X-Message-Number: 7996
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7981 - #7984
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 00:01:05 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

To Mike: I discussed what you have said also in later postings, which I 
assume you have gotten now. As for the patterns we see, just what would it 
MEAN for them to be in the world? WE see them. Nor will I so blithely assume
that a civilization (say) consists of morons because they have not noticed
prime numbers. Perhaps they knew about them long ago and have something
better which we have not yet found --- or may never found. If they too
have space travel and a technology, possibly one capable of much more than
our own (or possibly one which is both more and less than our own, an even
more fascinating possibility), then I will accept that they are intelligent
even if they understand nothing of our mathematics. Even for the design of
their spaceships, they may do quite it differently than we (math is very 
much involved in design of such devices among us). If those spaceships work,
then they are doing something right.

Here is a paragraph from that I decided to omit, but I will put it in here
now because I think it is very relevant. It has turned out on study of Greek
mathematics that their idea of numbers was quite different from ours. They
understood integers, as in counting. They also understood the kind of numbers
you might get if you measure (say) the length of a piece of wood or a cubic
object. BUT quite unlike us, they saw these as two very different kinds of
things, fundamentally different. For some time (with computers and the ideas
of numbers used in them, our own ideas may be slowly shifting once more)
we have believed in numbers as if they were all, integers, irrationals,
rationals ... put on a long line from -infinity to +infinity. Basically all
the same kind of thing.

I do not think you can even find a retreat for your views in mathematics.
We simply have no reason to believe that it is universal, or for that matter
that OUR mathematics bears much relationship to whatever equivalent ideas
we may develop in 10,000 years. And if OUR mathematics becomes outmoded,
or unnecessary, then no one will BOTHER to remember such notions as that of
prime numbers.

As for intelligence, I'd rely much more on what these people do than what
theories they have to explain what and how they do it. If their spaceships
work but they have nothing that we recognize as corresponding to our math,
it is their spaceships that provide the unanswerable test of their 
intelligence.

Nor for that matter can we really accept that even our basic scientific
ideas will remain the same for the next thousand years. All past scientific
history suggests the opposite.

Finally, as someone who has actually done mathematics a great deal, I will
add one more point. I am not here criticising our human attempt to see 
patterns in the world, or our attempt to devise mathematics which will 
somehow tell us more about those patterns. It remains important that we do
so. As for science, it remains important that we try to test, experimentally,
the validity of those patterns we may see. This is so not because what we
see is necessarily in any sense universal, but because WE come to not only
see patterns but learn to use them by doing this. And if we someday find
some other, better ways to make such advancements in our control of the
world, I believe we will do so not by rejecting this behavior but by
continuing it. Its value comes down to what it does to us and for us,
not whether or not it allows us someday to communicate with crystalline
creatures living on a planet near Sirius.

And as I said in a previous posting: the belief that what you are doing is
universal and cannot be questioned is indeed seductive, but very dangerous.
For if you have such a belief you will lose interest in any experimental
tests of your science, or any new ideas or systems in your math. You will
become fixed, believing that you understand all. And sooner or later,
some other people will pass you by... or even worse, you will one day meet
something your "universal" science and math can neither predict nor 
understand --- something dangerous that will destroy you.

About religions and cryonics: One thing I remember very clearly is a 
discussion by Ettinger of how the more conservative religious ministers
etc reacted to his ideas. They were much more friendly to them than many
of the more liberal denominations, or for that matter many people who 
did not respect religion and were either indifferent or atheists. 

This is one reason I think the matter isn't quite so simple as several
people on Cryonet have stated. Naturally we hardly want to march into 
churches flaunting our atheism and criticising their theology as cultish
and preposterous. For that matter, Christ himself told his disciples to
go out and raise the dead... which is not among the quotations in
Corinthians. (If someone wants me to find this quotation, I will, but
I don't have a Bible with me ... I'd have to go to a library. It's in
one of the chapters named for a disciple). 

Our main problem (I think) in getting religious people to listen to us
is that we are not religious ourselves... except for a few. One thing which
MAY help is to explain what we are about in slightly different and more
accurate terms: we have different beliefs about when someone is dead, and
would not describe what we do as an attempt to raise the dead. (... here
follows a short discussion of the informational test for "death"). We 
think that many people who are really alive are mistakenly labelled as
dead and then cremated or buried --- which causes them to die. (... and
here follows a discussion of cryonic suspension).

If our patients aren't dead in the first place, how then could we be
violating ANYONE's religious ideas by caring for them?

But I agree that such an argument, to someone who is a convinced Christian,
is hard for an atheist to make.

			Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7996