Trygve's second post (2 out of 4) for July the 6th, 2001.

The goal is personal life-extension,
or rather to survive as a continuation of oneself to the highest possible degree.

When it is not possible to survive as a 100% continuation of oneself, the goal opens for the whole specter between 100 % survival and 100 % extinction.

In this regard, Cryonics is just one of many means.

So far cryonics have been used as the name on the process of freezing dead corpses, heads, brains (and even tissue samples) with the purpose or hope that this might make it possible sometime in the future to bring back to life the dead people involved.

Present cryonics organizations have frozen both humans and pets. They have frozen corpses, heads, brains and tissue samples in various stages of deterioration from just dead to long dead or even long burried.

So far all this has been called cryonics.

If some people now want to reserve the word cryonics for the freezing of people under the most ideal circumstances, then it is a little late now to change the definition of a word that already has a different meaning.

Furthermore if we use cryonics only as a name for the freezing of people in such a way that these can be brought back alive, then some critics might rightfully say: that no one frozen so far might fall in the category!

Any accusation that I am doing this for the money, falls on its own absurdity:

I have assisted this lady from Australia for 1 month now, without asking nor receiving one penny. Several years ago I assisted Hindal in the freezing of his mother, and Saby in the freezing of his mother , also then without getting my expenses covered. I have also assisted for free in many suspension requests that never led to a suspension.

So far my involvement in cryonics has been a continuous outlay of time and money.

I am involved because I want to be frozen under the best possible circumstances myself,
and to accomplish that we have to establish more organizations, and better services outside the United States too, since it is clear that still more people fall outside the services provided by the present US organizations, and miss the cryonic life-boat alltogether.

Witness the many post mortem requests that the cryonic organizations get, and that they in my opinion does not do enough to assist.

The prevailing attitude seems to be to let all but the best post mortem request cases rot, while I see some value in maintaining even more decomposed corpses.

See other articles I have posted on the topic at Trygve's cryonics forum:

http://network54.com/Forum/136627

Sincerely,

Trygve Bauge


Ps. Please post any responses to my cryonics forum so that we do not clogg up cryonet.

Thanks.

Trygve Bauge

How decomposed a body would you consider preserving the remains of?

Let's consider for a moment a decomposing body, in a casket, pumped full of mortician's fluids. I supposed you'd say that that would be worth your consideration.

But if that body had been buried for, say 5 years, in what condition would it be? Let's push the envelope here and assume that what we have left is nothing but skeletal remains and teeth. Would you consider THAT worth saving?

How about ashes? If someone has been cremated, would you freeze the ashes to prevent even further decomposition?

Does you theory accomodate diaries of the deceased? Bills and receipts? After all, hard copies of items generated by the person is part of the information complex left behind by them.

Concievably, then, would it make sense to you to freeze a skeleton along with the fellows tax returns? This would certainly constitute that there's nothing more certain in life than death and taxes!

Seriously, though, would you freeze a skeletal remain? Why or why not?

Rick Potvin wrote:

>How decomposed a body would you consider preserving
>the remains of?
>
>Let's consider for a moment a decomposing body, in a
>casket, pumped full of mortician's fluids. I supposed
>you'd say that that would be worth your
>consideration.
>
>But if that body had been buried for, say 5 years, in
>what condition would it be? Let's push the envelope
>here and assume that what we have left is nothing but
>skeletal remains and teeth. Would you consider THAT
>worth saving?
>
>How about ashes? If someone has been cremated, would
>you freeze the ashes to prevent even further
>decomposition?
>
>Does you theory accomodate diaries of the deceased?
>Bills and receipts? After all, hard copies of items
>generated by the person is part of the information
>complex left behind by them.
>
>Concievably, then, would it make sense to you to
>freeze a skeleton along with the fellows tax returns?
>This would certainly constitute that there's nothing
>more certain in life than death and taxes!


