130 replies to this topic

[bgwowk]

osiris wrote:

Way to conveniently avoid addressing any of jay's logical arguments.

I am not avoiding Jay's logical arguments. The duplicates paradox is easily resolved, and I'll be happy to discuss it to any desired depth *in a new thread*. If you really want to know about duplicates, just start another thread.

Actually, my point was that the only test we have for survivability is internal, there is no external test, something that jay has also pointed out, and which you have conveniently ignored.

On the contrary, I rest my case on it. Let me prove it by asking you this question: If tomorrow you suffered some trauma that involved brain inactivation, and then later woke in a hospital with the feeling you had survived, would you then be persuaded that brain inactivation was survivable? Direct experience would prove the case, right? (Jay, please let osiris answer.)

---BrianW

[Mark Hamalainen]

If I woke up, I would know that I survived. If a new observer woke up, it would have my memories (assuming the trauma wasn't server enough to damage them), and would 'know' that it had survived.

Since in either case, me or the new me would 'know' that they had survived, the test cannot be used to prove or disprove my survival to others. However, the original me either survived or is gone to oblivion. It cannot be aware of oblivion, but it can be aware of survival, hence internally it knows whether it is still surviving.

[bgwowk]

osiris wrote:

Since in either case, me or the new me would 'know' that they had survived, the test cannot be used to prove or disprove my survival to others. However, the original me either survived or is gone to oblivion. It cannot be aware of oblivion, but it can be aware of survival, hence internally it knows whether it is still surviving.

Since you assert internal knowledge of survival, you must internally know whether you survived your sleep last night. And since you have stipulated that the test of survival is purely internal ("the only test we have"), you would be able to make that determination of survival purely based on feeling, without prejudicing the question by asking anyone what physically happened to you during the night, right?

In other words, first feeling, then conclusion about survival, then when someone tells you the physical process you experienced overnight, you would be able to state whether that process was survivable.

Consider a practical example. You apparently regard your internal feeling of survival in the morning as sufficient to establish the survivability of sleep. (It was on that basis that you dismissed my mock theory that interrupting waking consciousness is fatal.) Therefore, if right after telling me that loss of waking consciousness is survivable because of your internal awareness of surviving sleep last night, I were to tell you that in fact you were secretly assaulted and your brain briefly inactivated last night, then THAT would be proof that inactivation was survivable. Right?

---BrianW

[Mark Hamalainen]

I were to tell you that in fact you were secretly assaulted and your brain briefly inactivated last night, then THAT would be proof that inactivation was survivable. Right?

It would prove it to me. It would not prove it to you, since the test is inherently only useful internally. So in the context of this test, there is no way to determine ahead of time whether the experiment will work no matter how many times you've performed it in the past.

Given that everytime you perform the test you are potentially murdering somebody, and that the test cannot give you any results, the test is useless.

[bgwowk]

osiris wrote:

Given that everytime you perform the test you are potentially murdering somebody, and that the test cannot give you any results, the test is useless.

The experience of such tests is very useful to the experiencer inasmuch as it can change their whole worldview. As to the utility of such tests beyond the experiencer, how do you reassure your children that ordinary sleep doesn't kill them? Or general anesthesia when they need surgery? Do you really believe that if you have surgery and feel you have survived it, that this says nothing about whether other humans like yourself can survive anesthesia?

It would prove it to me (that inactivation was survivable).

For a feeling of continuity upon waking to prove survival, it must also be possible to have an internal feeling of non-continuity upon waking. (Otherwise everyone wakes feeling like a survivor, and the feeling proves nothing.) If feelings are the result of physical brains states (materialism), and brain inactivation is fatal, then brain inactivation must leave an indelible impression on a brain when it later wakens to generate the feeling of non-continuity.

The same brain state cannot generate two different internal feelings. That would be a violation of materialism. If different internal feelings can exist upon waking depending on whether a process was survived, then at the time of waking there must be objective neurobiological correlates of personal survival and continuity.

---BrianW

[Mark Hamalainen]

For a feeling of continuity upon waking to prove survival, it must also be possible to have an internal feeling of non-continuity upon waking.

Only if you're trying to prove it to others. You know if you're alive or not.

[manowater989]

Right, so then, if you *know* that you're alive then, subjectively, that means you are. Since upon waking from cryonic suspension, you would presumably know that you're alive, you then would be, correct? If you also "knew" that you were the same person you were before, would that also make it subjectively true to you, and form a fundamental bridge of continuity between the you who lost consciousness before you were preserved, and the you who awoke from it after? (I won't even get into the idea of how it would seem to you as if no time had passed despite the fact that centuries may have, since your talking about internal belief only as a test for having survived inactivation, and not necessarily believing that any perceived experience correlates with actuality.) Also, I'm starting a new topic about what I originally wanted this one to be about: technological and practical feasibility of cryonics, and I still think this discussion: "Philosophy of Cryonics: Who Really Wakes Up?" should be moved, and I'll say so again. Do you guys deliberately ignore what I say, or do you just have a total lack of respect for me and my opinions?

[bgwowk]

I'm sorry, manowater989, that your thread got sidetracked like this. But when someone says, "there is no reason to believe cryonics can work," and then supports this statement not with a technological objection, but a vitalistic notion that brain inactivation causes invisible philosophical events that have no support or advocacy in modern science, such statements cannot go unchallenged.

osiris wrote:

Only if you're trying to prove it to others. You know if you're alive or not.

Are there, or are there not, two different possible feelings upon waking; one feeling that you have survived, and another feeling that you are a discontinuous new person? If there are not two possible outcomes of internal feeling, then your internal experience that sleep is survivable means nothing. You cannot refute my mock assertion that the end of waking consciousness means the permanent end of subjective awareness. That theory is just as good as your theory that end of brain activity may mean the permanent end of subjective awareness. They are both equally arbitrary, and therefore both bunk.

Perhaps you mean that your internal self knows whether it really survives sleep, but your external self can never express it. If so, that means that anything you've written in this thread about your personal experience of sleep cannot be trutsted, and my mock theory that sleep is fatal stands. More darkly, it means that you cannot trust your own fingertips when they type that sleep is survivable. Nor can you trust your own hand when it signs consent forms for procedures that your inner self knows from past experience are fatal. You will be doomed to die over and over again, perhaps at every sleep, with your inner self powerless to express knowledge of its impending demise.

---BrianW

[drus]

I didn't vote because my opinion is somewhere in between the two choices LOL! But one thing's for sure, cryonics beats the conventional options!

[forever freedom]

I voted "strangely unworried". Although i would rather have voted in an option in the middle of the 2 extreme options in this poll.


Right now, cryonics is really just a bet. I hope that many decades later, if aging hasn't been cured yet and i get old and sick and crippled and screwed, cryonics has been developed enough to give me a fair shot at bio immortality.

[Shannon Vyff]

I agree with drus, but I voted for the latter and was happy to see it has a lead around here I'm a signed member of Alcor, I've been and continue to be apprised of the proper procedures to be preserved if I or one of my family members unexpectedly dies. I carry a laminated instruction card for what to do if I show up in a hospital in a dire condition I have a gold medical alert with Alcor's number.

But, I'd have to go with 20%, because for me it is just a chance, a backup--in case it works--I won't know or care if it doesn't since I'm already 'dead'

Not really dead though, when my brain could have electrical activity again someday--so as the years pass, I'd hope even in 500 or 1000 years, for all the people preserved there are other people who are family, or are curious, or strongly empathize with the will and right to live-- and they'll have ways to re-animate those that are preserved.

If a company went out of business, and I thawed-- then I'd be all the way dead, I'd still not know, or care though

I'm happy with my feelings of 20%

[Heliotrope]

How SAFE a bet?

not very safe, but it is a bet i'm willing to take ... unless...you got something better to offer me?

[VictorBjoerk]

What are the major arguments that it should work?

[Heliotrope]

What are the major arguments that it should work?

i think there's no real rigorous argument


no demonstratable proof whatsoever ,

i just hope it works, since it's the last final final safety net for now

[forever freedom]

Of course there are no proofs whatsoever cryonics will work. It's a shot in the dark, but i'd rather have this shot in the dark than not shoot at all.

[bgwowk]

Of course there are no proofs whatsoever cryonics will work. It's a shot in the dark...

Then how is cryonics different from a quack health product? If it's a shot in the dark, how do you know which way to shoot? Seriously.

[forever freedom]

Of course there are no proofs whatsoever cryonics will work. It's a shot in the dark...

Then how is cryonics different from a quack health product? If it's a shot in the dark, how do you know which way to shoot? Seriously.

The difference is that cryonics supposedly has a bigger chance of working, but we can't be really sure if cryonics really preserves us enough/the right way for future technology to be capable of bringing us back to life.

Who said that we know which way to shoot? Maybe there are other better ways of preserving ourselves right in front of us biting our nose yet we can't see them. What i meant with "shot in the dark" is that we don't know exactly wich way to shoot, meaning that we don't know exactly which way to best preserve ourselves.

[bgwowk]

The difference is that cryonics supposedly has a bigger chance of working, but we can't be really sure if cryonics really preserves us enough/the right way for future technology to be capable of bringing us back to life.

