X-Message-Number: 8020
Date:  Tue, 08 Apr 97 12:44:27 
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #8014 - #8016

Robin Hanson wrote (#8014),
 
> The lack of interest by most scientists in cryonics may thus perhaps
> be explained by their placing a low value on the potential benefit of
> revival, rather than on their placing an especially low probability on
> this possibility (say <5%).  This low value on revival is a new thing.  
> 

Cryonics offers the possibility of extended life in a state of mental 
alertness. This ought to be considered a great benefit to anyone of a 
scientific bent whose life is taken up with creative pursuits. Such 
a person, if not a believer in the supernatural, would presumably see 
that they had little to lose to arrange to be frozen, and possibly 
very much to gain. So this negative response--that revival would not 
be worth it--is really baffling, especially because it seems to 
reflect a change in views over 80 years (1916-1996). I wonder if
it is even accounted for by the terror management theory that seems
to explain much of the negative response to cryonics from the public
at large.


 Bob Ettinger wrote (#8015),

> Mike Perry (#8009-8013) says certain things that seem somewhat inconsistent
> to me. 
> 
> In #8009 he says we can experiment to locate the seat of feeling, and
> mentions the conjecture that it is in the midbrain-thalamic reticular
> formation. But then in #8010 the thrust of his discussion is that
> consciousness may be a matter of degree, and that a dim level of
> consciousness might be ascribed to simple, goal-seeking automata such as Grey
> Walter's turtles. 
> 
> These two notions do not fit well together. If the mammalian brain has a
> definite seat of feeling--whether localized or distributed in the brain or
> its functions--then the rest of the brain and its functions (most of it) is
> presumably outside of feeling, or more or less independent of it. And if most
> of the human brain is unfeeling, then surely we have no reason to ascribe
> feeling to a simple automaton.
> 
One way to resolve the apparent inconsistency is to think about what 
"agent" is involved. Suppose, as a thought experiment, that the brain 
of a person (not necessarily human, but a conscious being) is divided 
into regions A and B that correspond to different entities or 
"agents." This person communicates in English, and 
generally behaves and functions enough like a human that its consciousness can 
be tested in much the same way--plus we have advanced technology as 
needed. It is found that (1) region A is always active when the person is 
conscious, (2) when A is inactive the person is never conscious, and 
(3) A is the smallest possible region of the brain with these 
properties. So 
A, to all appearances, is the "seat of consciousness." By analysis, though, 
it is found that B is very much like A, except that B *only* 
communicates with A. When A is inactive, B may be active, but it has 
no "hookup" with the outside world and its activity is not normally 
apparent. In effect B is a fully conscious entity in its own right, 
but it is not the "person" that is represented in A. A uses B as a 
"slave"--with no direct awareness of any "feelings" B may 
have.

I'm no expert on the human brain, but it seems possible it could have 
regions like B. I've heard of certain creative 
people who can "work" on problems when they are not consciously aware 
of what they are doing, and they find answers. Perhaps they have 
"B-regions" that are actually conscious, to some degree, but it isn't 
"their" consciousness. Following this train of thought, we might 
imagine that much or all of the body's CNS is capable of consciousness to 
some extent, yet it isn't the "seat of consciousness" to the person 
who inhabits that body. 

In fact, there is an interesting conjecture in *The Hedonistic 
Neuron* (A. Harry Klopf, Hemisphere, 1982) along these lines. After 
hypothesizing that the midbrain-thalamic reticular formation
(MTRF) is the seat of consciousness, the author goes on to say (p. 
53): "The other brain structures probably experience pleasure and 
pain but, apparently, the nature of psychic fields is such that those 
fields associated with other brain structures do not significantly 
interact with the psychic field of the MTRF. Thus, we are no more 
aware of the psychic field associated with our own cortex, for 
example, than we are of the psychic field associated with someone 
else's cortex." It seems then that this "psychic field" is 
more-or-less what I have called an "agent."


To Thomas Donaldson, re #8016:

I could imagine a future in which we are very much more advanced than 
we are today, with many things in our "repertoire" that might be as 
incomprehensible to us now, say, as nuclear physics is to a frog. And 
indeed, I hope we are much more advanced--the prospect seems 
exciting. It is possble then, that our present mathematics and 
learning in general will have long since been forgotten, discarded, 
and yes, even permanently lost--but all this seems unlikely.

For one thing I think that there are certain things in our mathematics 
(integer arithmetic, computable functions, etc) that will be of 
continuing usefulness no matter how advanced we become. Second, even 
if these things should lose their primary usefulness, they will still have 
historical interest, and knowledge of them will be maintained 
for that reason alone. By analogy, we still maintain detailed 
information on Greek and Roman mythology, though we no longer believe 
these myths. 

Now, suppose we go further in our speculation and allow that future 
posthumans will also find no use for human historical information, 
and so will even discard that. If that is allowed, then effectively we 
are dead meat because what are our personal details except human 
historical information of a certain type? So really our very 
survival--as posthuman continuers of our present selves--depends on 
historical information (certain information at any rate) being regarded
as valuable enough to be preserved indefinitely.
 
As for me, I have fond memories of learning and doing math,
that I hope will survive in my 
posthuman period; this definitely includes comprehension of what I 
was doing! If I should change my mind later and want to 
discard these things, you could raise the question whether it is 
still "me."

Mike Perry

http://www.alcor.org

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