X-Message-Number: 25038
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 08:07:08 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #25030 - #25034

Hi everyone, particularly Richard:

Okay, you cannot have had an opportunity to reply to my questions 
put on Cryonet this issue. However Mike Perry may have raised an 
even more serious issue about identity.

You may or may not know that one event caused by freezing (as 
distinct from vitrification) is that it may very well destroy the
connections between our neurons. In that sense, freezing disassembles
a brain. I have actually mentioned this problem several times on
Cryonet. 

Forgetting the garbage about uploading, if you think that disassembly
of your brain will kill you, then clearly if you're a cryonicist
you must be a strong supporter of vitrification (which specifically 
does not cause that disassembly). If you're actually signed up, I'd
think that you'd insist on vitrification, and state in your
documentation that if you could not be vitrified for any reason then
you are to be considered "dead".

The whole idea of uploading ourselves (not modifying ourselves, but
UPLOADING ourselves) stems from an older idea about how our brains
worked. This idea claimed that after infancy, our brains basically
became static machines, with any learning or other changes caused
by changes similar to those in the circuits that make up a computer.
Careful neuroscience has since then shown definitively that this 
old idea is false... even though it may persist in older textbooks.
In that sense uploaders --- who may well not want to deal at all
with messy biology --- can be temporarily pardoned for their ignorance.
But understanding of how brains work in the first place is critical
to understanding just what we can do to preserve ourselves. Its
importance can be seen very early in cryobiology, in the early
experiments which established that our memories weren't preserved
in any continuous electrical activity of our brains (in the 50's,
by Audrey Smith and others now perhaps forgotten).

And Richard, if you are signed up, and are NOT a strong supporter
of work on vitrification, then please explain this apparent
contradiction in your beliefs.

              Best wishes and long long life for all,

                  Thomas Donaldson

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