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

[Brett Paatsch]

Slawomir Paliwoda :


> Brett,
>
> You're making some interesting points about the benefits of communicating
> ideas publically which make me reevaluate my "strategy". Thanks.

Good. Your welcome.

>
> > > 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.
> >
> > I'd encourage care when arguing by analogy - using words like
> > "symphony".
>
>
> My experience is that it is difficult to explain mind process. I'm not
> sure how to give a sense of what it is without using analogies.

I understand. I am not saying stop doing it. Just be aware that you are
doing it in a communication medium which is not one person one
listener/reader. Your posts will sometimes be read by individual list
readers not as part of an entire thread but just as single posts. Some
of the objections you will be asked to deal with will arise not because
they haven't necessarily been dealt with (or because the person asking
the question is a dill) its just the nature of an e-list. People jump in and
out of threads. And have different levels of engagement with and
understanding of a topic.

To communicate something new its necessary to use languages and
imagery that the person your talking to will understand.  We know
that intuitively most of the time.

If we try to explain science to a child we don't usually start with the
deepest explanation but with some simplification that may in fact be
an oversimplification.  Many people learn science from listening in to
the child like explanations pitched to a popular audience and then
think that they are hearing and discounting the full strength theory.

Nothing surprising there but this is going to happen more often on
a list where people pop in and out.

>  Dry theory
> never works for me unless the author illustrates the points he's making
> with examples, and I assume this is true for other people too.

Me either.  With something new people will usually want to know why
they should care and what is in it for them. They won't necessary say
that though.

> > So often in discussion about cryonics someone will throw out the
> > assertion that anybody that doesn't subscribe to the information
> > theoretic dogma must subscribe to a belief in souls. Its nonsense
> >  but it keeps coming back.
>
> It does.

It won't stop anytime soon. To continue my analogy with Darwin and
the propogation of the theory of evolution, I think, it might be worth
bearing in mind that on transhumanist lists you are not going to be
surrounded by creationists but you will meet a lot of Lamarkians.

Heck I may be a Lamarkian in a week moment thats the trouble :-)

> > > 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.
> >
> > I dunno. Actually I do know. You can't track the trajectories at this
> > stage in fact, you can only track them conceptually. That doesn't
> > ruin the explanatory utility of you theory.
>
>
> Are you referring to inability of present-day technology to track
> these trajectories?

Yes.

With synchrotrons we can track things like electrons and work out stuff
like proteins structures but we can't actually track something as complex
as a mind process.

I don't think that today we can really look closely at something like the
mind process that your referring to in another. We are looking at rough
maps only.

But I could still be wrong - please don't get potentially suckered into
agreeing with someone that seems to agree with you (they could be
mistaken). But the truth is the truth. The tree that falls in the forest and
is not heard will still make a sound.

> > > 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.
> >
> > Your theory of mind has to be compatible (i.e. not incompatible) with
> > what we know about developmental biology. Biological beings
> > grow brains.
>
>
> It is compatible because it completely disregards mind's computational
> medium. Whether or not mind emerges in organic or synthetic matter is
> irrelevant to what causes a process to become a mind.

There is a particularly hardy and erroneous meme that flourishes amongst
the IT (information technology literate) that tends to assume or suspend
disbelief about artificial intelligence. When you know a lot about
programming and computers you tend to see the world as a lot more
about programming and computers even when it isn't.

The ancients knew very little about science but knew about people so
they tended to anthropomorphise just about everything.

AI may be possible (actually I'm pretty sure it IS possible but turns on
the questions of what 'intelligence' is and how do we recognize it - Hal
wrote relatively recently a very good post on AI imo) but AI isn't yet
established fact. Some folks will talk as though it is and try and use an
imaginary model to attack another model that is an attempt to relate to
the real world.

We are all probably carrying pet misconceptions about, me included,
but we all have particular blind spots in relation to our own.

Cheers,
Brett