Harshing Gould’s Final Buzz

David Barash has a fairly critical review of Steven Jay Gould’s final book (though not of the man himself). Summary: it was too long, it badly needed an editor, he simply ignored valid criticisms rather than responding to them, he has a final indulgence in some pet (and silly) theories, and the author was too full of himself right to the end. Warning: the review itself is not short.

I probably won’t be reading the book myself any time soon, but at fourteen hundred pages, I probably wouldn’t have been anyway.

Corpsickles

I’ve been remiss in not covering the Ted Williams cryonics situation, because it’s a subject in which I have a deep interest and more knowledge than most, including, I suspect, most bloggers. I’ll try to stay on top of it better when I get back to California next week, but in the meantime, I just wanted to comment on this latest story from the National Post’s sports section. Now the daughter is pleading with President Bush and former Senator Glenn to intercede on her behalf (though what the legal basis would be for them to do so is unclear to me).

For those few who have been on another planet this past week, baseball legend Ted Williams died a few days ago. Apparently either he or his son had made arrangements for him to be cryonically suspended–that is, his body has been frozen in the hopes that some future technology advances will be able to cure what ailed him, and to undo the even more severe damage caused by the cryonics process itself, allowing him to once again stride the earth, and smell the roses, and maybe even once again hit balls out of the park.

The son claims that this was Mr. Williams wish. His half sister, Ted Williams’ daughter, claims that it wasn’t at all his desire–that he wanted to be cremated and have the ashes scattered over the Florida Keys. Mr. Williams himself is unable to weigh in on the matter, being many degrees below room temperature and, legally at least, dead.

As is usually the case in such stories, the reporting has been appalling, confusing, and confused. As always, many refuse to use the term “cryonics,” instead using the incorrect term “cryogenics,” which is simply the scientific and engineering field of low-temperature phenomena. And the back story is missing in action in most cases, so I’ll try to fill the gap a little here.

Cryonics is often, and mistakenly, lumped in with UFOlogy, ESP and other pseudoscience, but it actually has a very sound scientific and philosophical conceptual basis.

Most people think of death as an objective, unambiguous, and verifiable condition. But in fact, it’s a legal fiction, and its declaration is simply function based and arbitrary. It’s also based on the knowledge level and location of the personnel making the declaration.

For instance, a hundred years ago, a simple cessation of breathing (perhaps after drowning) would have been sufficient to declare death, though today such people are often resuscitated through simple CPR, and go on to live many more years. More recently, the lack of heart function was sufficient, though we now routinely stop hearts for cardiac surgery. The current medical standard (in most jurisdictions, which indicates again that it’s a legal standard, and not an objective scientific one) is a flat line on an electroencephalogram (EEG), indicating no brain function. But there’s no reason to believe that this is any ultimate indicator either–it may be possible in the future to revive people who have gone flat line (and in fact, this may already be the case now–I haven’t done a recent literature search).

For these reasons, cryonicists don’t accept a function-based definition of death. Instead, they propose something called information death. This is defined as the point at which, no matter what the level of conceivable future technological capability, it is no longer possible to repair the body to the point that it can be revived, with original memories and personality. Even this definition represents a continuum, rather than a binary condition, because most of us walking around now have lost or altered some of their earlier memories. But it’s a much more promising, and valid, definition for the purposes of offering a chance at future revival.

As an example of the difference between structural damage and information death, consider that a book that has been cut up into pieces, or even shredded, could be reconstructed by a patient and talented puzzle solver, and still have the same information value as the original. But a book that has been burned, and had its ashes scattered, is irretrievable by any technology short of time travel.

All of this discussion, of course, presumes a materialist perspective–that the living body, including personality and consciousness, is the emergent property of the machinery that composes it. If one believes in an evanescent immaterial “soul,” without which the body, even if living, is a zombie of some kind, then it doesn’t work, but there’s no scientific reason to believe this to be the case, so from at least a scientific perspective, cryonics should work, in theory.

So from this viewpoint, if Mr. Williams was adequately preserved upon his legal declaration of death, he is not in fact information dead, but is rather still alive. And thus his son is saving his life (putting him in an ambulance to the future, so to speak) whereas the daughter is trying, in her ignorance, to kill him. That’s because one can’t be more dead from an information standpoint than to burn the remains, converting them to illegible carbon molecules and scattering them.

That’s what makes this quote from the article above interesting:

Ferrell said she and her husband, Mark, had known for a year about John Henry Williams’ desire to have their father’s body sent to the cryonics lab after he died.

“It is unfortunate that I have been put into a corner to fight for what is right and for my father’s final wishes,” she said in the letter. “I too am on a final mission to save ‘Ted Williams.”‘

Of course, from a cryonicist’s point of view, what she is doing is exactly the opposite of “saving” her father, by any rational definition of that word. She is, in fact, attempting to ensure that it will be impossible to save him. I suspect that she is doing this out of some version of Leon Kass’ “yuck” criterion for moral probity. She’s uncomfortable with the thought of her father’s body being frozen, perhaps for religious reasons, or perhaps simply because it’s unconventional. She probably doesn’t believe that he will ever be revivable, or perhaps she doesn’t believe that he should be revived even if it’s possible, again, for irrational emotional reasons.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with doing things for irrational emotional reasons per se, but a man’s potential life is at issue here. If it were my decision, I’d have everyone suspended, because the cost of doing so isn’t that much more than standard methods of interment (particularly if it were a common practice), and I grieve the loss of sources of consciousness to the universe under all circumstances, unless they are malevolent.

But the ultimate arbiter should be the wishes of Mr. Williams. And it’s very difficult to tell what that was from the reportage to date.

Normally, Alcor (the cryonics organization to whom he has at least temporarily been entrusted) likes to avoid these kinds of disputes, for obvious reasons. It’s bad business, and bad publicity, to have to thaw and destroy a patient that they’ve accepted. They encourage prospective customers to get permission from their families, if possible, and when it’s not, or even when it has been gained, to make their wishes very clear, in a lucid and compelling manner, in writing and video.

If Mr. Williams signed up for the procedure himself, and can be shown to be of sound mind when he did so, and not coerced by his son, then the daughter will be out of luck–she won’t be able to kill her father under the mistaken guise of “saving” him.

If he didn’t sign up himself, but was signed up by his son, then it may be more problematic. In the absence of any clear indication of Mr. Williams’ wishes, it will simply become “he said, she said,” in which he will claim that Mr. Williams did want to attempt to extend his life into the future, and she will claim that he wanted his ashes dissipated over the Keys.

It wouldn’t surprise me in either case that they are simply expressing their own wishes for their father, rather than attempting to follow out his own. I can easily imagine that the daughter’s feelings are sufficiently strong as to lie about his desires, so finding corraborating witnesses on both sides will be critical. Similarly, if the son really was talking about selling Ted Williams DNA for cloning or other purposes, it will damage his case in the public mind, and make Alcor unhappy, because that isn’t the business that they’re in. They don’t want to preserve DNA–they want to preserve persons. Of course, if she’s lying about Mr. Williams’s wishes, she could be lying about this as well, to discredit her brother and bolster her own case.

It will be an interesting legal situation, but it’s not (at least yet) about the theoretical validity, practical effectivity, or ethics of cryonics–it’s really just a simple probate case.

But my concern will be if President Bush or Senator Glenn actually do attempt to do something to help her. If that means making cryonics illegal, that will be both scary (if it succeeds) and interesting. I’m afraid that the Yuck Factor will once again come into play, and that the rational discussion on the subject will be minimal. British Columbia already has a law on the books outlawing this form of human preservation, and I hope that the same doesn’t come to pass anywhere in the US, let alone in the entire country. When it becomes illegal to freeze people, or to extend their lives, then only outlaws will be frozen.

The notion that any Supreme Court would find such a law constitutional is disturbing, for what can be a more basic human right, for someone who has committed no crime other than to be born, than to live?

[Update shortly after posting]

I see that Jay Manifold has already found, and responded to, a Christian argument (and an utterly inadequate one, even from a Christian perspective, in his and my view) against cryopreservation. And like many opponents of cloning, the concern is not that it won’t work, but it will.

