🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sun, 11 Jan 1998 16:09:44 +0000, peter@cara.demon.co.uk (Peter
Ceresole) wrote:

>In article <698ate$1q4@panix.com>,
>cp@panix.com (Charles Platt) wrote:
>
>>I have the eerie sense that you don't quite know what you're talking
>>about--at least, not with the degree of certainty that you claim.
>
>I claim no certainty at all. However, all I am seeing here from advocates
>of cryogenics is wishful thinking.
>
>>You
>>certainly show no interest in responding to specific points raised by
>>myself and others, citing research. Therefore this discussion is
>>pointless.
>
>What points? What research? None of it appears significant to me. Some
>structures can survive freezing; fine. How much of long term memory is
>contained in the neuronic links formed in the brain, and how much if it
>depends on maintenance by continuous interaction with the rest of the
>brain? Nobody really seems to know.

Well, since we know of people who have been clinically *dead* for up
to several hours (children drowned in icy lakes) and subsequently
revived, then this would negate your assertion regarding "continuous
interaction," would it not, Peter? The effects of ischemia are
minimized due to the low temp.

Additionally, there is a type of surgery where patients are flatlined
at body temps significantly lower than normal. There is no evidence of
brain activity, therefore no brain interactions exist. Continuous
interaction with the rest of the brain, you say?

> But the idea that those links are
>sufficient to preserve the personality and personal history of a person
>seems ridiculous to me. Necessary yes, but sufficient in the absence of
>other continuous brain activity, almost certainly not.
>
>Nothing so far supports the proposition that you can freeze human tissue in
>such a way that it causes no damage that would significantly affect long
>term memory (including personality, while we're about it) and
>simultaneously stabilise the chemical contents of the brain sufficiently
>for it to remain effectively the same after rewarming- several decades
>later. And certainly, if there is no retention of short term memory- and
>there certainly wouldn't be, over any period longer than a few hours- then
>when you freeze, you die. You have no future. There is no continuity. And

Freezing *does* cause damage with current technology--great damage,
far beyond that which is possible to repair in the immediate future.
However, our outlook is this: we as human beings are simply the
universe's most complicated messages. Freezing damage makes these
messages "unreadable" for the immediate future (a fully conscious,
fully-remembering ( with some amnnesia acceptable, BTW) person revived
from cryostasis would be my definition of  a "readable" message
recovered from cryostasis).

As an analogy, if I code some very complicated message via a coding
scheme which *you* cannot decipher, then that information, that
message is *destroyed* so far as you are concerned, right now as of
this moment. If however, science should advance in the science of
cryptology and then *be able* to decode my coded message, then that
information which you once thought lost is now "readable" to you. 

This, then, is really the foundation upon which the *hope* (not faith,
not just wishful thinking) of cryonicists rests: the inevitable
advance  of science as applied to information theory:  as long as the
*medium* of the message is not destroyed (as it would be when it rots
in the coffin), with the advance of science, the day may very well
come when any message previously thought lost will someday be
decipherable.

Yes, as you pointed out, research is vital--especially when literally
*everything* is at stake! What else is there besides life? Or, Peter,
do you *actually* believe that there is something else besides this
life, and that some "vital" part of  the "human message" flies off to
some cumulus haven when death is pronounced? Have your arguments thus
far, --though couched in objective-sounding, somewhat
scientific-sounding language-- been a front for another, less
scientific, more *theological* philosophy?

As far as continuity is concerned, what is continuous and what is
vital for personal survival, is the *medium*, the structure of the
brain, not consciousness, as is made apparent by the cases of drowning
victims and hypothermic patients. In fact I think this topic of "the
boundaries of death being pushed further back" is going to be
addressed in a PBS documentary this Sunday evening (on the local PBS
station here in Houston). I'll report back, but we as cryonicists have
been keeping a watch on these developments for years and I'm sure it
will have no surprises for anyone here.

>the person that emerges at the other end bears little closer direct
>relationship to you than do your children; they may be like you, but they
>are irrelevant to you. 

So what relevance do people who have been flatlined have to their
"former," pre-flatlined selves?

Randy Smith
Cryonics: Gateway to the Future?
http://members.wbs.net/homepages/c/r/y/cryofan1.html
****************************************************