[MURG] Re: Cryonics costs

[Eric Zilli]

Well, I'll give this a shot...


On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 03:59:38 -0700, Anna <pantheon at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> 
> If you add personal memory to DNA, then 'you' will be 'you'  because we are
> conditioned by our memory.
> With the mind uploading you fall into a trap as you  have to admit that mind
> can be transferred from a container to a container ( brain, or similar) and
> what follows,
> mind  can exist  ( live?) disembodied. If so, then why not admit next that
> life after  death is possible too and NDE in such case could  be a  proof ?
> of mind's survival.
> Logical thinking requires that any  selection or rejection of axioms must be
> consequent.  
>  

Does logical thinking also require random strings of words? It makes
it pretty hard to answer your arguments... :)
If I smile at you on the street because I'm happy, you may become
happy too. Happiness has been transferred, but it does not mean
happiness can exist disembodied.
Mind uploading isn't about directly transferring the mind. We assume
the mind is the result of a process the brain carries out. To upload
then is to duplicate the process that results in a mind on another
substrate.
In general, logical proofs require their antecedent to be true, so I
don't think claims of NDE are a good proof for life after death.

> Mind uploading is a great idea in case of people who are in a great need of 
> new bodies while still living and their minds deserve to be  preserved, like
> Hawkins for example.

Ah, presumably you mean Sophie B. Hawkins, the singer/songwriter who
had such hits as "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" and "As I Lay Me Down"
in the '90s.
No... we don't get to decide who deserves to live. Mind uploading is a
medical procedure to save a patient from an unwanted death, any
patient that wants it.

> But remember, that most mental growth  comes from the sensory  lessons and
> our bodies, ugly or beautiful,  greatly influence  the mind structure and
> quality.
> I do not know if you are familiar with the Thomas Mann writings, but he
> wrote  a short novel about a "potato couch"  type intelectual  who became
> jealous of a carpenter's muscular and strong body and one day offered him a
> trade. Since the carpenter always wanted to be intellectual, he agreed. It
> was all fine at start, but eventually the carpenter lost his intellectual
> inkling , while  the fat body he took from the intelectual was becoming only
> more beautiful and muscular  day by day from chopping the wood.  At the same
> time, a similar situation was happening to the intellectual, and  in the end
> he lost his muscles and vigor and  looked just as bad as he did  before the
> trade.
> 

Ah yes, I believe he published that study in Nature, didn't he? :)
I'm not sure literature makes for good science. It does sound like a
neat story, and might have a poignant lesson or two, but that doesn't
mean it's real.
Of course, I'm not sure how it applies to what you're saying, so maybe
you don't mean it that way.
The most common views of uploading seem to result either in a
simulated body in a virtual world, or a robotic body in the real
world. Normally, overweight individuals aren't viewed as good
destinations, I didn't think.
Incidentally, if you feel the need to put your brain in a clone of
yourself (which isn't really uploading), and if you believe the body's
history has that much control over the brain that comes into it, then
you'll be in trouble. Your clone will not have had the same life as
you and may have a different looking body than your own.

-- 
Eric Zilli
Hasselmo Lab - Computational Neurophysiology
Center for Memory and Brain
Boston University
2 Cummington St.
Boston MA, 02215
digfarenough at gmail.com -- www.digfarenough.com