X-Message-Number: 17196
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2001 00:52:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis Epstein <>
Subject: Jul 19-22 Cryonet Responses

CryoNet - Thu 19 Jul 2001
-------------------------

    #17016: Reanimation from Clone, Enlightened Self-Interest [Mike Perry]

>Olaf Henny, #17011, writes
>>I would conjecture, that the data derived from stored memorabilia
>>would be completely insufficient in complexity and detail to serve
>>as ersatz memories, akin to a 8 Kb description of a 8 Mb image.

>For me, if I ended up as a cell sample plus stored memorabilia (or less),
>I would want the missing information filled out by the best possible
>guesswork. Make a "reasonable approximation" of what was there before,
>rather than a person with massive amnesia. Invent memories as necessary,
>always being careful to invent as little as necessary, and never contradict
>any known historical facts. (There are some other requirements too,
>outlined in my book, all of which should be feasible in principle.) Based
>on my multiverse views, you will not thereby be creating a fantasy
>individual, but reinstantiating someone who really existed, an authentic
>version of me. (But of course there is more than one authentic version.)

Depends on your definition of "authentic
version"...individual identity implicitly
requires uniqueness,alternate-universe analogues
of an individual may be interchangeable like
copies of a book,but they are still not each
other.In the case under discussion I think you
WOULD be "creating a fantasy individual" to
the extent that a biographer is making an
estimate of a subject.You can't know what's
inside someone's head!

>Now, granted, I don't think this is as good as bringing someone back from
>a good cryosuspension (or other adequate preservation) with memories intact.
>That's why I remain a staunch advocate of biostasis. But nevertheless it
>supports the conclusion that death is not an absolute, something I find
>essential.

A duplicate is nonetheless not an original.
You may make a copy of someone who has died
without bringing the dead person back to life.


CryoNet - Fri 20 Jul 2001
-------------------------

    #17024: Where are we at? [Edd111]

>Its almost becoming trendy to extrapolate where we will be in computer
>processing power by next year, by the middle of the decade, even by 2010.
>I posit a question to fellow readers:  If someone read the cryonet usenet
>on the latest in cryonics technology, for a few weeks somewhere in the middle
>1999, how much further have we gone in terms of actual implementation of
>vitrification breakthroughs, etc these past 2 years?  Where do you think
>cryonics R&D  will be around 2005?  2010?  Assume:  processor speed
>continues, and other scientific disciplines advance 'as expected', but do
>not assume any spike increase in financial expenditures toward cryonics.

Cryonics progress is much harder to
quantify than computer progress.One
can benchmark CPUs quite readily.
How can one benchmark cryosuspension?
Until reversibility is demonstrated,
it's hard.You can't dissect patients
to check their crystallization status
while keeping them preserved.

In terms of demonstrating that people
can be brought back from cryopreservation
cryonics is in the same position it has
always been...no evidence for it yet.
How can we tell if people frozen today
are more revivable than James Bedford?
It's now in the 35th year since he was
frozen.Of course,this discussion is
taking place mainly among people who are
thinking maybe they'll be frozen 35 years
from now and revived 35 years later,
looking at Moore's Law extrapolated to
2071.(We'd have to be storing gigabits
in electrons then for it to hold,I guess).
But I'd rather be around in 2071 by
having gotten to age 110 the old-fashioned
way.


    #17027: Re: CryoNet #17013  [Graham Hipkiss]

>> From: "Joseph W. Morgan" <>
>> Subject: We are responsible for our actions.
>>
>> Robert Ettinger, Cryonet 16998:
>>"From the broadest perspective, no one deserves blame (or credit either)
>> for anything at all. We each do what we can and what we must, no more and
>> no less. No one made himself, and no one created his own environment--we
>> are all equally victims or beneficiaries of blind chance."
>>
>> I can't believe you said that.

>Why not? It's perfectly logical and well phrased.Surely, we are we only
>machines. Organic, aqueous, feeling, complex....but machines.

>> We do have free will and we are responsible for our actions.

>I don't believe we do have free will any more than our computers have free
>will. We react according to the way we are made (our genes) and the way we
>are programmed (our environment). We should, of course, be made responsible
>for our actions, but that's a different matter.

And just how is it a different matter?

If the hypothesis that we have no free will,
since all our actions are predetermined by the
laws of physics applying to our atomic components,
is correct,then we can not logically be held
responsible for the inevitable occurrences.
Any concept of our being able to make decisions,
in such a framework,is nonsensical.

You may not be saying that we are predetermined
to such a degree...but you are likening us to
programmed computers,which ARE predetermined
to such a degree.

CryoNet - Sat 21 Jul 2001
-------------------------

    #17041: Refrigerators are good for converting temperatures [Appraisco]
	David C. Johnson, Raleigh, NC

>Yep, I know that the "squiggle" in ~23C means "about" or "approximately,"
>but I had read it as a "minus" the first time through just the same.  Also,
>I still think in terms of Fahrenheit, not Celsius, and maybe always will.
>This is the rest of the world's revenge on the USA for the emergent
>predominance of English as the "world language."  Under the circumstances,
>and particularly with the language as embarrassingly illogical as it is, I'm
>sure the States deserve it.  And I believe other English-speaking countries
>at least made this and other metric-type switches years or decades ago.

While I live,so will my hostility to metrication.
(The metric system is one of the things I want
to outlive,no matter how many centuries it takes).
As it happens,the UK at least is still in the
throes of government compulsion to use metrics
(the only way it has ever been adopted anywhere);
a celebrated case has been of a grocer charged
for selling bananas by the pound.Now appealing
his case.


>So what is the answers from the two questions posed from above?  The
>first answer is that a Fahrenheit degree is not quite as substantial
>as a Celsius degree by a factor of 1.8 (and therefore, while
>begrudgingly, the USA should probably make the switch).

Seems to me that the more sensitive degree is
better than the coarser one.But the "logical"
(though least used this side of Reaumur,at
least) temperature scale is Rankine,which has
Fahrenheit-sized degrees and starts at absolute
zero like Kelvin.(If it's under 500 degrees
out,dress warmly!)

CryoNet - Sun 22 Jul 2001:No responses

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