[extropy-chat] "Dead Time" of the Brain.

[Heartland]

Heartland:
> Cryonics preserves types of life, not
> instances of life so I see no point in signing up for suspension. Is it
> depressing
> that death is irreversible? Of course it is, but it's true.

Eugen:
"While cryonics is not a safe bet (several critical factors are yet unknown)
I wonder what makes you discard a distinct possibility. I presume you
would reject general anaesthesia or artificial coma, too? Even if it would
save your life, because it would be somebody else's life, not yours?"

That's right. Life is a subjective experience of being in the present moment.
Whenever an instance of that experience ends, this resulting state becomes
functionally equivalent to a state of life before conception and after death (i.e.,
what is currently considered as "death"). In all these 3 states you experience
nothing. This is the true essence of death.

If my current instance ever reaches the death state I really don't care what
happens next or if my type of mind gets instantiated again or not. As an instance 
I'm dead. As a
good person I can only try to ensure that the next instance of SE based on my mind
gets a better quality of experience then my current one so I would not reject
general anesthesia because living with pain and suffering is pointless. The above
statement is nothing more than an expression of my own meaning of life theory I
developed few years ago which aims to optimize the *quality and quantity* of
subjective experience. Trying to create best possible environment for future
instances of SE enhances the quality of my current instance of SE because I would
feel good about helping others, especially if others are the future instances of my
mind.

The only hope my current instance can have for immortality is definitely not
cryonics, but that some entity in the future invents time machine that will go back
and upload my current instance using Moravec Transfer. There's just no other way to
do this.

I expect that one of fundamental poshuman rights should be the right to maintain
current instance of mind process. As of now, we, humans, are living in barbaric
times. Death comes often and there's nothing we can do about it. And that makes me
very sad.

S.