X-Message-Number: 13342
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: A few clarifications and observations respectully submitted
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 11:37:28 -0800

Clarifications and observations interspersed below:

In Message #13336 Paul Wakfer wrote on the subject:Re: CryoNet #13305 sound
bites

>
> > Message #13305
> > From: 
> > Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 21:18:02 EST
> > Subject: sound bites
> >
> > [snip]
>
> Robert Ettinger pushed the following "viewpoint as 'the' key to
> life".
>
> > we can say some relevant things with
> > considerable confidence:
> > -----
> > If you don't try, you are less likely to succeed.
>
> This is a mere tautology

Yet the tautology does describe a relevant truth we can state with
"considerable confidence".

> > If you are pessimistic, you are less likely to try.
>
> This is a relevant, benefical psychological observation
>
> > If you are buried, you are less likely to survive.
>
> Not necessarily. They may both be zero.
>
> > It usually helps to have more friends and fewer antagonists.
>
> Not necessarily. Do-gooder, well meaning friends often do more harm than
intelligent,
> knowledgable, productive non-friends.
>
> > For the optimists to be right, only one approach need work. For the
> > pessimists to be right, every approach must fail.
>
> For cryonics to succeed, every individual part of a series of highly
complex processes must work
> correctly. For cryonics to fail, only one part of one of those highly
complex processes needs to
> fail.

This is conjecture stated as fact.   It is actually only a personal opinion.

For example, there seem to be non-linear patterns with redundancies which
work despite failures.  A launched missile is over 99% of the time off
target but is corrects its trajectory as it goes.

The human body is constantly "failing" as cells die.  Yet we generally
continue breathing for quite a few years - another example of non-linear
patterns with redundancies as cells continue to reproduce and replace the
failures in the highly complex process we call the human body.

> > In the sweep of history, the can-do surprises have overwhelmed the
can't-do
> > surprises.
>
> Nonsense! This totally ignores the myriad of inventions, processes,
businesses, discoveries,
> etc. which are never amount to anything and are, thus, never heard of and
certainly not recorded
> by history. In science for example, negative results are seldom published.
>

The fact that these unknowns never amounted to anything is why they are
overwhelmed by those that have.

> Paul Wakfer
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

It is all too easy to proclaim our opinions as facts.

It is even easier to miss what someone says when it clashes with our present
beliefs.

If you catch me doing either one in the future, please correct me as well.

George Smith
www.cryonics.org

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