"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> I have to say that I think <ischemia> is one of the less effective memes
> I've run across lately. Cryonics patients are DEAD. Adapting to the
Nothing to be done about it, study/minimization of ischemic damage is a
major part of modern mainstream medicine. Just look for "ischemia" on Medline.
> future consists of recognizing that death is not necessarily
> irreversible. The euphemisms are not fooling anyone and I think it sounds
> darn stupid, like wearing a sign that says "Hi, I'm in denial" or "Hi,
Um, ischemia is not a synonym of cryonics. It's a particular damage mechanism
which occurs in the biological tissue at stopped blood flow. Of course
ischemia management is of great relevance to cryonics, but that's another
issue entirely.
As to calling patients "dead" let's agree to disagree. Of course they're
dead to the classical medicine (particularly, after you pumped them full
of toxic chemicals and froze them stiff), but you're running in explanation
problems, as to why you still keep all the pop- and momsicles who're past
their expiration date, as you yourself admitted ("Cryonics patients are DEAD").
It's much easier to tell "no, they're probably not dead, but they're so
beyond the current state of the art we can't fix them yet, so that's we
inflict this extra damage on them occuring in the suspension process,
so that akk further changes are arrested, and we've stabilized them so well
we can afford to wait for kiloyears for the art to improve, if it needs be".
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:56 MDT