CryoNet #32512 - #32514

CryoNet - Sun 28 Mar 2010

    #32512: Re: CryoNet #32511 [robomoon]
    #32513: Identity and Value [2Arcturus]
    #32514: One up on Egyptian mummies [oberon]

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Message #32512
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:39:21 +0100 (CET)
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32511

So here's robomoon's brain which should be called the RoHuBrain (Robomoon's Human Brain). It's actually my human brain inside my own head. Yet, it's welcoming various sorts of uploading. With this it would be great to lead a healthy life so that it takes many decades before my body ceases being alive. Then the body might be a corpse legalized by a death certificate and not a person. So it's not supposed to become the same person again anyways.

It would be great to create an artificial RoMoBrain (RoboMoon's brain). If the RoHuBrain wouldn't end up in an urn despite of cryonics organizations being actually not ready to sign me up with the limited funding I've offered, it might be suspended. When it's so lucky, neuronal structure from the RoHuBrain will be copied, otherwise my DNA and mindfiles should be preferred.

The organization responsible for uploading should copy much data from RoHuBrain's neuronal outline supposed being in connection with my longterm memory. The data should be copied from the RoHuBrain into the RoMoBrain. The body for the RoMoBrain could be a robot or a cybercreature, whatever. That body should be called robomoon, like me, animated with lots of AI, of cause. If I wouldn't remember myself the way I hoped before, that's the risk I'm willing to take.

If people don't decide whether the body with the RoMoBrain will be the same or not be me, that's fine. If I'm not being the chosen surviver as a biological human, that's fine too. If the body with the RoMoBrain wouldn't be a person despite of an eventually changing definition of that word, why not? Will a person only be a human, so what? Will there never be an autonomous robomoon good enough to deserve legal rights being fairly applicable like those of an incorporated firm or a large business corporation, for instance?

> Message #32511
> From: [email protected]
> Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:49:48 EDT
> Subject: identity & value
> 
> I don't know why my format is coming through so distorted,
> with gaps and blurs.
>  
>  
> Jordan asks, "Why do you deny that the exact copy 
> constructed out of organic molecules would not have 
> the same value and importance as the original? "
>  
>  
> Value to whom? If you are talking about factual
> feelings of importance--how a doomed original would
> really feel--then certainly many people would not be
> consoled by survival of a copy, although some would,
> or say or think they would. If I were told that I would
> be "beamed up," even if I  believed the copying could
> be done correctly, I would consider it a death sentence.
> You apparently would not. How would you feel if you
> knew or guessed that in the far future, quite by chance,
> in a far galaxy a copy of you would develop? Would
> that console you?
*message cut*

//


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Message #32513
References: <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:44:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: 2Arcturus <[email protected]>
Subject: Identity and Value

--0-145623194-1269715467=:87856

We may perceive ourselves as a thing, an object, like a rock, whose molecules persist across time statically. Yet we know enough now to know our bodies are not static objects like that - by inhaling and exhaling and eating and excreting, our bodies are dynamic patterns, perpetually being made and unmade and made again. We look at a cloud and we may think, that is a persistent object, but its water molecules are condensing and evaporating and there is no persistence in shape or position as it arises and dissipates from its environment.

Our gut instincts evolved, just like our bodies and all the rest of us. Never before in the history of life on earth has an animal been able to transfer itself from one body to another. So it is natural our instincts evolved to tell us that our survival depends on the survival of our bodies, the continuity of our particular bodies. But in this case, we have a right to question our instincts based on new information. We can understand why it is natural to be troubled by the idea of a discontinuity of body, but we can't let this troubled feeling be the last word. Is the continuity we want the continuity of a particular sequence of biochemical reactions? Or is the continuity we want the continuity of our _selves_ - our personhood, our memories, our personality, our unique way of existing in t
 he world, our 'souls'?



--0-145623194-1269715467=:87856

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Message #32514
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 19:25:06 -0800 (PST)
From: [email protected]
Subject: One up on Egyptian mummies

[Pine oil seems to offer a tremendous improvement for mummification. I wonder if there might not be a similar "trick" which could boost the quality of organ cryopreservation enough so that this would become a commercial reality.]

http://www.thanhniennews.com/2010/Pages/One-up-on-Egyptian-mummies.aspx

One up on Egyptian mummies 
Last updated: 3/23/2010 16:07 
 
Vietnamese mummies did not have their organs removed and their bodies were supple and fragrant when unearthed

