X-Message-Number: 1289
Subject: CRYONICS Re: Future need for cryonics
From:  (Edgar W. Swank)
Date: Fri, 09 Oct 92 15:41:39 PDT

In cryomsg 1250, Thomas Donaldson says that we will NEVER escape
the need to store badly damaged people into the indefinite future.
 
I would submit that way before 2000 years hence cryonics and any
kind of suspension of the badly damaged will be replaced by
some kind of *non-destructive* copying and archiving of the perfectly
healthy.
 
In the event of any non-reversible accident, or even total destruction
or loss of a person, just go back and reconstruct from the last
backup copy.  At IBM, we called that checkpoint/restart.  It was a
technique for running programs which took longer to run than the mean
time to failure of the computing system.
 
If you take a backup, say, every year or so, then the worst that can
(subjectively) happen to you is loss of your last year's (or so)
memories.  I think most would choose that over the alternative of
suspending whatever was left after an accident and losing decades or
centuries of real time, even assuming no subjective memory loss.

--
 (Edgar W. Swank)
SPECTROX SYSTEMS +1.408.252.1005  Silicon Valley, Ca


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