X-Message-Number: 3630
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: CRYONICS:re #3608-#3620
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 1995 11:15:24 -0800 (PST)



Hi!

On the good side, it seems to be true that people who are "space-oriented" 
make better prospects than others for cryonics. Ken Wolfe's idea that it
would do better with such people seems to have actually worked (he wasn't
the first to have it). Keith Henson, if and when he gets on the Net, should
be able to say more. (Not perfectly or 100%, but it did work better).

On uploading: The first thing to remember is that to be successful, uploading
should somehow copy not only our memories but our feelings and desires too.
We certainly are NOT just brains. When I concentrate on brains and memory, it
is because they are the unknowns here, not because they are the only important
things.

As for feelings, we should also not confuse the anatomical structures in our 
brains and elsewhere that allow us to have these feelings (and for that matter
beliefs, desires, etc) with the feelings themselves. There is an interaction

between all of these things (my desires can change because of what I know). 
It'snot clear at all that simply preserving memories will do the trick, but then
simply preserving the thalamus (seat of feelings in our brain) will hardly do
that either. And similarly, there is very likely a special brain structure 
responsible not only for the fact that we are awake (when we are) but that we
are self-aware; but again, simply preserving that structure won't come any-
where close to preserving US in any meaningful sense. Sure, the creature that
results will be self aware and know it is whereever it is, but it will have 
no idea that it once was YOU and no memory of how you felt, what you wanted,
what your dreams were, what you remembered. As a form of survival that does
not seem very good --- if we are to consider it a form of survival at all.

Second, I find it impossible to believe that a complete copy, if revived,
would not be YOU, ... under the right circumstances. One problem with a copy
needs to be dispensed with: if TWO copies were made, then by virtue of that
fact neither one would be a copy of YOU. For you are not just an individual
with no relations to the world around you, and one of those essential 
relations is that you are unique. Only one of you has a claim to your 
checking account, your car, and whatever property you may have accumulated.
And quite certainly, that artificial twin would try to make the same claims.
If you are married or have a lover, just which of you is told to leave?
You would become rivals. Not only that, but you would worry about your own
survival, and quite possibly even rejoice if your rival failed to survive.

Given that you remain the unique copy, at all times, then I think it would be
impossible to argue that you weren't a true continuation --- no matter how
long you existed as records in a computer, or whatever.

I will, however, say something more about the idea of uploading. Yes, we
certainly want to improve ourselves. We also live in a world where computers
have shown many and increasing abilities. I assume that no one who wants 
uploading seriously wants to be uploaded, say, into an nCube, or a Cray, or
an IBM PC: just considering these computers, it's very clear that they fall
lightyears short of being the kind of computers we'd be interested in 
uploading into. But that raises an issue which many uploaders seem to forget:
if we are really going to upload ourselves into some kind of dream computer,
then it behooves us to work out in some detail just what this dream computer
must do and be, and then from there ask the serious question of whether we
could even call it a "computer". Perhaps instead it is some kind of lifeform
but made of different materials. I have heard from some that we would merely
become patterns of information in one vast dream computer, feeling and 
sensing a virtual reality put on just for us. Anyone who wants that end
may no doubt eventually find it, but there is no reason for them to work so
hard at it: heroin, opium, and many other drugs will do the same job now.
Anyone who wants to retreat from the world and become a lotus-eater in an
artificial paradise is welcome to that (I am a libertarian) but it does 
not attract me at all.

			Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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