X-Message-Number: 4650
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #4642 - #4645
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 13:24:22 -0700 (PDT)

Hi everyone!

Re: Bob Ettinger's posting about probability

Sorry, Bob, but I think you are quite quite wrong. Not about cryptanalysiss,
nor about the "great sweep of history" (though I will say that history 
contains not only successes but ruined, blasted hopes and countless failures).

In order to apply any sort of probability analysis, we must first know what 
the possible outcomes ARE. If we know we are flipping a 12-sided die, then 
we can begin to think about probability. If we have no idea whether the die
has 2 sides, 20 sides, or 200, our probability calculations based on an 

ASSUMPTION that it has (say) 12 sides will generally be way off when we 
actuallyobserve the die. The empirical test comes not when we apply our ideas 
about 
probability to estimate the chance of one outcome or another, but when we
figure out that there are 12 sides in the first place.

Not only that, but even your example is faulty. It is tests of that nature 
that can tell us, in a gambling house, that the odds are rigged and the die is
weighted. If you mean by your example that someone tests a die previously 
found to be true, and finds that it isn't, and then tests many others and 
finds the same thing, then you are right that many people may ignore his 
results. They ARE on the boundary of those things to which we pay attention. 
Yet think: suppose that others can duplicate his experiments, and get the same
results. If duplications were to happen frequently, it would be foolish for us
not to conclude that something strange may be happening to cause this result.
What changes in the experiment cause this deviation NOT to happen? Imagine that
we lived in a society which did not understand electricity or magnetism, and
we made part of our dies out of iron. The odd fact that they acted strange in
this experiment but not in others might tell us something ultimately very 
important. (Again, I'm well aware that even most scientists don't normally 
study phenomena for which they have no idea of an explanation at all).

And so back to cryonics: do we understand brains, and the damage caused by 
different varieties of cryonic suspension, well enough to just do probability
calculations on them? I would say that we do NOT. And both sides would need
study: how our brains work (which will tell us just what information and 
features of our brain we will need to recover) and just what damage occurs.
As of this instant in 1995, even though neuroscientists have begun to get an
idea of how memory is stored, that idea remains incomplete and uncertain. Not
only that, but cryonicists have only just begun to explore the damage which 
suspension (and remember that not everyone gets a "perfect" suspension, too)
causes. This is true despite the fact that a number of cryonicists have been
jumping up and down for years asking for studies of the effect of suspension 
ON BRAINS. (And I personally am profoundly glad that you are doing the work
you are doing with Pichugin).

If we don't KNOW how our memories are stored, and don't know just what the
damage is, then when we start talking about probability we're exactly in the
position of someone who wants to use probability to predict the fall of dice
without knowing how many sides each die has.

Think carefully about what you're saying here. Without any kind of empirical
handle on the events discussed, we can argue that we will someday accomplish
virtually ANYTHING AT ALL. Not only that, but we will do this relatively soon.
An argument that can prove anything at all is a very weak argument, not a 
strong one.

I took up cryonics, years ago, because it seemed to me that it was the best 
option out of a bunch of bad ones. And yes, because your book, and other 
thinking, convinced me that it had a serious chance of working (but note that
you didn't just give the argument you've outlined in your message, but other
facts and figures too). And I definitely believe that with effort we can 
MAKE it work. Yet that is not the same as believing that it will ALREADY
work, at all. I even believe that it is possible to progress on virtually any
question.      

But I very much do not believe that progress is inevitable or need not be 
worked for. What would the dinosaurs have said to that, just after the 
asteroid hit? And one major path to progress in cryonics is not just to make
theoretical arguments about its success, but to actually demonstrate by 
experiment that it works. Such experiments aren't so far away: if we 
really believe, as we claim, that preservation of information is the important
issue, then we can come close to demonstrating preservation of information
very soon, even though actually reviving someone and making them young again
will still remain a long time off.  

As I said at the end of my second message about Merkle's posting, one major
empirical event has begun to set my mind to rest about whether or not the
information (which is our memories) really survives. Biopreservation definitely
needs to follow up on that experiment --- among other things, to verify that 
similarly good preservation continues at LN2 temps, or else to show a way 
to vitrify brains. And of course, to explore the reasons why glycerol at such
concentrations is toxic. The problem isn't solved, but now it has a big dent.
And your own work shows a similar effort to progress.

All that is great! But those facts don't make fallacious arguments any less
fallacious, and I do not believe that basing our arguments for cryonics on 
fallacies will help us at all.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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