X-Message-Number: 17185
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 00:08:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis Epstein <>
Subject: Replies to Jul 15-8 Cryonets

CryoNet - Sun 15 Jul 2001
-------------------------

    #16983: Re: Constructive Thinking Without Consciousness? [Lee Corbin]

>A second powerful technique obtains from evolutionary epistemology.
>Consider the claim by some that plants feel pain.  We refute this by
>merely asking what possible benefit would accrue to the genes of plants
>if the plants were to feel pain (or be conscious).  The answer is, no
>benefit would accrue whatsoever:  the strategy of plants is to devote all
>their resources into metabolism and staying alive.  In a nutshell, nature
>didn't make a tree sensitive to getting chopped because there is no
>action that the tree can take to prevent it or flee.

Plants get injured,plants can heal.
It is certainly in the interests of
a plant for "awareness" of an injury
to spread throughout its systems to
mobilize response,even if the response
systems are more geared to keeping out
infection when a branch falls off,
perhaps knocked off by another tree's
falling branch,perhaps rotten,than to
the too-quick-to-fix disaster of a
man with an axe or chainsaw.


    #16989: Simulation, Conscious Ducks, Survival Options, Trygve [Mike Perry]

>Some years ago I saw some amazing home movie footage a relative had taken
>of a duck playing with a dog; they were almost like two children "horsing"
>around. Of course, a die-hard could always maintain that no amount of
>behavior that looks like consciousness in some animal is the "real"
>thing, but that borders on solipsism.

If it's in an animal,it's the real thing.

It's when it's in something created by
an animal,that isn't an animal,that it
can't possibly be genuine intelligence.


CryoNet - Mon 16 Jul 2001
-------------------------

    #16991: CryoNet #16980 - #16989 [Thomas Donaldson]

>One major reason I say this is simply that doctors have been preserving
>brains gotten from bodies hours after death for some time. There is still
>information there... and this preservation is independent of cryonics and
>took place well before cryonics had been heard of by anyone. And yes, the
>actual destruction depends a lot on how the brains were treated both
>before and after they were obtained as specimens. It may or may not have
>destroyed the person IN the brain,but that is a separate issue... and much
>more subtle than "liquefaction" in any case.

To what extent can it be confidently
stated that information remains stored
in a brain after death...if such information
has never been recovered?

This issue is central to the usefulness of
cryonics(as something other than a means of
preserving corpses).The Parnia research
speaks of people returning to consciousness
after a time when their brains appeared to
have stopped functioning,but cryogenic
temperatures were not involved...the Darwin
frozen dogs didn't get into the LN2 range
either.


CryoNet - Tue 17 Jul 2001
-------------------------

    #16996: CryoNet #16990 - #16995 [Thomas Donaldson]

>As for whether or not future people will revive us, the question is being
>asked much too abstractly. We will be revived because we are in suspension
>and means have been found to revive us. We will be in suspension and cared
>for by others who ALSO expect to someday end up in suspension... even if in
>their day suspension takes a quite different technical form. It is by caring
>for and reviving those in suspension (who can now be revived) that we
>protect our own hopes for suspension and revival. And yes, we'll be revived
>by a descendant of a cryonics society, NOT by society in general.

>The idea that suspension (of some kind) will be needed into the indefinite
>future is NOT a side issue. It is essential to the entire idea.

Doesn't this have rather cautionary implications?

Are you saying that if there IS a super-singularitive
advance that makes perpetuation for all something taken
for granted,this will eliminate the motivation for the
revival of those frozen in the "olden days" rather than
efforts to include them in the new paradigm?

I expect the cryonics societies will want to do the best
for those they have frozen as a means of closing up shop.

>Think about it from the standpoint of the cryonics society which revives
>you: by doing so it proves that revivals can happen,and so emphasizes the
>idea that if you join it (or other such societies) they will someday be
>able to revive you also, EVEN IF AT THAT TIME NO WAY TO DO SO WILL EXIST.
>In return, you will remain a member and perhaps someday revive some of
>those who revived you.

