A view on cryonics (was Re: [extropy-chat] Bad Forecasts!)

[Jef Allbright]

Slawomir Paliwoda wrote:

>
>I'm not sure how you arrive at this conclusion, but even if one can conclude
>from this that people have souls, this is definitely not the *only*
>conclusion that we can draw here. Much more effective alternative is to
>focus on subjective experience because that's the only thing that stays the
>same throughout memory fluctuations or changes in personality. I want people
>to think about identity from the perspective of subjective experience rather
>than from the perspective of memories and personalities.
>
>  
>
Key point:  Subjective experience certainly does not "stay the same" in 
any measurable sense.  Subjective experience is highly malleable, 
subject to gaps, distortions, and revisions.  The conceptual difficulty 
is because the only way we have to interrogate subjective experience is 
via the same mechanism that creates the illusion that it is whole and 
continuous.  This is the crux of the endless debate about qualia, the 
so-called "hard problem of consciousness", and personal identity.  
Descartes was fundamentally mistaken.

- Jef