CryoNet #33435 - #33438
CryoNet <[email protected]> 8 Mar 2011 10:00:01 -0000
| Newsgroups | gmane.culture.science.cryogenics |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
CryoNet - Tue 8 Mar 2011
#33435: Re: CryoNet #33423 - #33427 [andrej x]
#33436: Cancer patient ending his life in Oregon, USA Today article m... [Rudi Hoffman]
#33437: Martine's reply to Bob Ettenger [Keith Henson]
#33438: Re: CryoNet #33428 - #33434 [Gerald Monroe]
Rate This Digest: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33435%2D33438
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Message #33435
References: <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 13:57:31 +0100
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33423 - #33427
From: andrej x <[email protected]>
Because of some problems with free host (it couldn't provide croatian
characters), I relocated my cryonics essay to this site:
http://krionika.pondi.hr
Andrej
Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33435
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Message #33436
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 09:17:14 -0500
Subject: Cancer patient ending his life in Oregon, USA Today article m...
From: Rudi Hoffman <[email protected]>
--00163641735901253f049de5277f
Hello, Cryonetters:
Someone forwarded this link to me today. It is about a cancer patient using
the Oregon "Death with Dignity" laws to voluntarily deanimate.
Hopefully, this will revive the nationwide discussion of giving humans
greater options on end of life choices.
The implications for cryonics are obvious.
I could be wrong, but it is my opinion that some type of "voluntary
deanimation" mechanism would seem to be VITAL and NECESSARY part of enabling
consistent optimized suspensions. To this end, myself and several activists
have been quietly trying to determine the optimal way to raise this issue
and make the changes necessary in law to enable legal, ethical assisted
suicide especially for cryoncists. Surprisingly, this is controversial even
among cryonicists, it would seem.
For the last 17 years, I have read with great dismay the details of multiple
suspension arrangements gone wrong. Just last year, Alcor has engaged in
two separate lawsuits as a function of members not being allowed to choose
the timing and circumstances of their deanimation. Don't take my word for
it, go to the Alcor and CI sites, dig into the "case summaries" and make
your own conclusions. When cryonics protocols are only done after hours,
days, weeks, and MONTHS after death and ischemia, cryonics looks...and may
be...fraudulent. I do not think it should be particularly controversial to
simply ask that a human being be "allowed" to have a suspension as good as a
dog.
As to the best way to go about influencing the culture to enable some type
of voluntary/ assisted/ death for cryonicists (and noncryos, for that
matter) I do not pretend to know.
But keeping this issue as a front runner in the "components making for
successful cryo-arrangements" makes sense. By the way, you must be an
Oregon citizen for six months to utilize Oregon law...and you are obviously
STILL not in Arizona or Michigan when you need to be. Welcome to the
continuing Dark Ages...when religions and superstition rules...
Here is the link:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-03-07-RW_dying07_ST_N.htm?sms_ss=email&at_xt=4d74d7889ebd7d7b%2C0
--
Warm Regards,
Rudi
Rudi Richard Hoffman CFP CLU ChFC
World's Leading Cryonics Insuror rudihoffman.com
Former Board Member Financial Planning Association fpafla.com
Board Member Salvation Army salvationarmy.org
Member Alcor Life Extension Foundation alcor.org,
Member Cryonics Institute cryonics.org
Certified Financial Planner(TM) CFP Board of Standards
Member World Transhumanist Association http://transhumanism.org/
Securities offered through Broker Dealer Financial Services Corp. Member
FINRA and SIPC.
--00163641735901253f049de5277f
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Message #33437
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 09:47:18 -0700
Subject: Martine's reply to Bob Ettenger
From: Keith Henson <[email protected]>
I forwarded Bob's request to Martine to Lori Rhodes, who I know as an
assistant to Martine.
Per below;
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Dear Keith,
You are too kind!
I did register however, in lieu of my spending the necessary time to
acquaint myself to the CryoNet posting protocol, if you would post Martine'e
response (below), I'd be most appreciative and shall continue to sing your
praises! Please feel free to use (if possible) the email address I register
with: [email protected]
Fondly, Lori
Martine's response to Bob:
On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 8:27 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Lori -- My responses to Dr. Ettinger are in black. Please feel free to
> post on Cryonet.
>
>> > -------- Original Message --------
>> > Subject: Contact with Martine for Ettenger?
