CryoNet #32847 - #32852

CryoNet - Wed 22 Sep 2010

    #32847: unnatural selection [Charles in Arizona]
    #32848: to Jens [Ettinger]
    #32849: minds changed! [Ettinger]
    #32850: Re: Identity is as Identity Does [Perry E. Metzger]
    #32851: Re: Identity is as Identity Does [Keith Henson]
    #32852: No Subject [david pizer]

Rate This Digest: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32847%2D32852

Administrivia

To subscribe to CryoNet, send email to:
    [email protected]
with the subject line (not message _body_):
    subscribe
To unsubscribe, use the subject line:
    unsubscribe
To post a message to CryoNet, send your message to:
    [email protected]
from the same address to which you are aubscribed.
Send questions, comments, or feedback to [email protected]
with "CryoNet" or "cryonics" somewhere in the Subject line.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #32847
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 02:38:17 -0700
Subject: unnatural selection
From: Charles in Arizona <[email protected]>

Brian Wowk writes, "evolution selects against humans who spend
time worrying about whether sleep, anesthesia, or biostasis endangers
personal identity."

Unfortunately, among life forms in the internet ecology, this is no longer true.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32847

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #32848
From: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 07:21:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: to Jens

You wrote:
 

>Important question is: Is there a written last will, such as  
cryo-customers,
>cryo-friends, cryo-family members want to  resurrect?!

I'm not sure what this means. If it refers to possible requests or  
instructions of patients, any patient may leave a record of his requests or  
preferences, and while there is no formal policy that I recall, I'm certain the  
future directors of CI will do their best to accomodate any reasonable 
recorded  request of a patient.
 
Be well.
 
Bob


 Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32848

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #32849
From: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 07:38:51 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: minds changed!

Brian Wowk wrote in part:
 
>there are two things I've never seen: (a) A truly new argument, and  (
>b) Someone change their min d.
 
Until now! Through  sheer stubbornness I have repeatedly tried  different 
wordings to try to make clear to others what seems clear to me,  namely, that 
uploading is unlikely to be successful no matter how advanced the  
technology may be.
 
In the last week or two on the CI forum Cryonics 
[email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected])  there was a lively exchange,  and a 
few who started out insisting that uploading  must succeed ended by  conceding 
that it might not. One of those was Jones Murphy, a very bright and  well 
informed individual.
 
Whether this will have any importance of course is unclear, but it gives me 
 some satisfaction.

 Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32849

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #32850
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 08:04:31 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Identity is as Identity Does
References: <[email protected]>

A couple of nits in Brian Wowk's recent email:
> In all that time there are two things I've never seen: (a) A truly
> new argument, and (b) Someone change their mind.

I've (partially) changed my mind over time on the topic, though I'll
be coy and not say in what direction.

> I have come to believe that the question of whether a
> computationally equivalent duplicate of a human mind (assuming
> equivalence in this context is even definable) constitutes a
> continuation of the original person may be objectively
> unanswerable.  It's almost a matter of taste, like alternative
> interpretations of quantum mechanics that assume different
> underlying realities that give exactly the same measurable results.

It may be that you are right on the subject of "continuity of
consciousness", especially absent any sort of rigorous definitions of
the terms of discourse.

However, QM is not quite so hopeless.  As it turns out, not all
interpretations of QM are externally indistinguishable. For example,
the GRW interpretation was recently ruled out by a sort of global
extension of Bell's theorem.

See: http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf (and ignore
the paper's name, as it is deceptive.)

I note that the defenders of GRW have refused to surrender, but
others no longer care to listen to them much, just as Bell's Theorem
more or less wrecked the hidden variables crowd.

Methods to falsify or fail to falsify other interpretations of Quantum
Mechanics might also eventually be developed. I would not assume that
none can ever exist.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		[email protected]

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32850

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #32851
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 08:58:50 -0700
Subject: Re: Identity is as Identity Does
From: Keith Henson <[email protected]>

On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 2:00 AM, Brian Wowk <[email protected]> wrote:

> I read with interest Bob Ettinger's recent remarks about Mark Gubrud's
> piece in The New Atlantis.
>
> http://futurisms.thenewatlantis.com/2010/06/why-transhumanism-wont-work.html
>
> Although I have not been around as long Bob, I have nevertheless
> observed arguments about uploading, identity duplication, and related
> subjects for decades.  In all that time there are two things I've
> never seen: (a) A truly new argument, and (b) Someone change their
> mind.  What is seen are people who passionately believe they are
> correct, and who believe that they have just the argument to finally
> convince the other side that they are right.  They never do.

There are very similar arguments going on the extropian list at
present.  I responded to one of them and it seems appropriate to copy
it into this thread.  It's an engineering perspective that flat out
ignores the philosophy.  (Incidentally, well stated Brian.)

***************

I read all the arguments about uploading including what Hans Moravec
said about one way to do it back in the late 80s and early 90s.  I
have not seen a single new thought about this subject in years.

Much of the discussed methods violated medical ethics or engineering
practice or both.

I had to consider this for "The Clinic Seed" chapter.

Given the exceedingly fine scale that nanotechnology is expected to
operate on, infiltrating the brain to the level of every synapse could
be done.  I don't think it's needed to go that fine, cells or perhaps
even cortical columns may be enough to see what a brain is doing.
With some amount of monitoring you could be reasonably confident that
an emulation was close enough to be acceptable.  (I.e., within noise
limits it would do what a brain does.)

In the process of reaching this level of detail we would fully
understand how memory is created, consolidated and accessed.  A neural
interface of that time would allow us to access the stored collective
data humans have amassed as if it were our own memory--somewhat the
way we use search engines to locate data today.

With this level of understanding we could write memory to a local
human brain as well, probably well beyond the normal rate that humans
can form memories.

Given this level of technology (and it's hard to see why it would not
come about) it should be clear that every step from unaugmented human
to a fully disconnected from the body uploaded state is reversible
without even losing conscious awareness.

So you can try it and if you don't like it, stop at any step and
either stay there or revert all the way back.

My opinion is that it would be addictive and darn few people would go
back to living in bodies except maybe on vacations (perhaps forced
vacations).

Being somewhat conservative (like most engineers) I would probably
keep the old brain updated so I could slip back into a body and go for
a walk.  But then I still have a working (I think) Apple II.

Keith

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32851

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #32852
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 09:36:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: david pizer <[email protected]>

Jon said:  "I declare this: If the Arizonian economy do not revive Alcor Patients before the important year of 2200, Arizonian people will be considered as lazy and slow."

If that happens I guess we will then be considered to be like you?

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32852

----------------------------------------------------------------------

End of CryoNet Digest
*********************