Friends,
I'm cross-posting this to the cryonet and extropians list.
I've been thinking lately about brain damage. When exactly
Specifically, I'm wondering about the difference between loss of
information, and loss of ACCESS TO information. This last
When a brain is damaged--I'm thinking here of strokes,
Some of those changes presumably involve actual cell death. But
Then too, what degree of brain damage is characterized by cell damage
without cell death--membrane or cytoskeletal damage/alteration;
When a person is brain dead, is there actually a great lump of dead tissue
inside the skull (I don't think so), or does the absence of brain
waves--the flatline on the electroencephalograph that provokes the term
"persistant vegetative state"--only suffice to imply loss of global
function, but not large-scale cell death, maybe not even small-scale cell
death, or (here's the crux)maybe not nearly as much information loss as
we're inclined to think?
To what extent is the topology of damage responsible
Are dementia et al victims really as far gone as we fear they
Identity survival is central to cryonics. Some aspects
One final detail. I'm a strong believer in the "elegant design" of
natural systems. "Nature" squeezes as many uses out of any system
component as she can. (Please excuse the teleological
In the process of writing this, I produced a typo: memeory, instead of
memory. Hmmmmmm.
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles