[extropy-chat] Thoughts on Schiavo

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Damien Broderick wrote:
> 
> 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.

Even if the cerebral cortex is severely atrophied, there might be enough 
data there to reconstruct Schiavo.  It's not a question of biological 
healing, but a question of information theory, as I once said of 
cryonics also.

If I were Schiavo's husband I would not keep her on the feeding tube. 
I'd remove the feeding tube, wait for clinical death (damn the law), and 
then freeze Schiavo immediately before any further atrophy occurred - as 
should have been done years ago.

If that wasn't possible for some reason, I would keep Schiavo on the 
feeding tube and hope an SI could reconstruct her.

I once thought of calling what I served the "ethos of life".  I guess 
the "culture of life" business has ruined that terminology for public 
usage.  Yet life is worth serving.  Where there's intelligence there's hope.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence