[extropy-chat] Cryonics should be preserving life, not just identity.

Heartland velvethum at hotmail.com
Sat Jan 28 12:19:13 UTC 2006


On 1/27/06, Heartland <velvethum at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Cryonics makes no sense if it tries to preserve the identity of the
> original while forgetting to preserve the *life* of the original.


Actually that may be the case for you but may not be the case for everyone.
I think my father might not prefer to continue on an exteremely extended
life if many of the people he has cared about have died (my mother for
example).  I proposed something along these lines a few weeks ago but it did
not lead to an active thread.

Briefly they are:
1) Total reanimation of the "thread" (i.e. *you* get to run who *you*
consider yourself to be).

2) Total recovery of all of the memories of a life preserved within a
brain.  Though presumably if these were uploaded these would allow one to
"inhabit" the mind of that person.  (Do I really want to be Paris Hilton?)

3) Total recovery of all of the "good" memories of a life preserved within a
brain.  E.g. my father might prefer to pass along his memories of his
childhood, my paternal grandfather (whom I never knew), my great
grandfather, etc. but not pass on his memories of WWII.
>

These would be good options to have but it seems that they all fall under 
the task of preserving identity (memory of who you are plus memory of your 
life experiences). Unfortunately, these options/requirements do not preserve 
the actual *life*. In other words, they do not preserve the original 
presence of being of the original thread that carves out unique trajectory 
in space-time. Instead, the original trajectory ends and a different one is 
created with the same identity (memories) of the original. Unfortunately, 
the side effect of this is that the original life ends forever.


>I suspect this would require something like bequeathing ones brain to a
trust and allowing information withdrawal from the trust under carefully
controlled situations (similar to today's medical ethics evaluation
committees dealing with things like allowable organ donations, transplants,
etc.).  In cases not foreseen this might require partial "reactivation" of
the evaluation centers (which could be connected to the emotional centers)
of the mind in order to evaluate a withdrawal request which was
unanticipated with the trust was established.  It gets very dicey if it was
specified in the memory trust establishment that full "thread" activations
were not allowed.

Robert
>

I would like my original brain to be fully restored and operational. This 
would restore both life and the identity of the original. Subsequent mind 
substrate changes would have to be performed by Moravec transfer.

sp 



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