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

[Slawomir Paliwoda]

> > I answered this question in my reply to John K. Clark:
> >
> > > 1) Prove to me that you are the original and not the copy.
> >
> > Suppose the location of any mind in the future is recorded using 4
> > parameters (x,y,z,t). At the moment of creation, my clone's mind will
> > necessarily occupy a different location than my original mind.
> >Therefore, I will be able to prove my originality by presenting a log
> > detailing  locations of my mind in space and time, which will show
> >different values for  x, y, z, and t from the values of someone who
> > claims to be me. As long as I can show that the set of space-time
> > position parameters for any two minds never share the same exact
> > values, I will always be able to prove identity of any mind.
>
> I think you and I are in agreement Slawomir. I think you system is
> cogent and has better explanatory power and utility in that it suggests
> ways by which progress may be made.
>
> I suspect that this recommendation will be unnecessary, that you will
> probably do it anyway, but I think you should write down in one place
> your own view of cryonics defining your key terms "identity" "mind"
> "person" etc

> I'd also suggest you keep the questions that you have been asked
> in a sort of FAQ.

It's a good idea and I've thought about doing something like that for few
years now. The reason why I haven't done that yet is people's apathy when it
comes to thinking about PI, perhaps developed over the years of frustrating
and noisy discussions about identity. It seems like whenever the issue is
raised, people are convinced the topic is too difficult and messy and that
no solutions exist. And, to my amazement, this applies to transhumanists
too. How do you talk to a person who claims "identity is an illusion"? I may
think that, if given few hours with any rational person, I would have an
excellent chance of explaining the concepts, but if I know I can't make that
person even agree to really listen in the first place, my chances of
explaining anything to anyone will be very small. When I figure out how to
make people pay attention, that's when I'll commit to writing it *all* down.
Right now I don't think my ideas about PI would have enough audience to
justify my future effort to write them all down. I'm not going to commit to
writing something that would need to be the size of a small book if I know
people won't read it, though maybe an evolving FAQ model will work. Thanks
for the suggestion.


> Now about your above comment. I want to get clarification.
>
> The time parameter is clear necessary and I agree. Your x, y, z
>  3D spatial parameters are point spaces I presume?


Yes.


> Even though
> the mind is not a point. It may have some conceptual spacial
> midpoint. The centre point of an inflated balloon actually has no
> balloon there. But the balloon boundaries like a brain's boundary
> delimit the balloon.


Mind is indeed not a point. What I mean by a mind process is the sum of all
the little processes inside the brain that contribute to emergence of mind.
My conceptual model of an overall mind process is a cloud of bubbling
electrons in space delimited by the space occupied by the brain.
(Incidentally, you may notice that this model focuses on the activity that
will always be substrate-independent). Therefore, mind is not a point, but,
conceptually, a symphony of points that these electrons map in space and
time. By tracking the trajectories of all the matter points in space-time
that contribute to the emergence of mind, I'm able to track the trajectory
of the overall mind process, i.e., the location of mind itself.



> That is, it is not each atoms that it is relevant to track they can come
> and go (and indeed each atom could have an identity and trajectory
> of its own in and out of the personal identity but that's the identity of
> an atom not the identity of the "person"). Dito synapses.


Exactly. This is where the benefits of grounding identity in a mind, and
defining that mind as a process, come in. I track the trajectories of only
what's relevant to the process because it is that activity of matter that
causes a mind, not the inactive matter itself.


>
> You cannot say exactly how large the mind is spatially (volumetrically)
> can you?


The issue of size is orthogonal to what matters the most for defining
identity, namely, where and when that mind is in the Universe.


>The mind process will always by spatial definition run in some
> positive volume of space.


..and time.


>
> There may be some parts of what we understand to be the brain
> which are actually superfluous spatially to the region in which
> the mind process works. As we discover what these are we may
> scientifically reduce the space of the mind-process but never below
> zero.
>
> Agreed? Or is some of the above a misunderstanding of your
> position.


I agree completely. Since I only care about identity of the mind, as opposed
to the identity of a kidney or leg, I only care about the identity of things
that generate that mind. What causes a mind to emerge is an overall mind
process (=the sum of all the little processes defined by the flow of matter
in space-time inside the brain or future computational mediums suited to
perform mind processes), so I only need to focus on those *particular* flows
of matter that contribute to that mind process. For example, if an electron
at, say, X, Y, Z, and 477th femtosecond position moves to X, Y, Z, and 478th
femtosecond, and that flow turns out to be contributing to a non-mind
process, then neither that particular flow, nor the electron in it, need to
be considered during identity verification (because maybe that particular
flow occurred inside the heart muscle).

Slawomir