Much like retraining people that experience total amnesia. Wouldn't this still be you, and a continuation of you? What if this process means that some static is added, that you end up with 90 percent memory like what you had before, and 5 percent memory that others wrongfully thought you had, and 5 percent memory that replaces such of your memory that they didn't find an alternative source for. Wouldn't this still be you, or a continuation of you? Let us assume that the brain cells in question are yours, but that still more of your original cells needed some repair before the memory could be restored from other sources than yourself. Wouldn't this still be you, and a continuation of you? Let us assume, that in order to get enough healthy brain cells, the medical team take some of your healthiest nerve cells and threat these so that they multiply, before they then restore the memory from external sources. Wouldn't this still be you and a continuation of you? What then if your whole brain is regrown from still fewer cells, much like it did in your mother's womb. Wouldn't this still be you and a continuation of you? What if the whole brain is regrown from one of your own cells? Then we are speaking about cloning. So where in the process is it that so many cryonisists want to stop the process, and say that we are not interested any longer, please let us rot? When in the process is the ensuing being no longer oneself, to such an extent that the end result is not worth pursuing? Are we so tied up in the will to preserve a given memory the exact way it was first experienced? Are we even sure that the brain doesn't itself move memory around all the time? And how do we know that we today correctly differentiate between storage of personality, wills and memory, experience of such, and the entity experiencing it? What about mixed cases, where some memory is preserved naturally, other memory is recreated? What about mixed cases where some cells and memory have survived, other cells and memory are repaired and other cells are cloned with memory added in. Where does one stop being oneself to such an extent that one doesn't want to continue? I have over the years met many religious people who without any evidence to back this up, claim that even if we wake up people from the dead, with the original memory preserved, it wouldn't be the same consciousness experiencing it. Do we really know that anyone frozen today, will be themselves if we reanimate them? What an ironic twist if we later find out that those frozen today turn out to be no better continuation of ourselves than a clone would be. What if the consciousness restarted after even the best cryonic treatment, is no different than any cloned consciousness? Or what if we find out that cloning could be used to make even rotten corpses come back as their former self? If we are able to restore the physical body by a combination of undamaged survival, repair, cell splitting, cloning, and transplants. And if we are able to restore the sense of being oneself, the personality and mental content, by a combination of undamaged survival, repair of brain structure, and recreation of brain content from external sources. When do we then then draw the line for where we no longer want the process? First of all: let each individual draw the line oneself for itself and for one's next of kin, where the latter has not drawn one.! Otherwise we will create a presedence where someone else will draw the line for all of us! Secondly: Maybe it would be wise to let the future decide what that is possible, rather than to be too pesimistic today? Have yourself frozen, in the best possible way, even if this is just as a rotten corpse, and let the future take on the challenge of finding the best way to restore you. --- I can foresee several scenarios: 1. Maybe we can repair the cells and reawaken the same basic sense of pure awareness even in a quite damaged corpse. And that in a yogic sense, this would be the same consciousness, even though all more mundane memories have to be restored from other sources than the corpse itself. 2. Pure awareness is pure awareness, it might not be necessary for all your cells to survive for the same pure awareness to survive. Bottom line is that at the deepest level the pure awareness might be the same for any one of your cells as for your whole body. A clone would thus be a continuation of your own deepest pure awareness and not an alternative to this. 3. Maybe we are too hung up in clones being competitors. What about pursuing a situation where you and your clones get to share the same common consciousness also when it comes to more mundane experiences? E.g. so that losing one clone would be like losing an arm or rather like losing part of one's brain and part of one's sense organs? 4. Even if clones were linked up to share commonly all that each one of them experience, they would still be different people, but maybe the only difference between you and your clone compared to the left and right side of your brain is that you and your clone would be more mobile as to one another, while the two sides of your brain is stuck together in the same box. What I am saying is that losing a properly linked up clone might not be a worse loss than suffering a stroke. ----- In reality each clone will have its own ego, and it will experience itself as a continuation of you, and be free to outgrow whatever it got from you, but at the deepest level it will be a part of your consciousness that will survive and go on in the clone. It might be the same life-force and consciousness on the cellular level that will go on. For all practical purposes the same pure and basic awareness. Personally I would like to be cloned, and I will set the clone free to develop its own personality after it has got a chance to learn whatever I wanted to pass on to it. Personally I would, let the future figure out how to make the best combination that it can make from my corpse, and from cloning of my DNA. Maybe I will end up waking up with a recollection of not just the Sydney track and field but of the rowing competition as well. So someone screwed up. But just waking up, I might not complain. ------=_NextPart_000_0063_01C0FF4E.8D6C7080 Content-Type: text/html; [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16731