>> > From: Keith Henson <[email protected]>
>> > Date: Sat, March 05, 2011 11:48 am
>> > To: Lori Rhodes <[email protected]>
>> >
>> >
>> > This showed up on Cryonet today.
>> >
>> > Keith
>> >
>> > Message #33421
>> > From: [email protected]
>> > Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 00:11:48 -0500 (EST)
>> > Subject: Terasem
>> >
>> > It is interesting, exasperating, and frustrating to read about Terasem and
>> > try to gauge its effects, its usefulness or counterproductivity.
>> >
Thanks for spending the time thinking about Terasem and its efforts.
>> > Aside from the fact that all of its leaders appear to be women, members of
>> > Terasem seem in many respects to resemble cryonicists, and indeed support
>> > for cryonics is one of its specific endeavors. But Terasem also seems to
>> > support a whole gamut of futuristic programs including various kinds of
>> > transhumanism and especially "mind uploading" (into a digital computer).
Your comment makes us smile, because it implies that cryonicist leaders do
not appear to be women. I'm thinking Linda Chamberlain and Tanya Jones --
great femaie cryonicist leaders. Anyway, yes, Terasem is gung ho on the
future.
>> >
>> > The evidence seems very clear to me that (1) "mind uploading" into a
>> > digital computer will never happen, and (2) support for the concept among
>> > cryonicists has a strong tendency to turn off potential supporters of
>> cryonics.
I have seen no evidence that mind uploading won't happen; to the contrary, I
think the evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that it will happen. My
support for mind uploading has not affected my support for cryonics in the
least. In fact, I continue to increase my efforts for cryonics, most
recently with the development of a Brevard County, FL support response
group.
>> >
>> > Some numbers would be useful, but I don't have them. How many belong to
>> > Terasem?
All humanity belongs to Terasem. It is defined as the collective
consciousness of humanity. That would be about 7 billion people. As it
says in Truth of Terasem 1.2.2 "Never mistake the organization for Terasem,
nor foresake the organization for expedience, convenience or misguidance."
> How many of these agree with the uploading notion?
Most transhumanists, and almost all Singulatarians, agree with uploading.
Many thousands of books have been purchased on these subjects, and many
thousands pay to go to these conferences. That is a pretty good guesstimate
of those who agree with the notions, plus or minus 50%.
> How many give how
>> > much money/effort to promotion of Terasem, and how much to cryonics?
Millions of people give money and effort to promoting the collective
consciousness of humanity, which is Terasem. As per Truth of Terasem 1.2.4
"Extroprian organizations arise from Terasem to outcompete entropy, as do
life forms from nurturing environments." I believe Alcor and its other
cryonics orgs publish some donation numbers.
>> >
>> > Any help would be appreciated. I have had no luck trying to communicate
>> > with Martine Rothblatt.
Robert -- Quoted below is your successful contact with me, and my responses,
from March of last year. Best always, and ad astra, of space, time and
mind.
Hi Robert -- See some responses in Green
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 11:03 PM, <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:
> Thank you for your kind words and your attention. Your
> achievements are impressive, as is the scope of your
> further ambitions for yourself and all of us.
Ambitions/ideas don't amount to much, if anything, if not implemented. Your
achievements are evidenced in the reality of the two good cryonic
preservation orgs today, plus their support contractors.
>
> You have explicitly acknowledged that your hypotheses
> are in need of justification, and I am confident that your
> sense of realism will tell you that there is a hard row
> ahead in overcoming cultural inertia sufficiently for
> substantial growth of a rationalist movement.
Our hypothesis are standard scientific hypotheses. Some experiments can
take a while to consummate, even decades. We have funded Terasem such that
it can continue to pursue the mindfile and cellular regeneration experiments
for decades until they are proven or disproven. A rationalist movement, per
se, is not needed for the pursuit of our scientific research at lifenaut.com
<http://lifenaut.com/>
>
> We need to find some way(s) to exploit our main asset,
> which is the capability of maintaining honesty or integrity
> even though the truth is not always pleasant and it is often
> painful to jettison your indoctrination. Shaw said something
> like, "To be in Hell is to drift; to be in Heaven is to steer."
Great quote! I have benefited enormously from being mentored by great
steersman as Gerard K. O'Neill (space colonies) and Ray Kurzweil. We all
share a positivist view that destiny is controllable, if efforts are
successful. Persistence is omnipotence.