You wouldn't freeze non biological materials like records, you might store such electronically, but you wouldn't freeze them. As far as tax returns are concerened, there are probably some objectivists that would like to preserve these so that they eventually can claim a refund. ):

>
>Seriously, though, would you freeze a skeletal
>remain? Why or why not?

How would I treat mummies?
It used to be that Europeans brought home mummies and dissected these for fun at parties.

I would offer mummies much more protection,
in the hope that these sometime in the future could be cloned, and that the clones could learn what we know about the time their predecessors lived.

As to all the human remains that lay around in church yards etc, I can foresee a time in the future when humain remains systematically will be dug up,
and attempted cloned or restored.

The challenge is to find ways to accomplish in reality what religious groups so far have taken on faith
that will happen.

As to what to do in the short run:
I leave that up to each individual,
or the nearest kin.

I would like to see a cryonics storage provider, that
stores what people want stored, and that let the issue of whether or not to store something be up to the client, instead of insisting upon taking this decission
for the client.

Sincerely,

Trygve Bauge

Consider what it would take to store bills and receipts electronically. If a client wanted store years worth of these, digitizing them would be a huge chore-- and very expensive.

On top of that, digital records are not neccessarily permanent. There are all kinds of problems associated with CD's and disks in this regard.

Wouldn't it be easier to simply bundle the reciepts together, tightly, put them in a dewer and pour LN2 in? I think it would. The paper itself IS definitely partly organic. There's no doubt in my mind (is there in yours?) that you'd be slowing the rate of decay of the paper at LN2 temperatures, and therefore the information written on it.

I think this needs further consideration-- freezing a person's paper records. If a client came to you and wanted his paper records frozen, wouldn't you do it? You said you'd leave it up to the client-- so I'd assume that if you were asked to do it, you would. Am I wrong? Why limit the information pertaining to the identity of a person to their bodily remains? Why not include-- seriously-- organic-based paper records in the dewer?

Rick,
I don't think you are serious when you suggest that we FREEZE records and bills and tax returns etc. in liquid nitrogen.

But let me just rebut the suggestion systematically anyway:

1. Many things get brittle when frozen in liquid nitrogen. e.g. frozen rubber tires when hit by a hammer turn into pieces like a broken glass.

2. Liquid nitrogen is a fluid, and might possibly
dissolve or damage things it doesn't freeze. Things that soak up liquid nitrogen could possibly be damaged when the liquid nitrogen later evaporates/turns into gas upon reheating.

3. It is more expensive to keep something in liquid nitrogen than to just store it in a dry and cool place.

4. And I doubt that receipts and tax returns etc. is what that it is the most important to preserve when it comes to verify that a person has been brought back as itself.

5. Furthermore when it comes to recreating or verifying the correct reconstruction of a human memory
I think we will have to depend upon computers,
not just to guide nanorobots,
but even for conventional teaching of a clone or revived cryo patient and not just for stroke victims.

There is a lot of information to gather and store,
and in the future still more of this will be available electronically, anyway.

6. As to safety of records, why not do as the big companies: Store backups on several computers in different countries? And store these in a self correcting and redundant way, e.g. repeatedly on several hard disks, so that if any one disk crashes, its content is recreated from the other disks?

7. Maybe sometime in the future it might be possible to connect a computer directly to a brain, so to just transfer information from brain to computer and vice versa.

8. dewars are expensive to buy and expensive to keep cold. If anyone has money to burn, I guess they can pay to fill up a lot of expensive dewars with their bills and receipts, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Paper records take up a lot of space,
and to maintain a dewar space one already has to set aside more money than most people have.

9. There is also the issue of large scale cryonics here. Miniatyrization by storing information electronically is the solution when it comes to storing information on thousands if not millions of people.

10. Preserving libraries and treasures is expensive enough for the rich, and might easily be robbed.

11. It might be of value to complete or upgrade records, after a person is frozen and that is not as easily done if the records are implanted in the patient or stored in the dewar together with the patient.

12.People are sometimes frozen with clothes on.
So I do not rule out that some people can try to sneak in a book or pamphlet about themselves in a pocket.

