X-Message-Number: 21061
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 06:54:30 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #21030 - #21036

For Mike Perry:

One basic point I made before was that personal taste plays a large
part in what we consider to be identity. You have argued for "sameness".
which basically extends the notion of identity because it does not
satisfy one of its postulates (which are basically its definition,
not a statement about the world). So long as they are logically
consistent, anyone may adopt their own notion of identity (or
sameness). You have been logically consistent and stated your
preference. 

Just what others may think of it depends on THEIR preferences. It
may help to work out just what different cryonicists preferences 
are for continuation of their "identity" or at least their "sameness".

For James Swayze:

Your comments deserve much more study than I can give them late
tonight. However I will make one comment related to copying neurons:
if you have an assembly of nanotech devices cooperating on that
task, then as a combination of nanotech devices it ceases to be
a nanotech device itself. Cells are much larger than nanotech
devices, and can be better thought of as combinations of them
all working together. Enzymes (and the corresponding RNA 
entities), or viruses, fit the definition of nanotech much
more closely. Enzymes are nanosized machines. 

And as I said before in another context, we're much more likely
to succeed in repair if we use devices made of many nanotech 
subdevices, but hardly nanosized themselves, than if we insist
on only using independent nanodevices.

More later --- but remember that so long as you are consistent,
your notion of identity has no basic merit over the ideas of
someone else.

             Best wishes and long long life for all,

                 Thomas Donaldson

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