>
> I wonder if you are aware of David Pearce, who wrote
> The Hedonistic Imperative (hedweb.com <http://hedweb.com/> )? He has gone
> furthest of anyone I know, and of course has had very little
> following. His goal is the total elimination of suffering for
> all animals on earth. I have avoided using the label of
> Hedonist for myself, but am reconsidering that. My
> philosophy is after all a kind of neohedonism. Fighting
> the use of a false characterization of hedonism (simple
> devotion to sensual pleasure) could be a helpful wedge.
I'm not familiar with him, and in any event I'm not much of a labeler. One
very big problem I have is that even though I've benefited from a speed
reading course, I am hopelessly awash in things to read that are yet unread.
It is probably because I'm at least as much disciplined, if not more, about
enjoying life via outdoors activities and time with my loving spice of 28
years than I am in doing 'a book a day.'
>
> I'm rambling, but the various organizations tied to futurism
> and transhumanity seem mostly to have faded, or at least
> fallen far short. We need somehow to salvage their assets
> and correct their errors.
>
I don't really take such a dim view. Let's take the WTA for example. It
has morphed into H+ and via their very slick monthly publication they are
now reaching100x if not 1000x more people than the stodgy WTA or the avante
garde Entropy folks ever reached -- although they are reaching them with the
same message. In other words, the number of people who are buying
transhumanism is vastly greater now than in the 70s - 90s. This is an
unmistakeable sign of success.
> I don't know how much I'll be able to do, or for how long,
> but I think we can use both our similarities and our
> differences to good account.
Your grasp far exceeds your reach; in this body or not, you are remaking the
world via your published ideas and via the other minds your memes have
colonized, like mine. I hope you build up a robust mindfile at lifenaut.
I'm sure will use our unities and diversities to synergistic effect!
>
> Thank you again.
The thanks is all mine to you. What little I have done is mostly to
encourage teams of very talented people to be all they can be -- which is to
transcend bodily and mental limitations. I am still pinching myself to have
the privilege to exchange thoughts with you. So you know me a little bit
better, some of my other heroes are Robert Heinlein, Thomas Starzl (on my
scientific advisory board), Margaret Meade (greatest quote), Thomas
Clarkson, and Robert Ettinger.
Dear Kkeith,
You are too kind!
I did register however, in lieu of my spending the necessary time to
acquaint myself to the CryoNet posting protocol, if you would post Martine'e
response (below), I'd be most appreciative and shall continue to sing your
praises! Please feel free to use (if possible) the email address I register
with: [email protected]
Fondly, Lori
Martine's response to Bob:
On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 8:27 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Lori -- My responses to Dr. Ettinger are in black. Please feel free to
> post on Cryonet.
>
>> > -------- Original Message --------
>> > Subject: Contact with Martine for Ettenger?
>> > From: Keith Henson <[email protected]>
>> > Date: Sat, March 05, 2011 11:48 am
>> > To: Lori Rhodes <[email protected]>
>> >
>> >
>> > This showed up on Cryonet today.
>> >
>> > Keith
>> >
>> > Message #33421
>> > From: [email protected]
>> > Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 00:11:48 -0500 (EST)
>> > Subject: Terasem
>> >
>> > It is interesting, exasperating, and frustrating to read about Terasem and
>> > try to gauge its effects, its usefulness or counterproductivity.
>> >
Thanks for spending the time thinking about Terasem and its efforts.
>> > Aside from the fact that all of its leaders appear to be women, members of
>> > Terasem seem in many respects to resemble cryonicists, and indeed support
>> > for cryonics is one of its specific endeavors. But Terasem also seems to
>> > support a whole gamut of futuristic programs including various kinds of
>> > transhumanism and especially "mind uploading" (into a digital computer).
Your comment makes us smile, because it implies that cryonicist leaders do
not appear to be women. I'm thinking Linda Chamberlain and Tanya Jones --
great femaie cryonicist leaders. Anyway, yes, Terasem is gung ho on the
future.
>> >
>> > The evidence seems very clear to me that (1) "mind uploading" into a
>> > digital computer will never happen, and (2) support for the concept among
>> > cryonicists has a strong tendency to turn off potential supporters of
>> cryonics.
I have seen no evidence that mind uploading won't happen; to the contrary, I
think the evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that it will happen. My
support for mind uploading has not affected my support for cryonics in the
least. In fact, I continue to increase my efforts for cryonics, most
recently with the development of a Brevard County, FL support response
group.
