From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Tue Aug 27 2002 - 23:05:24 MDT
Driven FromThePack wrote:
>How about this:
>
>1. Personhood is essentially stored as information in
>the brain, and such brain-stored information is
>sufficient to constitute the person, in and of itself.
Not quite... If I could precisely describe the complete "wiring scheme" of
your brain and store it in a buch of CDs, those CDs wouldn't be you. You
need more than the information -- you need the brain too.
And even though I could right now specify the connections between a million
neurons (e.g. a cube of 1000x1000x1000 with all neighbours connected) no
one could make such a neuronal circuit. So what you really need is to
recover the brain with little damage.
[...]
>5. After assessing recent and distant history of the
>human race, we may conclude that as time advances,
>with a reasonably high probablity, we will see the
>increasing sophistication and power of information
>retrieval apparatuses,
[...]
> That is a question I
>cannot answer; however, if it does, then I know the
>payoff for me is huge (the biggest payoff possible),
>so therefore, after considering all information
>available to me (sweep of history, etc) I have signed
>a contract for cryopreservation.
But you ommit here the "information loss" (i.e. brain damage) associated
with the freezing process. Evidence indicates that this is considerable
with current or forseeable techniques. We can't even freeze a kidney, let
alone a brain...
And once the information is lost, even developing a thawing process that is
100% efficient and looses no information at all, you'll still have a badly
damaged brain. Remember that your brain will be frozen after you die, and
unlike other tissues which can survive for significant periods (hours or
more) with no oxigen, brain damage becomes irreversible after a couple of
minutes.
Science is based on evidence. Evidence indicates that freezing your brain
will destroy it, if it's not already too badly damaged even before the
procedure starts (do they guarantee they'll start freezing within a minute
of your heart stopping?).
Although examples of great success like skin, corneas, sperm or embryos are
given to show that it's possible to preserve complex tissues or organs this
way, the reality is that these examples come from the best laboratory
results, obtained among lots of failures. So you don't see cryogenic
depositories of skin or corneas for transplants, and the only reason sperm
and embryos fare well is that only a few cells need to survive the process
in these cases.
My conclusion is thus that cryopreservation of human brains is not science
but misguided faith and quackery.
Ludwig Krippahl
--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com >
Alternate: < terry_colvin@hotmail.com >
Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB *
U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program
------------
Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List
TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans,
Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:27 MST