13.Well, I guess it couldn't hurt to have an extended dogtag so to speak, so to link any patient to the right record stored elsewhere, but why not then just operate in a computer chip with the necessary information? It would have capacity for much more information and take up virtually no space.

14.For safety one could have both a dog tag, a computer chip and some paper summary and maybe even a tatoo, all linking the patient to records stored and backed up repeatedly elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Trygve

Trygve, I'll be back to respond to this last post later. No time right now. For now, though, I'm just notating two points I want to pick up on later.

1. There ought to be a way to cryoprotect paper. With proper treatment, paper CAN successfully be frozen and thawed. I'm going to run an experiment this weekend using a notebook I filled in 1991 and my freezer. And, by the way, I'm quite serious. You KNOW that "molecular motion" slows down under lower temperatures-- that's what "cold" means! You CAN slow the rate of decay of BOOKS by lowering the temperature. Old documents OUGHT to be house in low temperature warehouses!!!

2. If a client came to you and wanted to arrange to have their "soul" frozen, would you try to accomodate them? Since many people believe that the soul gets trapped in a cryonically suspended person, perhaps it's possible, in their minds, to create a "soul trapping LN2 lined room" so that when "legal death" is declared, you can instantly capture that "essense". I'm serious about this too- since you said that you would DO whatever the client WANTS. If the client WANTED this, and was willing to pay you, would you DO it?

This is a reference I'll use in the analysis of Bauge's attempt to associate cryonics with the Australian disinterment case:

"Information Storage and Computational Aspect of Repair", by Tad Hogg, Ph.D. email tad@alumni.caltech.edu http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~tad
Cryonics magazine, 3rd Qtr. 1996. Volume 17:3. A publication of Alcor Life Extension Foundation.

Hogg begins this article as follows: "Cryonic suspension is an attempt to preserve enough of a person's body, after death by current standards, to allow future technology to restore the person to health. This preserved physical structure may not in itself by sufficient for future repair, due to the damage caused by suspension, especially if the suspension is delayed. So people planning for suspension might improve their cahnces of eventual revival by saving additional information about themselves in the form of records seaprate from their bodies".

In the case of exhumation as contemplated by Bauge's bogus cryonics case in Australia, the "suspension would be delayed" to an exceedingly extraordinary degree. Bauge insists that such a case would merely be an extension of current cryonics practice by extending the benefits of post-mortem suspensions to a wider customer base. On the contrary, such a case cannot in any meaningful sense of the term, be "cryonics". By the thinnest of threads, Bauge hangs the name cryonics on, apparently, anything his "client" wants it to be, even, admittedly if it's only the DNA that is preserved. Clearly, DNA preservation in liquid nitrogen does "not" constitute cryonics anymore than does preserving an individual's diaries or written records.

I'll expand on this notion, using Tad Hogg's published article in Cryonics from 1996. The point I will argue will argue is that to the extent that cryonic suspension is delayed is the extent to which external records become vital. Hogg makes this clear when he says "a key purpose of suspension [is] preservation of individual [and unique] information. From this point of view, the required information can be shared between preserved structure and external records so that records can compensate for some suspension damage."

In Bauge's bogus cryonics, he most defintely has "some suspension damage" his hands. For Bauge to demonstrate consistency with a scientific approach in light of a key purpose of suspension according to Hoag, he would have to ask his Australian "client" to work as much as possible to preserve diaries, photos, and any other "external records" as well as anything else he asks of her, in order to maintain scientific credibility.

To the extent Bauge does NOT ask his client for such records is the extent to which Bauge rejects Hogg's thesis. And to the extent Bauge rejects Hogg's thesis is the extent to which Bauge is attempting to grandstand for the publicity as opposed to making an attempt at working on cryonics qua cryonics as we all understand it and as defined by Hogg.

Check, Bauge.

And probably checkmate.

Q.E.D.

Rick Potvin wrote:

>This is a reference I'll use in the analysis of
>Bauge's attempt to associate cryonics with the
>Australian disinterment case:

This is not the first cryonics disinterment case.
I know of several, as does those that have been involved in cryonics for a while.

As a matter of fact since the Australian case was embalmed prior to burial, it is probably a better case than some of the people and brains that have been frozen by other cryonics organizations over the years.

>"Information Storage and Computational Aspect of
>Repair", by Tad Hogg, Ph.D. email
>tad@alumni.caltech.edu
>http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~tad
>Cryonics magazine, 3rd Qtr. 1996. Volume 17:3. A
>publication of Alcor Life Extension Foundation.
>
>Hogg begins this article as follows: "Cryonic
>suspension is an attempt to preserve enough of a
>person's body, after death by current standards, to
>allow future technology to restore the person to
>health. This preserved physical structure may not in
>itself by sufficient for future repair, due to the
>damage caused by suspension, especially if the
>suspension is delayed. So people planning for
>suspension might improve their cahnces of eventual
>revival by saving additional information about
>themselves in the form of records seaprate from their
>bodies".


>In the case of exhumation as contemplated by Bauge's
>bogus cryonics case in Australia,

Rick Potvin has not delivered any proof of the Australian case being bogus cryonics. His only argument presented in a different article has been soundly rebutted in a response to said article.

>the "suspension would be delayed" to an exceeingly
>extraordinary degree. Bauge insists that such a case
>would merely be an extension of current cryonics
>practice by extending the benefits of post-mortem
>suspensions to a wider customer base. On the
>contrary, such a case cannot in any meaningful sense
>of the term, be "cryonics".

As a matter of fact with the combination of embalming,
cell storage and separate storage of vital information from other sources than the corps' own brain, the Australian case qualifies as cryonics, and more so than many of the autopsied brains, murder victims
and disinterred brains etc, that other cryonics groups have stored over the years.

>By the thinnest of threads, Bauge hangs the name
>cryonics on, apparently, anything his "client" wants
>it to be, even, admittedly if it's only the DNA that
>is preserved. Clearly, DNA preservation in liquid
>nitrogen does "not" constitute cryonics anymore than
>does preserving an individual's diaries or written
>records.

How come then that the existing cryonics groups have offered and still offers to store cell samples for their clients?

I still think that cryonics has come to mean what cryonics groups have been doing and offering over the last 35 years.
And what we are proposing to do in Australia is nothing different than what most existing cryonics groups offer to do to any signed up client that inadvertently has been burried, or has died and is not immediately found.

In the Australian case the body has been embalmed,
and is thus a better case than some of the cases existing cryonics groups have taken on and are willing to take on.

The only difference is that I try to offer the same service even to people that sign up their relatives post mortem.

If cryonics are to succeed we have to handle all the post mortem requests better than we have been doing so far.
And we have to be more polite in our debates, and be more focused on offering service to those that request assistance. It is no good to in an impolite manner telling others to go and rot, and to spend more time arguing against assisting people than assisting the latter.

>I'll expand on this notion, using Tad Hogg's
>published article in Cryonics from 1996. The point I
>will argue will argue is that to the extent that
>cryonic suspension is delayed is the extent to which
>external records become vital. Hogg makes this clear
>when he says "a key purpose of suspension [is]
>preservation of individual [and unique] information.
>From this point of view, the required information can
>be shared between preserved structure and external
>records so that records can compensate for some
>suspension damage."
>

>In Bauge's bogus cryonics, he most defintely
>has "some suspension damage" his hands.

All present cryonic cases have severe suspension damage at their hand, as well as severe damage that caused them to die in the first place.

>For Bauge to demonstrate consistency with a
>scientific approach in light of a key purpose of
>suspension according to Hoag, he would have to ask
>his Australian "client" to work as much as possible
>to preserve diaries, photos, and any other "external
>records" as well as anything else he asks of her, in
>order to maintain scientific credibility.

These questions have been asked, and will be asked again. Thus Potvin is really attacking a straw man, that he has created himself.

