[extropy-chat] Thoughts on Schiavo

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:

My own experience with my mother proves to me that someone can come
back from the very edge of tissue liquefaction, regain their memories
and personality.

> I can understand some Xians getting all worked up about this case,
> since 
> they might believe that the living, thinking, feeling identity of
> Terry S. 
> resides in her inviolate non-material soul, which is presumably still
> hovering around her brain stem. Few on this list would accept such an
> understanding.

I would think that, given what we know of some cases of person who have
lost immense amounts of brain tissue but are still functional cognizant
human beings, that the potential for future technology to regenerate
destroyed brain tissue would be commonly accepted here.

> 
> Of course there is no valid comparison with a cryonically suspended
> human, although that comparison has sometimes been drawn (but not,
> I feel sure, by the weeping faithful keeping vigil). Such a dead
> body is also flatlined, but the brain has not been significantly
> eaten away, just stopped. Future science might revive those frozen
> neurons, but they have to be there in the first place. Someone might
> eventually clone a Terri twin, but her history would of course be
> utterly different.

I seem to recall that Robert Anton Wilson's daughter is frozen at Alcor
with a rather serious amount of brain damage that is currently
considered unrepairable today. It does not seem to me that list
participants are domonstrating an apropriate level of optimistic
extropian zanshin.



Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/