Why Transbemans in Biostasis are Alive

Dr. Martine Rothblatt

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In 41 years we went from one heart transplant, (like a miracle), to where it is so routine ten are done every day, over 75,000 have been done. Counting all the major bodily organs, mostly kidney transplants, there have been over a million transplants performed.

Only 19 years since vitrification, [1] which is a more advanced form of cryonics, was proposed and people said it was impossible. Nineteen years later, it was done and reversed. We have successfully reversed the vitrification of a kidney. Only 16 years after vitrification was proposed, the first human vitrification has been done. There are now numerous human neuro vitrifications and even a full body vitrification has been accomplished at Alcor.  

When will the vitrification revivals or reversals occur? Well, I think soon looking at 50 years from the Wright brothers to the B-52 and 30 years after that to the landing on the moon.

I never want anybody to forget that 50 years and 30 years now more like 10 years because advancement is exponential and not linear. According to Ray Kurzweil, [2] we are just about 15 years from having the computing capacity of a human brain for a thousand dollars, even sooner than that for more expensive outlay of money.

Even today, some brain functions can be computerized. I think all of us have a huge sense of loss whenever our hard drive crashes. I know some people that feel they have lost part of their brain like it is a minor stroke because our memory is so embedded already, and that's one of the most important functions of the human brain; more generally, mannerism; personality; recollections; feelings; beliefs; attitudes and values.

Other people have pointed out the creativity of the art and music program, Aaron. [3] All kinds of brain functions, and I am not even calling them intelligence or skills, can be computerized today.  

An argument can be made under the existing international legal definition of death; there is a function that already continues to exist. 

We call these digital copies of key brain functions "bemes". Bemes are analogous to memes that in turn were inspired by genes. Bemes are are the smallest units of beingness. By holding our bemes, sites like CyBeRev.org, [4] Secondlife.org
[5], and other such sites are actually performing a brain function. A bemenaut has thus not really ceased all of the functions of the human brain because they have deposited a lot of those functions in a place like Secondlife.com or CyBeRev.org, and hence, continue to live in those online worlds. 

Let's go back to the medico-Legal [6] problems. Bemes are not currently accepted as medical standards. The juridico-medical establishment would tell an individual who deposited all their mannerisms, personality, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values, even though all those brain functions are deposited in a computer, we do not accept bemes in the medical establishment. It is not in any textbook, so you are still dead. 

Secondly, they will say you cannot use the purpose of rules to defeat the rules. The purpose of rules was to get you definitely dead. No matter what you come up with, we are not going to let you loophole your way out of the definition of death distinction.  

How do we get around this problem to keep our transbemans in biostasis legally alive? First, I think it is very important to get psychiatry to accept the reality of bemes as a brain function, and that is something all of us who are experts in this field can work with.

 
Image 4: Bemes

Tremendously important to getting people in biostasis (especially cybernetic biostasis) alive would be to merge bemes with mindware to evidence cyberconsciousness. [7] This is the kind of work that companies like Novamente [8] are working on by creating the process functions of the mind, the consciousness of the mind.  

Creating mindware that we can drop our data files into. The bemes are like data files that drop into mindware with convincingly evident cyberconsciousness and would begin to become more of a brain function that would be harder to deny.

 
Image 5: Solutions to Legal Death

Showing cryonic revival would probably be like receiving a message from ET. It would be a tremendous wake-up call to everybody that this procedure was reversible. 

Ultimately, we must persuade society that death is not necessary. 

There are many motivations to get society to accept cyber-life. I think many people would like to see Elvis come back. Personally, I see no reason why Elvis could not come back. I do not think he is walking around alive now, but I think that there are tons of bemes of Elvis around and somebody could recreate Elvis. In fact, they could recreate multiple versions of Elvis. 

That would be one reason: to keep key contributors to society alive, especially those who are on the cusp of biological death.

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Footnotes

1. Vitrification - a process of converting a material into a glass-like amorphous solid which is free from any crystalline structure, either by the quick removal or addition of heat, or by mixing with an additive. Solidification of a vitreous solid occurs at the glass transition temperature (which is lower than melting temperature, Tm, due to supercooling).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrification August 8, 2007 4:10PM EST

2. Ray Kurzweil – (born February 12, 1948) is a pioneer in the fields of optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, technological singularity, and futurism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil August 8, 2007 4:14PM EST

For further information, visit: www.KurzweilAI.net

3. Aaron – is the first fine art screensaver to utilize artificial intelligence to continuously create original paintings on your PC. Developed by Harold Cohen and productized by Ray Kurzweil.
http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com/ August 14, 2007 2:47PM EST

4. Secondlife.com - a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its Residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 8,687,234 Residents from around the globe.
http://secondlife.com/whatis/ August 8, 2007 4:20PM EST

5. www.CyBeRev.org - means cybernetic beingness revival. The purpose of the CyBeRev project is to prevent death by preserving sufficient digital information about a person so that recovery remains possible by foreseeable technology. Terasem Movement believes that future technology will be able to recover full functionality for CyBeRev people.
http://www.cyberev.org/ August 8, 2007 4:25PM EST

6. MedicoLegal - Of, relating to, or concerned with medicine and law. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/medicolegal August 8, 2007 4:31PM EST

7. Cyberconsciousness - Terasem defines cyberconsciousness as self-awareness residing in computerized software and hardware.

8. Novamente - a software products and services firm focused on creating intelligent agents for virtual worlds and MMOGs.
http://www.novamente.net/ August 9, 2007 12:55PM EST

 

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