So...will people get discounts on suspensions after
their first?

This also has a cautionary corollary...will societies
whose efforts to revive frozen patients fail be eager
to sweep these embarrassing results under the rug?
By how much will failures postpone subsequent attempts?

Cryonicists like to foresee that every attempted revival
will be a clear success...but I don't think that confidence
in this is too well founded.

>If you really want immortality then you'll find such a society quite
>necessary. Yes, we can find ways someday to abolish aging, but all the
>other things that can happen to you, now or in the indefinite future,
>will remain out there waiting to bring you down. After only a little time,
>those ways won't be anything we can now specify, but they'll still exist...
>and give you something to think about at that time. There is no single
>measure which will make us all immortal without the need for further
>self-defense. And it is that need that will keep cryonics societies
>existing... and help us to live far longer than simply abolishing aging
>could ever do.

Can there really be such confidence in the
permanence of the "cryonics society"?
The universal-nanorepair vision would seem
to leave few conditions where cryogenic
temperatures would be called for in restoring
health of someone who had been deprived of
conventional vital processes.


    #16998: justice and mercy [Robert Ettinger]

>"I don't want justice. I want mercy." And many of us--perhaps most, even
>now--are prepared to temper justice with mercy. Some cryonicists have said
>in public that they would not refuse to freeze even the nastiest people, the
>worst criminals--in part because it should eventually become easy to cure
>them.

"cure" in a way that wouldn't be condemned as brainwashing?

>And even now society as a whole rarely kills its predators, but instead
>spends large amounts of money to keep them isolated but alive and
>relatively comfortable.

Should there in the future emerge a difference
in public perception between being cryosuspended
and being killed,I can see the former being
enacted as a replacement for both execution and
"animated" imprisonment as a punishment for
serious violent crime.Would many cryonics
societies welcome "cryo-imprisonment" for a term
of decades or centuries as a sign of public
recognition that suspension works,or shy from
it as a bad-for-the-image association?

    #17001: Brains liquefy? [Mike Perry]

>>From: Thomas Donaldson <>
>>
>>No, brains do not liquefy shortly after death. Or even some time after
>>death.

>Well, "short" is a relative term and I should have been clearer as to what
>actual time frame I had in mind. Partly I wasn't sure myself, but let's
>say "short on the scale of several weeks or more," which would apply to the
>Kostadinova case in Australia. A mortician my organization (Alcor) works
>with did indeed tell me, about two years ago, that the brain will liquefy
>if not treated. Not in the sense of just melting I'm sure, but still in
>the sense of entering a liquefied state.

Is it at this stage that the Egyptian
mummifiers removed the brain through
the nose,bit by bit?(A clear case of
the inferiority of classic mummification
to cryosuspension in the preservation
of bodies,though it's not clear to me
that a modern chemopreservation might
not be much better).


    #17002: Cloning and Coming Back [Mike Perry]

>Olaf Henny, #16995, writes
>>While I believe, that there is a point in preserving recordings,photos etc.
>>in order to augment a memory, which might be left "spotty" after revival,
>>I see no benefit in keeping such records,when only the DNA is preserved.
>>If the purpose is to create a clone, or several, of myself, then preserving
>>genetic material may be of some use.  However the preserved recordings and
>>photos will do little to integrate themselves into the consciousness of a
>>clone, growing up in an entirely different environment than the original,
>>beyond being interesting historic information.

>The recordings and photos won't just "integrate themselves." *But* have
>you considered the possibility of not just creating a clone, a tabula rasa,
>and have it learn something from records as it grows up, but instead
>creating a *programmed* clone, that *starts off* with information derived
>from records and suitably encoded in its memory structure? There is also
>no reason why the new individual would start as a baby. Instead,
>nanotechnology should make it possible to create a fully formed and
>*in*formed adult, right at the start. Now granted, the reconstructed
>memories might be a bit skewed or pushed around, amplified or shrunken, from
>what would have been obtained from a good cryopreservation. Still it might
>be good enough to qualify as more-or-less the original person, even by
>hard-nosed critics (those who, at least, are willing to be lenient on the
>issue of original material). The reconstruction, if done properly, should
>produce an individual in no identity-critical way distinguishable from the
>original either by him/herself or others.

I see no reason to assume the assurance of
more technologies not now feasible than are
absolutely necessary to achieve a goal.Here
one is piling more advances on in order to
overcome the likely shortcomings in what is
more likely to develop.

Certainly where the original body is not
preserved,only DNA samples and mementoes,
use of these can produce no more than a
clone who is well educated about the
original's life.Scrapbooks can not read
minds...by reading what people write we
do not share their consciousness.

The suggested development to adulthood of
clones nano-educated is a fine dream that
is well known in fiction...but for the
education to take root it would seem that
the person's original brain would need to
be preserved and then wilfully discarded.

Any duplicate of me that was produced in
such a fashion would not accurately reproduce
my views on such matters unless it considered
the mode of its creation to absolutely disqualify
itself from being properly considered to be me!

CryoNet - Wed 18 Jul 2001
-------------------------

    #17004: Avoiding an Autopsy or Organ Removal [Joseph W. Morgan]

>You didn't sign an organ donor agreement did you?  In some states it
>comes with your driver's license.  You're just "road kill" after an
>accident and if somebody wants a piece of you they can have it.

In some states they insist on family consent
beyond a donor form...or act on family consent
that they ask for without one.

Note that the centralized organ-donation
bureaucracy will not allow designation of
recipients in most cases,and tries to force
donor anonymity.

    #17009: peace breaking out on Cryonet? ;) [john grigg]

>Cryonics is a wonderful adventure! :)  When I read of where cryonics was ten
>or twenty years ago I am thrilled at where we may be less then a decade from
>now.

From what I've seen of its history
progress has not been smooth or continuous
or consistently fulfilling of predictions.

It's still built on hope,not demonstrated
usefulness...except as preservation of bodies.

    #17010: why people reject cryonics [john grigg]

>When the Venturist resort/community is built we will see a great deal of
>media interest which should get the ball really rolling.  David Pizer and
>his associates will be doing a landmark thing with their initiative. What
>has just been talk will finally be reality!  A community for cryonicists!
>And with a resort open to all we will see opportunities for "missionary
>work."

>And when Saul Kent and Wil Faloon's Timeship is built, cryonics will be ON
>the map!  This structure will generate a tsunami of media interest which if
>surfed properly with our own marketing efforts will reap many new members
>for us.

John is certainly the enthusiasm-merchant,
if no one else is...these are dreams that
will find a reality that is not necessarily
that envisioned by the dreamers.How funded
is the "Timeship" project?
(I have a website where I track a dozen
different plans to build a new Titanic that
have been around for years.But no one has
the money,and no one has even started to
build a ship).

Will the media really regard Ventureville
as more than just another little resort
with a cute gimmick many customers won't
want to think about?

Only time can tell.

>P.S. I hope Linda and Fred Chamberlain are finding success in their efforts
>to raise funds for the Alcor vitrification upgrade project.  Could we
>possibly have a status report?  This may not be as exotic sounding as the
>other projects, but it is still extremely important.

Well,unlike the others it actually speaks
to an advance in preservation technology
as its core...but with Alcor's neuro-bias
it's still deeply hostage to unavailable
imagined technologies.

    #17011: On Revival, Consciousness and Inserting Memories. [Olaf Henny]

>Thomas Donaldson <>wrote:

>>  And yes, we'll be revived by a
>>descendant of a cryonics society, NOT by society in general.

>While there is a special interest/obligation by the cryonics society to
>revive us, there is also a reasonable expectation of the society as a whole
>to promote our revival to gain historical perspective from representatives
>of our time, at least as long as we are only as few as we are now.

So if the technologies for revival are
developed too soon,there will be much less
general interest in reviving people?
(Right now there are people alive born
in 1887,before any frozen cryonics patient
was born...so there is not yet any historical
perspective that could be gained only by
reviving cryonics patients).

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17185