Thanks to pine oil, King Le Du Tong's body remained in rather good condition during the 46 years it was kept at the Hanoi-based National History Museum before being reburied earlier this year
She looked like a sick woman who was asleep.
The thing was - she had been sleeping for several centuries, underground.
The body of Pham Thi Dang, second wife of Dang Dinh Tuong - a high-ranking official under the Le Dynasty (1428-1788) was found 42 years ago in Van Cat Hamlet, in the northern province of Nam Ha (now Nam Dinh).
"We had excavated many mummies, but we couldn't help being shocked when seeing her, because she looked as if she were just a sick woman who was sleeping," says Do Dinh Truat.
Decades after studying mummies discovered across the country - from the bodies of royalty and senior officials to the common man, archeologists Do Van Ninh and Truat are still amazed by the ancient Vietnamese technique of preserving bodies.
Despite not having their internal organs and brains, as in Egyptian mummies, their bodies were usually found in good condition - soft with joints still supple after being buried for hundreds of years, they said.
Some still retained the facial features they had when they were alive, Truat said.
In the case of Dang, the veteran archeologist even asked a local woman who was at the same age as Dang, 60 years old, to stand next to the body "to see who was more beautiful."
Pine oil
According to the archeologists, one of the secrets in the Vietnamese techniques of preserving bodies was pine oil, which they say has been found in most mummies

Archeologist Do Dinh Truat with a clod of solid essential pine oil found in an old coffin
The late Prof. Do Xuan Hop, known to many as the "King of Anatomy" was one of the scientists who studied the body of King Le Du Tong (1679-1731) which was found in 1958 in the central province of Thanh Hoa. Hop noted that the king was placed in a coffin that contained lots of pine oil.
The oil made quilted blankets, clothes and shrouds oily, while "the fragrance soaked into his skin and through skin into his internal organs, so [he was] soaked with aroma," Hop wrote, noting that betel leaves and areca buried with him also remained fresh.
Thanks to the oil, the Le Dynasty king's body remained in rather good condition during the 46 years it was kept at the Hanoi-based National History Museum before being reburied earlier this year despite the harsh weather in the north, scientists said.
The importance of pine oil was stressed in another article by Hop.
He wrote that the body of a royal wife from the Trinh Lords (1545- 1787), found in 1957, was only examined by scientists a month later. During that month the body was taken out of the coffin and buried in the field for three days before being put into another coffin flooded with water (though it is not clear why this was done). However, it still gave out the pine oil's aroma.
The body was later washed five times, yet the aroma didn't fade away, Hop wrote.
Truat also recalled his first impressions of the mummies he saw. "Many people think mummies must stink, but amazingly, they give out the aroma of some wood." The archeologist said he even once tasted the water at the bottom of a mummy's coffin and found that it wasn't fetid, but tasted like turpentine.
More than props
Besides the pine oil, other things like blankets, pillows and clothes which were considered customary belongings for placement in the coffins, worked in fact to get rid of the humidity in coffins, Ninh said.
This was also true of the tam that tinh (Seven-star plank), which was usually placed under the body.
Under Taoism, the plank with seven holes placed in the shape of Ursa Major, or the Great Bear constellation, was believed to protect the deceased's spirit from evil spirits and ghosts. But it also helped drain water to the 20- centimeter thick layer of roasted rice below, Ninh said
The roasted rice also acted to help remove humidity.
Ninh said dying people usually had some ruou que (cinnamon wine) to lengthen their life for some time to meet all of their children, and they would be washed with the wine again after their death. The wine would help clean the body, within and outside, decreasing the harmful effects of bacteria, he surmised.
It was also a custom that Vietnamese people lit candles in the coffin before putting the body in, and this also helped create a vacuum and kill bacteria, according to Ninh.
Enduring wood
Truat said one of the most noticeable things about Vietnamese mummies was that they were mostly interred in coffins made of ngoc am (or pemou wood) which was highly resistant to termites and bacteria.
The coffins were made by highly skilled carpenters, airsealed and then plastered them with a mixture of raw paints, and sawdust with or without a sticky substance from pine trees mixed with rice paste. Some coffins were made with two layers, with the outer coffins as thick as 0.5 meters, made with lime, sand, molasses or honey, and sometimes strengthened with shell crumbles (not made of wood).
Some outer coffins were so strong that it took 15 young men 40 days to break it, like the one that Nguyen Thi Hieu, believed to be a family member of King Gia Long (1802-1820) under the Nguyen Dynasty, was buried in. Her body, found 16 years ago, is being kept at the Ho Chi Minh City History Museum.
"At the Thuy Xuan Beach in the northern province of Thai Binh, an outer coffin was smoothened by waves over the years, yet locals didn't realize that (it was an outer coffin) until they accidentally excavated it and found the complete body of a young lady," Truat said, demonstrating that the body was not damaged even though the coffin was buried on the coast and exposed to factors like salt.
Dr. Phan Bao Khanh, who has studied many mummies in the central region, said the Vietnamese technique of preserving bodies was "a very human way to preserve bodies, as no knives or scissors were used to take out the deceased's brains and internal organs."

But it was a pity that this knowledge has been lost with the passage of time, he said.

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