>To the extent Bauge does NOT ask his client for such
>records is the extent to which Bauge rejects Hogg's
>thesis. And to the extent Bauge rejects Hogg's thesis
>is the extent to which Bauge is attempting to
>grandstand for the publicity as opposed to making an
>attempt at working on cryonics qua cryonics as we all
>understand it and as defined by Hogg.

I could do very well without the publicity this case generates, and especially without all the unjust animosity that a few other so called cryonisists respond with.
But let me say that the opposition does not seem to come so much from people with a track record of organizing cryonic suspensions, but rather seems to for the most part come from people who only have a track record of arguing about cryonics, and in a quite unpolite manner as well.

>Check, Bauge.
>
>And probably checkmate.

Don't count on it!

Cryonics has come to mean the freezing of bodies, brains and even cell samples with the purpose of bringing back or recreate a person or consciousness that is similar to and a continuation of the person that was the source of this biological material.
And though the goal is a large extent of continuation, it is clear that when that is not possible, the question is one of the highest possible degree of continuation.
100% similarity does not seem to be a goal, since most people want to be rejuvenated and also to come back smarter and better than they were when they died.

Independent of whether one freeze the whole body or just a few cell samples, and independent of whether or not one is frozen directly after death with the best present techniques or as a long rotting corpse,
it is still very important to preserve as much information as possible about the person from other sources than the latter's own brain, so to better be able to recreate the person.

And Potvin's attempt to claim that I ignore information storage, is completely off target, and an attack on a straw man that he has created himself.


Sincerely,

Trygve Bauge

>Q.E.D.

Remember playing "dodgeball" in high school?

Well, Bauge would have been great at it! Let the reader witness how fast he's scrambling to avoid being hit!

I can't do a point-by-point analysis right now, but over the weekend, I'll come up with a format to comprehensively establish the working-positions of each argument-- Bauge's and mine-- and try to seek a "common language" so that we understand precisely where we agree and disagree, and agree to disagree.

I expect that out of this debate will come a working paper that will be the center-piece of a professional cryonicists association-- a kind of association that does not yet exist-- that will establish minimum constraints and definitions for what is meant by the term "cryonics".

Bauge has indicated that "embalming, cell storage and external record" constitute cryonics. That's simply wrong. It might be "tantamount" to cryonics-- but that's all. "Embalming" COULD be construed as "very poor cryonics" if the embalmed is then put in a cooler-- or if the underground temperature in a coffin is cooler than the above ground air, if one stretches the definition to a rediculous degree.

Actually, using Bauge's definition, every person that has been buried in cold ground, and who has been embalmed is ALREADY "cryonically suspended". All Bauge wants to do is lower the temperature still further!

Using Bauge's definitions, we have hundreds of millions of people, all over the world, who have been very POORLY cryonically suspended and whose suspensions can be improved by disinterring them and subjecting them to still lower temperatures-- so slow and stop their rate of decay compared to their current rate of decay.

Since those people who are currently housed in cryonics labs in LN2 are decaying at a much slower rate, technically speaking, in the view of many observers, they're simply in a "high tech coffin" that slows-- but doesn't STOP their rate of decay. In a sense, they could be considered to be NOT "suspended" at all-- but simply "buried" or "interred" at the lowest possible temperature.

Bauge's "trick" in all of this is to emphasize that the only difference between what HE wants to do and what the cryonics companies are doing is a matter of degree. And in a sense, he's right! That's why the argument fascinates me and that's why I'm taking the time to write all of this in response.

The problem is that Bauge is, at the same time, failing to establish the fact, in the minds of nieve observers, in a coherent way, that the "slippery slope" he is on is a very LONG slope and that, at some point, there is such an order of MAGNITUDE difference in the DEGREE of a sitution that one can say that we're no longer dealing with "cryonics".

Mistah Tyrgve done got you snookered.
He done beat you.
Can't you see he has it figgered out?
And and and...he gets his pitcher on TV...fer free and gratis!