Talking Past Each Other

One of the good things about this weblog is that it not only introduces space issues to people who don’t normally get exposed to them, but it offers an opportunity to thrash them out with other people in the industry, perhaps giving them and me a new perspective on the problem. The fact that we have to have such conversations is one of the reasons that I’ve decided to finish my book on space technology and policy.

In response to today’s Fox News column, I got an email from a Bill Kunce, who I assume works for USA in Houston.

After reading your response to Tony Ianettie, I reread your article “For Lack Of A Nail… “. I too an an engineer for NASA at JSC in Houston (actually I work for a subcontracted aerospace company). My comments are: You can’t really compare the loss of 1 DC-10 not shutting down the airline industry to the Challenger halting the space program. Aircraft manufacturers have 100+ customers to support their industry; manned space flight only has two – USA and Russia (which also are their own manufacturers – China will be their soon).

Well, I thought that that was exactly my point. It’s why the comparison is interesting.

Next comes the obligatory (incorrect) conventional wisdom:

The cost development process for a manned spacecraft is several orders of magnitude greater than a passenger aircraft. Only a government (and very few) would have the financial resources for that development. How many private space flight companies currently exist? Manned, none. Unmanned, a few are starting up.

There is insufficient data to determine if a space transport requires “orders of magnitude” more development cost than an air transport, since we’ve never attempted to build the former. Capsules on expendable vehicles are totally inapplicable in evaluating the cost of fully-reusable vehicles, and the only empirical data that we have for the latter is Shuttle, which is also inapplicable, for several reasons: it’s not fully reusable; it was overspecified; given those overspecifications, its development funding was insufficient for the technology and knowledge of the time; it was done by the government on a cost-plus contract basis; it was done with technology available three decades ago; and its primary mission was to give NASA and its contractors something to do after Apollo wound down, rather than minimize either development or operational costs.

In addition, even if those conditions didn’t exist, it’s only a single data point, and is not particularly useful to extrapolate to the general case.

Certainly only governments are capable (or willing) to fund such programs, but this has nothing to do with low-cost access to space.

And as to the fact that there are few private companies doing manned space, this is a problem only in the short term. There are actually several, and they are either being self funded and bootstrapping, or raising needed funds. Their market is tourism, a market which is being taken more and more seriously as time goes on.

Considering the “next generation launch system, as thought there will only be one”. As I stated above, there are beginning to emerge companies to support unmanned satellites. But no manned systems. And if you look at the Russians, the only reason they are still in business is that we let them sign-on to the ISS program. Maybe with the advent of space tourism, some entrepreneurs will succeed.

That is the market, and that will be the inevitable result of current demand and trends.

Why do you consider a focus remaining on technology and vehicle concepts, beside the point? Technology and the advancement of such got us into space.

They are beside the point not because they aren’t necessary, but because they aren’t the major factor holding us back. Markets, finance, and regulatory issues are. Solve those, and the technology will be developed, if it’s not available off the shelf (as in fact most of it is).

Vehicle concepts? That’s the process of determining what is the safest and most economical path into space.

Yes, but it’s not the primary problem. There are lots of ways to solve the technical problem, given funding and incentive.

We DO recognize the “currently infinitesimal market size for space transportation”. We’re the only one’s really in the business.

You don’t have a “business.” All you have is a NASA contract. There’s a lot more to business than following the direction of bureaucrats. It involves market research, marketing, sales, R&D (with your own money, not funds reimbursable by the government), etc.

What do you mean by “the traditional aerospace contractors”? NASA uses whomever submits the best plan at the most reasonable cost.

As long as NASA is the only customer, there’s no hope of making space affordable. See the title to this post.

Have you got any “untraditional solutions”? NASA is working on ion engines and other propulsion techniques. How much diversity do you believe there is in launching a rocket? Only one way to do it, a LOT of thrust! I agree that a diversity of provides can only be supported by a large demand. But the demand isn’t there yet.

This is my favorite paragraph, because it encapsulates just how much we are working at cross purposes. Bill believes that if we only had the right technology, that all would be well–a typical engineering response. The point is that new approaches mean new approaches to developing markets and raising funds, not (just) designing and testing vehicles. It is not an engineering problem, it is an institutional and paradigm problem, and one that’s amply demonstrated by this exchange.

