I bet Jordan will tell us if nicely asked. He has never been reluctant to speak up straightforwardly on here.
If Wowk came on here (under his real name, not that pantyassed thing he used to try to discredit FD and failed), he would be welcomed and given all respect for his straightforward posts, by me.
Perry - that was a directed donation by some individual, therefore has to be used for that purpose. I seem to recall Mike having expressed an interest in chemical fixation before. Maybe some good will come out of it. Heck, how many years of that CryoMonk's wages will that amount cover, plus getting the dewars topped off along with the deal?
And yes he branches out from comp sci into quantum physics/computers and it isn't hard to see that if fixation saves the structure and info better, and if that is all that is important, I suppose the original could just be discarded. This of course gets into the "is a copy of me, me?" debates, and has altogether IMO to do with awareness of identity and wherein that resides, if indeed it is a real thing at all.
Shermer recently had a superb article in his rag "Consciousness is Nothing but a Word" by Henry D. Schlinger. It is a must read for anyone who thinks about consciousness and identity. It was in his 2/27/08 eSkeptic send - I don't know if it's on a web page or not, google?
TaaaaaDaaaaaa,
FD
