X-Message-Number: 25196
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 08:18:29 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #25190 - #25195

For Bob Ettinger:

Fundamentally I have no better answer to this question about survival
than you do, but since continuity seems to be an essential idea
behind the claim that we might NOT survive, OK, I'll take on this
issue. (For that matter I never asked YOU to define your notion of
continuity).

You speak about physical continuity. As you know, a lot of empty
space exists between the atoms that make us up. In that sense
we are not physically continuous in space. Some theorists argue
that similar gaps exist between our different instantiations
in TIME. In that sense NO ONE is physically continuous at all.
Does this mean that each version of us has its own QE? Most important,
if not why not? Or to put it another way, how is this continuity
implemented in a space and time which are discontinuous?

Again, when I go through my life I have various experiences,
meet various people, and do various acts. I exist in a Universe
formed by my sequence of experiences. You exist in a Universe
formed by your sequence of experiences. As I said in my note on
Cryonet, which specifically assumed that I was not only recreated
but recreated to be physically identical to what I was before,
in all parameters which can ever be measured, then we have another
sense of continuity: my existence, TO ME, is continuous. That 
you may have seen me destroyed and then recreated only deals with
your private Universe. Imagine I am a function on a domain
which consists of two intervals, (-infinity, 0) and [1, infinity).
We give those two intervals a topolgy which joins them together,
so that the points near 0 in the lower interval and 1 and the
points near 1 in the upper interval are considered close to one
another. Because I am an exact duplicate, the functions before
and after link up continuously with no trouble (this is another
way of thinking about the same setup, if you prefer something
more mathematical).

I will point out, also, that since I am physically identical in
all parameters, my QE must then be physically identical. Other
than the fact that it's a little older, it too is continuous.

There's another way, too, to think about this phenomenon. Clearly if
I am destroyed and then recreated exactly, the information specifying
me must have been stored somewhere. That information, of course,
will also include my (physical) QE, again as a specification rather
than a working QE. When that information is used to recreate me, I
become a living being again. Each stage of this process has been
continuous. So where is the discontinuity that gives me a new QE?

Yet again: some psychological conditions, and even some verifiable
physical conditions (stop all nervous impulses going through your
corpus callosum) produce what seem to be two different QEs. A
person may have more than two, also, taking up one identify for
a while in which he/she completely forgets a previous period, as
if it had been removed from his/her life. And then one day
that previous life returns, while the other one becomes forgotten.

Do such individuals have different QEs for each time a particular
identity appears? Or are they the same? Again, if we use an
anesthetic rather than surgery to stop connections through your
corpus callosum, then do the 2 personalities you had when your
brain was separate disappear? Do you acquire a new QE when you
get your corpus callosum restored? It seems more reasonable to
me to say that you get your former personality and QE back, not
that it was a new one; and I would say the same for the 
psychological cases.

I'm happy to come up with further definitions of continuity if
asked.

              Best wishes and long long life to all,

                      Thomas Donaldson

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