X-Message-Number: 822
Date: 13 May 92 02:05:49 EDT
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: cryonics: #817

Dear David:
Fortunately or unfortunately, we are NOT computers. Frankly, I don't
think we will ever choose to be. (Enhancing our abilities, including our
mental abilities, is NOT the same as becoming or uploading ourselves into
computers). Furthermore, although I have no doubt that someday it will be
possible to store a sufficiently complete description of a person so that
they can be recovered (including their identity), doing so, as I'm sure 
you see, is not the same as "uploading" that person.

I hope you have arranged for your own suspension, since terminal illness
or catastrophic accidents can come with no warning, even to the most
intelligent. Yes, I think it is the best we can do now; and my own sense
of how our real brains really work suggests to me that it will be a long
time (certainly more than a few decades, conceivably more than a century)
before we will work out how to reliably capture everything about someone's
brain at the level of detail required to revive them. That problem is very
much NOT the same as devising machines that show some signs of intelligence,
which will come much sooner.
				Thomas Donaldson

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