X-Message-Number: 72
From: Kevin Q. Brown
Subject: fate of individual survival 
Date: 30 Mar 1989

Editorial / Opinion - The Fate of Individual Survival
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Do you remember when natural was obviously not artificial?  When seeing was
believing and photographs did not lie?  When life was easily distinguished from
death?  The new knowledge and new options being opened up by our science and
technology often blur and complicate our schemes for categorizing our world.
Of course, we cryonicists are smug in the conviction that we know about
nanotechnology, cell repair machines, space colonization, etc. and have a
pretty good idea of what to expect from the future, unlike the average person.
Right?  Think again.

The goal of cryonics is individual survival.  I suggest, however, that just as
science and technology have blurred and complicated the distinction between
life and death, they will also blur and complicate the distinction between
self and non-self and thereby blur and complicate our notions of individuality
and survival.  In particular, the debates (in sci.nanotech, Cryonics, The
Immortalist, and elsewhere) concerning whether a person REALLY survives when
he or she uploads (to a non-organic medium) or beams up via a Star Trek style
transporter, suggest to me that our current concepts of self and survival will
not stand up to the options provided by future technology.  Furthermore, such
debates may be as unimportant as calculating the number of angels that can fit
on the head of a pin.  Blasphemy!  Nothing is more important than our personal
survival!  How can such a question be unimportant?  Read on ...

Long before anyone is revived from (current techniques for) cryonic suspension
we will have high bandwidth direct brain / computer interconnection.  It will
occur before rather than after the first reanimation (from current suspension

techniques) because (1) it is technically simpler, and (2) it will be in demand.
It is technically simpler because it does not require advanced nanotechnology
to construct I/O ports between organic brains and silicon.  It will be in
demand because humans and computers are quite complementary; humans are very
good at several things that are hard for computers and computers are very good
at several things that are hard for humans.  A human / computer symbiote will
be more powerful (and economically advantageous) than either alone.  As the
brain / computer interfaces improve, more of the memory of the human can
reside in the computer and more of the high-level, commonsense thinking and
real-world interfaces of the computer can reside in the human.

One thing that computers are very good at is high bandwidth telecommunications.
The human / computer symbiote may thus be distributed widely geographically.
But what if the human capabilities are needed simultaneously at two (or more)
locations?  Expand the symbiote to include more than one human (perhaps clones
of the same human).  These two (or more) humans will be much more intimately
connected than two people talking on a telephone; they will share the same
memories (and perhaps thoughts) rather than just pass sound waves back and
forth.  It must be done this way because "you" want to be at each location,
not just have someone else sitting in as your representative.  A symbiote will
have a much different sense of self than anyone living today.  As the fidelity
of uploading increases, all the human bodies will become equivalent interfaces
to the same symbiote person; "I" will become the symbiote system, not just any
particular human body.  The memories of all bodies will be uploaded and stored
redundantly throughout the system.


This symbiote system may sound wildly foreign, but is actually just an extension
of what we already have.  The brain is a highly interconnected network and a
symbiote will be a bigger, highly interconnected network.  Rather than losing
individuality when building oneself up to a symbiote system, one gains it since
one can do more at once.  Furthermore, life becomes much safer (provided one
avoids the electronic equivalents of worms, viruses, etc.).  Suppose that
one of the human bodies comprising a symbiote is obliterated in a nuclear
explosion.  Did anyone die?  From the point of view of the symbiote (and thus
of all the human bodies remaining in the symbiote) that is a moot point because
the human / computer symbiote will still survive, and, furthermore, no
information will be lost because all information that was ever retrievable from
the recently destroyed human body had already been backed up elsewhere.  The
symbiote will likely just "shrug its shoulders" and get on with business.
(That is why it will be unimportant whether a person "really" survives
uploading; the symbiote will not care.)  "Naked" humans that are not uploaded
into any symbiote system will constantly be at great risk of destruction.
Economics and evolution will thus favor symbiote systems; most people will be
symbiotes, not "naked" humans.

It gets even more complex than that, though.  The symbiote systems that I
just described are uploaded and distributed, but still have a fairly clear
sense of self vs. nonself.  Suppose, however, that you mixed and matched
(uploaded) parts of your personality with parts of other people's personalities
to form a composite, thinking and feeling person.  Who is that person?  Or does
this sound too far out to be possible?  Believe it or not, you already do
something like that in your own head.  Everyone has little sub-personalities
corresponding to their (perceptions of their) parents, friends, heros,
employers, etc.  Furthermore, little bits of you are scattered among all the
people who ever met you, heard of you, or were somehow affected by you.  No
human lives in isolation.  This proposed uploading, mixing, and matching is a
technological extension of a process that already exists.

What is individuality and what is survival?  As you can see, it becomes
complicated.  Furthermore, a more important and more powerful question is
"What do we want?".  One could pursue survival by mass-duplication - one
survives provided the rate of one's destruction does not overcome the rate of
duplication - but somehow that seems to miss the point.  I now need to restate
an earlier assertion.  The goal of cryonics is not individual survival; it is
continuation of one's life.  The difference is the emphasis: pursuing life
rather than avoiding death.  Picasso said that every act of creation is a
series of little destructions.  The same goes for life.  You cannot live
without changing, but changing may cause the "death" of the old you.  A
symbiote system will remember being a single, "naked" human, but is clearly
not the same person as before.

The traditional scenario for survival through reanimation from cryonic
suspension now seems quaint and innocent.  It sounds like heaven; when you
first re-awake you will be surrounded by your friends and loved ones (who have
come back before you) and these people will all be young, healthy, wise,
incredibly wealthy and powerful by today's standards, and, of course, in
immortal bliss.  I cannot believe it will be that simple.  Symbiotes will
still engage in power struggles and even engage in deceit and an occasional
murder, much as people do today, except on a much wider and more complex scale.
Ordinary, "naked" humans will not stand a chance in this game.  But, it's the
only game in town.  Let the good times roll!

                                       - Kevin Q. Brown
                                       ...att!ho4cad!kqb
                                       

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