From: Skye (skyezacharia@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Feb 29 2000 - 00:09:42 MST
I always thought it'd be pretty neat to get frozen in
amber:)
--- Jim Hart <jqhart@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Up front I should say that I'm not arguing against
> vitrification
> in favor of freezing. I'm arguing that even with
> our current
> freezing methods that leave what appear to be
> unrecoverable
> damage it makes emminent sense to sign up for
> cryonics. If
> somebody can come along and make the freezing damage
> less destructive I'm all in favor of that.
>
> Thus sprach Eugene Leitl:
>
> > > Freezing is largely nondissipative. No.
> Disagree strongly here.
>
> It doesn't matter how strongly you disagree; this is
> basic
> physics.
>
> >Though not having to bear burden of proof,
>
> You, like myself and all other posters, bear the
> burden of proof
> to the extent you want to convince the list of your
> point of view.
>
> As a practical matter, argument in favor of change
> from
> a traditional technique (in your case, from freezing
> to
> vitrification) bears more burden of proof.
>
> An argument for changing from a faith-based belief
> in a soul
> to belief in the efficacy of cryonics in general
> bears
> very little burden of scientific proof. The
> standard of care
> in the immortality industry is remarkably low. The
> cryonics
> industry with all its warts already meets a much
> higher
> standard than most immortality consumers demand.
>
> Not at all arguing against scientific study -- after
> all I
> consider myself to be a sophisticated consumer and
> want the
> best science possible for *my* body. But if the
> issue
> is the practical consumer choice of signing up for
> cryonics
> vs. succumbing to the promises of faith-based
> immortality,
> let's put this "burden of proof" thing in
> perspective.
>
> > > damage Merkle's analysis may be too
> *pessimistic*: we can often use
> >
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >This is a joke, no?
>
> No. MLE is a very inefficient way to solve the
> problem if one
> instead can solve most of the problem using pattern
> matching
> algorithms. (While according to Merkle's analysis we
> will have more
> than enough CPU cycles to do MLE, this is important
> if for
> other reasons, as you argue, the problem is harder
> than he states).
>
> >The cryptoanalysis analogy is btw perfectly valid
> if you attempt to
> >reconstruct the real thing by monitoring operation
> (say, using 10^9
> >nanoprobes in vivo), especially if including
> manipulative measures
> >(exciting subsystems and analyzing their activity
> dynamics).
>
> It would be even more useful if we had
> pre-deanimation measurements
> to test against. SPECT, EKG, and behavior videos
> may be crude by
> future standards, but they provide a substantial
> amount of
> information on target neural dynamics that is
> currently being
> lost.
>
> >It's just that a lot of people will die, perhaps
> all of us here
> >present, if we wait for the advent of this
> technology (if it indeed
> >arrives, which is far from being guaranteed). Nor
> is sustainability of
> >patient storage guaranteed.
>
> The probabilities are small, but the expected value
> is vast.
> A finite but still large version of Pascal's wager.
>
> >If you thought that typical cryonics patients look
> bad, don't even try
> >to look at straight freeze. Ugh.
>
> It does not at all matter how they "look" to an eye
> untrained
> in chemistry *and* computational reconstruction
> techniques.
>
> >Your stainless steel bracelet does not guarantee
> salvation.
>
> Certainly not. That's where we fall back on faith
> in the
> Omega point. :-)
>
> >Ischaemia is being adequately addressed, also
> (especially,
> >considering the resources) by the mainstream. Brain
> vitrification is
> >not.
>
> This is a good point. I'm not arguing against
> vitrification
> in favor of freezing. I'm arguing that it makes
> very good sense
> to sign up even with the bad-looking freezing
> methods employed
> today. It makes good sense to support scientific
> research
> into techniques such as vitrification as well.
>
>
>
>
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