Who said that we know which way to shoot? Maybe there are other better ways of preserving ourselves right in front of us biting our nose yet we can't see them. What i meant with "shot in the dark" is that we don't know exactly wich way to shoot, meaning that we don't know exactly which way to best preserve ourselves.

Shot in the twilight, then. The problem with saying "no proofs whatsoever" is that it sounds like a Q-RAY bracelet. Personal survival depends upon survival of brain information, and cryopreservation under good conditions preserves much brain information. The sufficiency of the information can be debated, but the reason that it can be debated is that we have some knowledge about it. There's a bit more substance than just Pascal's Wager.

[forever freedom]

The difference is that cryonics supposedly has a bigger chance of working, but we can't be really sure if cryonics really preserves us enough/the right way for future technology to be capable of bringing us back to life.

Who said that we know which way to shoot? Maybe there are other better ways of preserving ourselves right in front of us biting our nose yet we can't see them. What i meant with "shot in the dark" is that we don't know exactly wich way to shoot, meaning that we don't know exactly which way to best preserve ourselves.

Shot in the twilight, then. The problem with saying "no proofs whatsoever" is that it sounds like a Q-RAY bracelet. Personal survival depends upon survival of brain information, and cryopreservation under good conditions preserves much brain information. The sufficiency of the information can be debated, but the reason that it can be debated is that we have some knowledge about it. There's a bit more substance than just Pascal's Wager.

Yea whatever you wanna name it.

[drus]

Cryonics is more than 'a shot in the dark'! It is an intelligent and very reasonable decision, considering the alternative! I don't want to sound offensive, but i would almost go so far as to say that anyone who doesn't opt for cryonic suspension is a fool! I have argued and philosophized countless times with many people about this issue and have found it amazingly unbelievable how many people are either opposed or indifferent to cryonics! It really boggles my mind how short sighted people can be! Even in the off chance that it is eventually proven that cryonic suspension as it's practiced today is futile, it would still have been a worth-while pursuit at least in principal.

[forever freedom]

Cryonics is more than 'a shot in the dark'! It is an intelligent and very reasonable decision, considering the alternative! I don't want to sound offensive, but i would almost go so far as to say that anyone who doesn't opt for cryonic suspension is a fool! I have argued and philosophized countless times with many people about this issue and have found it amazingly unbelievable how many people are either opposed or indifferent to cryonics! It really boggles my mind how short sighted people can be! Even in the off chance that it is eventually proven that cryonic suspension as it's practiced today is futile, it would still have been a worth-while pursuit at least in principal.

I never said i'm against cryonics, actually i'm all for it. All i'm saying is that people shouldn't go for cryonics thinking that they bought a sure ticket to the future. Some people may think that cryonics can't fail because it seems so reasonable but it can.

[VictorBjoerk]

Are the cryopreserved people dead?Is dead the right word?How should it be described?

[forever freedom]

Are the cryopreserved people dead?Is dead the right word?How should it be described?

According to current technology they're dead. If they're really dead, only the future will tell.

[drus]

Sam988, i'm sorry if i gave you the impression that my comment was directed at you, it wasn't. I was just making the statement in general.

[bgwowk]

Are the cryopreserved people dead?Is dead the right word?How should it be described?

Just plain "dead" is not the right word. They are legally dead, but legal death is not the same as "dead". Legal death is a designation of futility with available technology. Dead, without a qualifying adjective, means gone permanently.

Eric Drexler once suggested "ametabolic coma" as the most accurate description of the state.

[livelong]

Someone should ask her if she's a copy.
http://www.foxnews.c...,357463,00.html

So much for that six minute limit or whatever it's supposed to be, huh?

[VictorBjoerk]

Someone should ask her if she's a copy.
http://www.foxnews.c...,357463,00.html

So much for that six minute limit or whatever it's supposed to be, huh?

Very interesting,I'm sure more cases like this will happen in the next few years....

[Luna]

They are Cryonically-Challanged or something
And btw, the poll options are kinda silly.

Edited by Winterbreeze, 27 May 2008 - 09:23 AM.

[mentatpsi]

What happens if the future doesn't want to restore the people who died... or what if some robot in an ape costume gives you a heart attack (who can guess it). Either or it's much more guaranteed than any other choice we have so why not? I'm just a bit confused about how neural deactivation wouldn't result in anything bad. Now if anyone has seen Vanilla sky, that would make a bit more sense, but i won't ruin the ending so hmm ya, guess i can't specify .

[VictorBjoerk]

Most people here doesn't appear to be overly optimistic that it will work............