X-Message-Number: 12849
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: Opinions are not facts.
Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 14:12:05 -0800

In Message #12840, Alex Berg wrote:

> Subject: A need for an open discussion

<delete his quote of my former posting>

>I believe that current procedures DO cause *irreversible*
> information loss, which NO technology will ever be able to overcome.

Can you PROVE it yet?  Of course not.  Therefore it is only an pessimistic
opinion.

> Why?
> Because, as Mike Darwin and other people from 21CM repeatedly stated, the
> magnitude of the destruction is too great.

Can THEY prove it yet?  Of course not.  Therefore it is only a pessimistic
opinion.

> This is what one researcher said :
> > Most cryonicists would agree that cremation destroys identity
> >permanently for all practical purposes.

Can THEY prove it?  Even this we don't know for certain.  What if memory is
not stored in physcial systems as we know it, but, as Rupert Sheldrake has
speculated, in a trans-spacial morphogenic field (see his A NEW SCIENCE OF
LIFE, the only book Nature magazine suggested should be burned).

Maybe Sheldrake is wrong, too.  I know I DON'T know - and neither does
ANYONE else.

The real question is, when you DON'T KNOW, should you close the door which
would SAVE YOUR LIFE, should you reject cryonics in an effort to pretend you
really know what you don't?

>>Even nanotechnology would not
> >be sufficient to recover a cremated individual.

Can this researcher PROVE that?  It remains an assumption only.  He (she?)
states it as a fact, but it is only an opinion.

>>What if, instead of
> >burning from the outside-in, the brain burned inside-out, at a million
> >points spread randomly throughout the brain?  Imagine taking a blowtorch
> >to the Mona Lisa at random points until only 10-20% of the original
> >surface area of the painting remains.  You can still tell it's a
> >painting.  You might even be able to tell that it's a painting of a
> >woman.  But assuming that you have no prior photos of the painting, how
> >much of the original painting could you recover?  At what cost?  In what
> >time frame?

What if you have all the time you need because you are suspended in liquid
nitrogen because you didn't pessimistically assume that cryonics couldn't
work.  And as for cost, you can't even know that money will even be needed
by then.

> Applying current cryonics techniques is like taking a
> micro-blowtorch
> >to the brain at a million different points.
>
> Please note that it was such long-time cryonics activists like Darwin e.a.
> who changed  their opinion on the probability of success with current
> methods.

Yes. And they want YOUR MONEY for research.

Not some of it.  ALL of it.

They don't want you to spend the precious few dollars you might "waste" on
YOUR cryonic suspension when you could be giving to research, THEIR
research.

I don't think this is what they intended.  But the result is the same.

Please understand, if you want to give every last penny you have to
research, that's your business.

But consider this:

If I am right and they are wrong, you will LIVE with cryonics.

If I am wrong and they are right, it doesn't matter.  You'll just be DEAD.

But if you don't take a small amount of money and earmark it for the LIFE
insurance option we call cryonics, and you die, and they are wrong - well,
goodbye.

(The one consulation is you will probably never know you were wrong.  Not
much of a consulation, I think.  Is it really better to be DEAD RIGHT and
buried six feet in the ground than to LIVE?).

> And of course they know about nanotechnology.

NO!  This implies that current opinion is knowledge of all the facts,
present and future.

Today's experts only know about the CURRENT state of development in
nanotechnology.  Why, shoot, a few of them made a careful effort to correct
me on this, saying there still has been no meaningful breakthrough yet which
will LEAD to nanotechnology.  (But other experts disagree with THEM).

In other words, the future potential of nanotech is UNKNOWN.

That's the TRUTH.  Anything else so portrayed is an OPINION.

> I also want to repeat that even successful brain vitrification will not
> completely prove that cryonics will work. There still will be *huge*
amount
> of work after revival.

Jeff Davis keeps quoting Ray Charles on this.  It really is only "hard"
until you know how to do it.  When we can do it, it won't be "hard" or
"huge".  It will be normal.

> Remember, all we will have after revival would be aged
> and likely diseased brain! Currently, we can have only vague speculations
on
> what will be possible to do with it.

So nanotech will either work well enough to make cryonics work or it won't.

So cryonics is taking the relatively low cost gamble of saying, "Maybe it
WILL work so I'll cover that bet by signing up."  This is what I have been
calling optimism.

> Everyone entitled to his own opinion.

Yes.  IF it is expressed as an OPINION and NOT as a fact when it is only an
opinon.

When I see pessimistic opinion offered as fact, I will always try to point
this out.

> So I think that people reading this
> forum should know facts [*] from different perspective.
> And IMHO, current cryonic
> procedure amounts to little more than a high-tech funeral.

You are welcome to your opinion.  But opinions are NOT * "facts".

This my entire point.

Someone new to the Cryonet, someone trying to decide if it makes sense to
sign up his wife, his son and daughter, reads your post.  You use the word
"facts", when it is only opinion.  You point to cryonics experts who have
become pessimistic and believe that they are right, which is ONLY THEIR
opinion.

Someone decides you and the pessimists are right.  They don't sign up for
cryonics.  Then their wife gets cancer and dies in six months.  She is
cremated.  His son and daughter get killed in an auto accident next July.
They are buried after over $5000 is spent on their embalming and open casket
funeral.  He, himself, dies in 2001 from a heart attack and is cremated.

And what if you and those who are currently pessimistic are wrong?  What if
our reader had signed up his family and they were all placed in liquid
nitrogen instead of the crematorium or a casket?  What if cryonics
eventually works and they could all have been revived, healthy and restored
in twenty years, fifty years, one hundred years or more?

Cryonics is life insurance - not a guarantee.

Those who PRETEND they KNOW it can't work are not merely expressing their
opinion.  IF THEY ARE WRONG they are contributing to the deaths of innocent
people who otherwise would not have to die dead.

Look.  It isn't that expensive to have cryonics in place.  And please
remember that OPINIONS are NOT FACTS.  We don't know that cryonics can't
work, and it is a wise choice to wear a parachute before leaping out of an
airplane.  Everybody's in an airplane.  Everybody will have to jump.
Parachutes are available.  My suggestion?  Put one on.  What have you got to
lose?

In my opinion, it makes sense to remember that the future is UNKNOWN.  We
have ONLY opinions at this stage.  If  people believe that the pessimists
are right, they will NOT sign up for cryonics now.  IF they die before
something better comes along and cryonics works after all, people who could
have been saved will have been lost needlessly.  Why?  Because of opinions
misrepresented as KNOWN FACTS.

I apologize if this response seems a bit harsh.  But lives do hang in the
balance in MY opinion.

This is all a simple issue of intellectual honesty.

Don't offer your opinions as facts.

Be honest.

George Smith
www.cryonics.org

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