X-Message-Number: 5612
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 09:43:27 -0800
From:  (Dwight G. Jones)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #5601 - #5608
References: <>

1
> From: Peter Merel <>
> Subject: Memories
> Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 01:36:04 +1100 (EST)
> 
> Dwight Jones writes,
> 
> >what is the ESSENTIAL difference between successful cryonic rebuilding
> >and regeneration from DNA seed? What is it about today's memories that
> >we MUST them to deem ourselves successful in this venture?
> 
> Software and hardware, Dwight. Without software, what good is a
> computer?  Doesn't software exist in your philosophy? Do you imagine
> that software is somehow implied by hardware? Or do you believe that all
> programs are equivalent to one another?
> 
> We spend our lives writing our own internal software - it determines how
> we behave, who we love, the people and qualities and dimensions of our
> worlds. Perhaps your philosophy devalues this software, but for
> most of us here that's the whole point; the hardware can be replaced
> by some other machine with sufficient power to express our software,
> and we won't fuss - many of us even look forward to it!

I'm not denying that such memories would be nice to have. But as the 
years (and lifetimes) go by, we learn to let go of childhood, 
adolescence, and so on, just as we go to sleep each night confident of 
prospects in the coming day. Could we not look at lifetimes, gracefully 
surrendering each as we surrender the day?

Realize that our views are likely to be self-centric, it's hard to have 
any affect for externalized reality. It is this value set that allows us 
to see the World as our own, for example, and not something we share 
with 3 million other species.

If we begin to consider existence as pluralistic, (more than one 
lifetime, more than one phenotype, concurrent phenotypes, and so on), it 
is conceivable that we may come to see cryonics as overkill. That would 
be a relief to all of us who have been daunted by the dimensions of the 
problem.

What I am discussing is largely unexamined, and that is why I appreciate 
your input.


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