Our friend Sasha (was RE: success of cryonics arrangements)

From: Michael LaTorra (mike99@lascruces.com)
Date: Thu May 11 2000 - 15:27:26 MDT


Stephan cthulhu@cthulhu-dynamics.com wrote:

Sasha preferred the notion of uploading himself into a world-wide computer
network. Whether or not this seems more or less feasible to you, it was
his dream. He was neither frozen nor uploaded, so the only way he is not
totally lost is if we remember him and honor him and don't let the world
forget him.

I agree that, most likely, continuation of Sasha's ideas depends on us. But
there may be other ways, too, including the one Sasha wanted most of all.

On Sasha's website is a quotation from the Dalai Lama (excerpted from the
book "Gentle Bridges") that I sent him. In it, the DL states that it may be
possible for a person who has worked with a sufficiently advanced computer
for long time to essentially reincarnate into the machine. At least, the DL
believes that this is a possibility within the Tibetan Buddhist philosophy
he has been taught. But he admits that we must wait and see if this can
actually be done.

I doubt that our computational devices are capable of hosting human-level
information processing yet. That being said, there is a part of me that
hopes that somewhere, on a Net-connected machine, Sasha's mind still lives.

Regards,
Michael LaTorra



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