X-Message-Number: 815 Date: 08 May 92 05:01:04 EDT From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: Re: cryonics: #797 - #801 Dear Eric Messick: You are quite right that recovering the PROPER structure of a frozen brain is not an easy problem. I have been involved in arguing this issue with Ralph Merkle, who as you know has produced an elaborate argument that we will certainly be able to recover its structure in great detail AFTER it has been frozen ... but says nothing about recovering what that structure should have been. And examined rationally, that REPAIR is the crux of the cryonics problem. I found and still find no significant problem at all in just scanning (or otherwise) working out the UNREPAIRED condition of a frozen brain. Naturally as seen from that angle we'll simply have to learn some neurology, neuroanatomy, and neurophysiology even to discuss it. But of course, I've found that learning points in a direction of long term optimism. Best Thomas Date: 08 May 92 05:15:33 EDT From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: Re: cryonics: #802 - #808 To David Stodolsky: I feel a bit surprized. Up to now, you've generally said penetrating and interesting things. But as for developing devices which can read out our memories and brain structure, I detect a great deal of handwaving. It's one thing to imagine such devices as available 100 or 200 years from now, to be applied to someone in suspension already, and quite another to imagine them as being developed within (say) the next 40 years. That latter I consider quite out of the question. If you have any special reasons to believe that it is not, then by all means discuss them .... they seem to be key to what you are saying. Best Thomas Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=815