>> >
>> > Some numbers would be useful, but I don't have them. How many belong to
>> > Terasem?
All humanity belongs to Terasem. It is defined as the collective
consciousness of humanity. That would be about 7 billion people. As it
says in Truth of Terasem 1.2.2 "Never mistake the organization for Terasem,
nor foresake the organization for expedience, convenience or misguidance."
> How many of these agree with the uploading notion?
Most transhumanists, and almost all Singulatarians, agree with uploading.
Many thousands of books have been purchased on these subjects, and many
thousands pay to go to these conferences. That is a pretty good guesstimate
of those who agree with the notions, plus or minus 50%.
> How many give how
>> > much money/effort to promotion of Terasem, and how much to cryonics?
Millions of people give money and effort to promoting the collective
consciousness of humanity, which is Terasem. As per Truth of Terasem 1.2.4
"Extroprian organizations arise from Terasem to outcompete entropy, as do
life forms from nurturing environments." I believe Alcor and its other
cryonics orgs publish some donation numbers.
>> >
>> > Any help would be appreciated. I have had no luck trying to communicate
>> > with Martine Rothblatt.
Robert -- Quoted below is your successful contact with me, and my responses,
from March of last year. Best always, and ad astra, of space, time and
mind.
Hi Robert -- See some responses in Green
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 11:03 PM, <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:
> Thank you for your kind words and your attention. Your
> achievements are impressive, as is the scope of your
> further ambitions for yourself and all of us.
Ambitions/ideas don't amount to much, if anything, if not implemented. Your
achievements are evidenced in the reality of the two good cryonic
preservation orgs today, plus their support contractors.
>
> You have explicitly acknowledged that your hypotheses
> are in need of justification, and I am confident that your
> sense of realism will tell you that there is a hard row
> ahead in overcoming cultural inertia sufficiently for
> substantial growth of a rationalist movement.
Our hypothesis are standard scientific hypotheses. Some experiments can
take a while to consummate, even decades. We have funded Terasem such that
it can continue to pursue the mindfile and cellular regeneration experiments
for decades until they are proven or disproven. A rationalist movement, per
se, is not needed for the pursuit of our scientific research at lifenaut.com
<http://lifenaut.com/>
>
> We need to find some way(s) to exploit our main asset,
> which is the capability of maintaining honesty or integrity
> even though the truth is not always pleasant and it is often
> painful to jettison your indoctrination. Shaw said something
> like, "To be in Hell is to drift; to be in Heaven is to steer."
Great quote! I have benefited enormously from being mentored by great
steersman as Gerard K. O'Neill (space colonies) and Ray Kurzweil. We all
share a positivist view that destiny is controllable, if efforts are
successful. Persistence is omnipotence.
>
> I wonder if you are aware of David Pearce, who wrote
> The Hedonistic Imperative (hedweb.com <http://hedweb.com/> )? He has gone
> furthest of anyone I know, and of course has had very little
> following. His goal is the total elimination of suffering for
> all animals on earth. I have avoided using the label of
> Hedonist for myself, but am reconsidering that. My
> philosophy is after all a kind of neohedonism. Fighting
> the use of a false characterization of hedonism (simple
> devotion to sensual pleasure) could be a helpful wedge.
I'm not familiar with him, and in any event I'm not much of a labeler. One
very big problem I have is that even though I've benefited from a speed
reading course, I am hopelessly awash in things to read that are yet unread.
It is probably because I'm at least as much disciplined, if not more, about
enjoying life via outdoors activities and time with my loving spice of 28
years than I am in doing 'a book a day.'
>
> I'm rambling, but the various organizations tied to futurism
> and transhumanity seem mostly to have faded, or at least
> fallen far short. We need somehow to salvage their assets
> and correct their errors.
>
I don't really take such a dim view. Let's take the WTA for example. It
has morphed into H+ and via their very slick monthly publication they are
now reaching100x if not 1000x more people than the stodgy WTA or the avante
garde Entropy folks ever reached -- although they are reaching them with the
same message. In other words, the number of people who are buying
transhumanism is vastly greater now than in the 70s - 90s. This is an
unmistakeable sign of success.
> I don't know how much I'll be able to do, or for how long,
> but I think we can use both our similarities and our
> differences to good account.
