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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25038