X-Message-Number: 10348
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 09:30:30 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #10343 - #10347

To Bob Ettinger:

Fortunately or unfortunately, Tipler made assumptions about cosmology
which have turned out to be clearly false. A SCIENCE article a few 
weeks ago detailed the results of current tests of cosmological theories.
There may be no end of objective time, and the universe will expand
forever. Yes, we could be wrong about this, but I doubt very much that
we will be wrong in such a way as to resurrect the old assumptions 
Tipler used.

You also say something which quite bewilders me. Sure, others may know
this too. But just how do Tipler and Moravec believe that they can
resurrect someone on the basis of no information about who or what they
were like? Since I've read Tipler's book, I can make a guess about 
HIS methods. But what about Moravec? Or has he signed on to Tipler's
ideas? In any case, there are two essential assumptions here which may
very well be false: that information about the past survives indefinitely
in sufficient detail to recreate it, and that the number of forms
people may now take is finite. (The second is not clear either, since
those forms will contain memories of the world, and the world --- in the
sense of the Universe --- may very well not be finite. Sure, the individual
people may be finite just like every integer is finite, but the totality
may not be).

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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