Here comes more conventional “wisdom.”

As I see it, “the problem with our space markets and approaches” is 1) We don’t have a desire as a nation to support a vibrant space program, 2) We’re not willing to spend the money to achieve that goal, 3) the complexities of living in space are sometimes greater that planned, 4) because of those complexities, NASA is blamed for poor planning. and 5) unlike during Mercury/Gemini/Apollo days, people seem to be driven more by the bottom line than by pride in accomplishments.

Our hostage holder is NOT “microscopic slivers of metal”, it is the holders of the purse strings. When you buy cheap, you get cheap.

Let me translate.

“We at NASA and the contractor community have done nothing wrong. It’s all the American peoples’ fault. That they don’t consider a three-person space station that took almost two decades to build, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, or Space Shuttle missions that cost half a billion dollars apiece, an “accomplishment,” and take pride in it, just shows how little they understand about space and how difficult and expensive it is. All we need is more money, nothing else needs to change.”

Sorry, but given the government’s performance in every other sphere, it’s hard for me to believe that it’s not possible to do space any better than the government does it.

Social Experimentation

I’m visiting my brother and his wife and their daughter and son. She’s four.

She wants to play with her Lincoln logs. After I help her build a house with them, she knocks it down and goes for a more horizontal structure, and lays them all out flat, to make a dance floor. Then she dresses up her beanbag frog and hops him around on it in time to her music box. You’d almost think that gender wasn’t an artificial social construct…

Geek Appreciation

Professor Reynolds has a little ode to technology today at TechCentralStation that actually ends with a little plea to remember the engineers once in a while who make it possible.

In that spirit, I want to encourage everyone to check out the ceremony that we’ve developed to celebrate the first lunar landing, because it’s a celebration of scientists and engineers, and as far as I know, it’s the only one that does so on what I consider to be a major holiday. It’s only a week and a half from now, so you might want to start planning it for a week from Saturday with some friends, or relatives.

Checking In From Missou

I got out of LAX a couple hours before the shooting gallery excitement over at El Al, and arrived safely in St. Louis. What is the deal of this idiocy in not calling it terrorism? A hate crime? Puhleeeeeze. If you want to play that game, what happened September 11 was a “hate crime.” Certainly, if you listen to their rhetoric, Al Qaeda was largely motivated by hate. Can we please put this politically-correct stupidity to rest? Crimes are crimes. That they’re motivated by “hate” is irrelevant, and renders them thought crimes.

My opinion: the FBI is too embarrassed over their failure to prevent this at what was supposedly one of the most secure (and targeted) locations in the US. It sounds less like they were asleep at the switch if they can call it something other than “terrorism.”

But it’s unreasonable to think that this could have been easily prevented, anyway. We don’t have security at the ticket counters–it starts at the entrance to the gates. My biggest concern now is that they’re going to use this as an excuse to move the brain-dead security policy (and lines) to the airport entrance, instead of the gate entrance. If I were the paranoid sort, I’d think that big (and blundering) government partisans were setting these things up to give them an excuse to increase their intrusions on our lives.

Anyway, on the fourth, we went downtown and watched a spectacular fireworks display, framed by the Arch. No terrorist incidents, other than some squirt guns. We were in a perfect position to watch them destroy the Arch, if they were of a mind to, but it didn’t happen. As similar fearsome scenarios didn’t play out elsewhere.

I’m finding myself in agreement with those who think that Al Qaeda shot their wad last September. The guys who pulled that one off weren’t the brightest bulbs on the string, and they were likely the best they had (at least of those willing to sacrifice themselves).

Which doesn’t mean, of course, that it’s no longer necessary to drain the Arabian swamp.

Semi-Hiatus

I’m heading off back east for the next week and a half. I’ll take a laptop, but posting will be sporadic, at best. In the meantime, check out my Fox column tomorrow (which will be basically my column about commemorating, rather than celebrating the holiday, and celebrating our liberation from the planet) and in the meantime, check out Ken Barnes’ Independence Day quotes and notes.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!