Your grasp far exceeds your reach; in this body or not, you are remaking the
world via your published ideas and via the other minds your memes have
colonized, like mine. I hope you build up a robust mindfile at lifenaut.
I'm sure will use our unities and diversities to synergistic effect!
>
> Thank you again.
The thanks is all mine to you. What little I have done is mostly to
encourage teams of very talented people to be all they can be -- which is to
transcend bodily and mental limitations. I am still pinching myself to have
the privilege to exchange thoughts with you. So you know me a little bit
better, some of my other heroes are Robert Heinlein, Thomas Starzl (on my
scientific advisory board), Margaret Meade (greatest quote), Thomas
Clarkson, and Robert Ettinger.
>
>Robert Ettinger
Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33437
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Message #33438
References: <[email protected]>
From: Gerald Monroe <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 12:13:33 -0600
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33428 - #33434
--20cf307f335e55df10049de875ed
Jens Rabis : Here's what I think you are getting at. I'm just guessing, due
to the poor translation, but you're reminding me of another issue.
As we know from experience, most human memory is "recognition". Most of our
memories as human beings are vague enough that we cannot directly recall
them - we have to be exposed to some trigger and we remember pieces of the
past. A reasonable assumption is that this is true at the hardware level :
the reason our memories are like that is because the brain doesn't have
enough capacity (due to noise) to accurately store most of our memories
directly, indstead storing them implicitly.
Well, the freezing process and the illness months prior to death is going to
do considerable damage to our memories. We can only hope that current
freezing techniques save enough for revival to be worthwhile. In any case,
it would probably help the entities restoring us if they had some reference
points - videos and photographs and journals of events we were at and
thoughts that we experienced. This very well might be a key - if the
entities restoring us could locate a specific event's actual neural traces
in our brains, they could possibly more accurately decode the patterns our
specific brain uses to store information, and solve for unknown variables
more accurately.
To show what I mean, let's talk a little math. Suppose that experience X
causes one particular synapse of many to be updated and now it has a firing
potential contribution of 0.2. (on a scale of 0 to 1, with 1 being a 100%
chance that the target neuron will fire if the neuron supplying this
particular synapse with an AP. a 0.2 means 20%). Experience X was a very
strong memory - perhaps a key event during your wedding - and over time the
memory is accessed multiple times, causing the brain to somehow reinforce
the structure holding the memory. Anyways, the patient becomes ill, dies,
and is cryopreserved under average conditions for the present day. All this
trauma, including the freezing, has damaged the structure holding the
memory. A super-intelligent entity in the future analyzes the atomic
mapping of that synapse and calculates a firing potential contribution of
0.1 based upon this entity's vast knowledge of neuroscience.
Well, now the being putting you back together is going to get it wrong.
If the entity has no way of correcting for unknown damage, the final result
won't be pretty. But suppose it has a videodisc, stored in the salt mines
for a few hundred years, of that same wedding. And somehow the entity can
isolate the actual mapping of the event to a section of neural tissue and
figures out what the firing potential of that specific neuron SHOULD be if
it's storing that particular bit of data. Just a linear equation here A*b =
C, or 0.2 * b = 0.1. b = 0.5, so the entity knows that neurons in this
region need their firing potentials boosted by 2. And it uses that as a
clue for other regions of the brain.
Please realize : the true complexity would be immense. It would be many
equations interacting, with many unknown variables. The math for this may
not have even been invented yet - but even though I cannot describe the
math, I can say that more information always helps. The entity would need
the kind of brain power to look at 7 * 10^14 synapses to do this kind of
analysis, and would almost certainly have to be sentient. This is one of
the reasons I am in favor of 'electronic uploads' - because if the humans of
300 years from now are no more intelligent than those of us today, they will
not be able to bring back patients cryopreserved with significant damage.
But if you took a brilliant scientist or engineer, cryopreserved under
near-perfect conditions with future advances in the technology, and made an
electronic analogue of this person, said person could probably solve many of
these difficult problems aided by millions or billions of times the brain
performance of a human alive today.
But what it comes to is : in theory, you should journal as much of your life
as possible. Save as many photos and videos as you can, and so on. That
stuff needs to be saved on media that will survive for centuries and given
to the cryonics provider on a routine basis for long term storage. To be
honest, I am not doing this and I don't know if I ever will make the time to
do so. This is more of an "in theory, you should avoid all trans-fats" kind
of message.
Gerald
Monroe
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