[extropy-chat] Altered genes let roundworms wiggle longer

[Robert J. Bradbury]

I'm not going to respond to Brett's points with a case by case
argument for the sake of trying to be brief.  I will make two
points.

First, I believe that Greg Fahy at 21st Century Medicine is
making good progress with using vitrification for the preservation
of at least some organs.  Investigating in PubMed and/or contacting
them directly would probably confirm or deny this.

I also believe there is a lot of scientific area that remains
to be explored with respect to cells that can tolerate freezing
(in areas ranging from antifreeze proteins to the repair of
damage caused by freezing).

Second, with respect to the "self" debate (relating perhaps to choices
with respect to reanimation style) -- this has come up a number
of times on the ExI list over the years.  I do not believe it
has ever been resolved.  In part it remains a difficult philosophical
problem to exactly what "self" is.

There are going to be people who insist that they want the original
atoms in the original form.  For example if one looks at my solution
to the Israel-Palestinian problem of eventually using nanotech to
duplicate the country and splitting the atoms such that each party
gets half people who have the opinion "I want nothing less than
the original" will not be satisfied.

Now on the other side of the fence there are people who will be
comfortable with "if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck
and quacks like a duck -- its a duck".

I do not see a way to resolve this debate.  I would simply hold
that in my opinion that the closer one can get to the pattern
and expression of "Robert" then the closer one is to my "self"
surviving (which is one reason why I raised the possible
reconstruction of Robert from a database of information about
Robert a month or so ago [which if I recall correctly Harvey completely
dissed]).  Now the only problem is that if the technology is
good enough (i.e. not dealing with reconstructions from an information
base but dealing with reconstructions from the actual molecular framework)
one could easily end up with a dozen Robert's in operational condition.
And I'm not going to inflict that upon the list (at least not today :-)).

Robert

P.S. It would however be an interesting debate as to how many copies
of specific individuals it would take to make the ExI list non-functional.
Hmmmm... seems like we need a revision to the posting limits with respect
to how many messages one (or ones copies) can send each day.