X-Message-Number: 15370 From: "George Smith" <> References: <> Subject: Name calling and omniscience. Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 13:26:50 -0800 (CAPS below used for emphasis like bold or italic in this still primitive visual medium. "Shouting" requires a sound medium and this isn't one). The outcomes of name calling seem to be three: (1) It demonstrates intellectual bankruptcy. (2) It persuades no one that you are correct. (3) It potentially shortens your life span if you say the wrong thing just once to the wrong person. And if Robert Ettinger is demonstrating "senility" (according to Eugene Leitl in message #15354) by his communications on the Cryonet, I only hope to someday raise my intelligence (and hopefully most of the rest of the world!) to his level of "senility"! What nonsense to accuse this man of that trait! I absolutely admit to a firm prejudice. Everyone in my family is signed up for cryonics and has been for about ten years. I support cryonics and I support those who support cryonics. I do NOT support those who oppose cryonics because they MUST claim to know with certainty that it can NEVER work. (When I worked as a therapist at Western State Psychiatric Hospital the term applied to similar grandiose assumptions of omniscience was "delusional"). The opinions of "scientists" in 2001 regarding what is possible or impossible in, say, 2101 is the height of ego maniacal self delusion in my humble opinion based on the entire trend of such predictions throughout history. They are usually not a little wrong, but incredibly wrong... particularly when stating what CANNOT happen in the future. Examples include aircraft, spacecraft, telephones, radio, computers, organ transplants, electric lights, radar - the list is almost as endless as the nuimber of scientists who said this or that will NEVER happen and then were completely wrong (and usually dead and gone by the time the events transpired). Let me be clear. If I die I want my body to be physically preserved. Any part of me. Any way it can be done. A "straight freeze" with no cryoprotectants is better than nothing. Chemical fixation is better than nothing. Anything is better than nothing. This view is shared by all members of my family. We view cryonics as potential CONSCIOUS reincarnation. We HOPE it will work but can't be certain until it does. (Ask us again later after we're on the other side of the ice). If I die I believe that someday I will be able to be brought back to physical life because it MIGHT be possible, and the mechanisms for accomplishing this already seem likely to be created in the relatively near future. In the meantime if new doodads come along which seem to do a better overall job, I'm all for the new doodads. But if you are today convinced that what is available CAN'T work, I congratulate you and stand in awe of you for you must be God since God is held to be all knowing and you are claiming that same trait of omniscience. If you know something CAN'T happen, especially something like resuscitation of cryonics patients through a future technology, well, I am truly amazed! It must be great to know what CAN'T happen in the future! Frankly those who say they favor cryonics for themselves and then state that they don't think it can work as it is now are attributing God like omniscience to themselves. They are implicitly claiming that they absolutely KNOW the future. (Even psychics on tv don't claim to be able to do that!). Everyone can (and usually does) have rational blind spots. The above one seems amazingly obvious to me, however. (Next in line is the clinging to mechanistic views of science based on disproven concepts of 19th century physics, but that's another issue definitely off topic here!). There is no wiggle room for error if you lay claim to certainty about what CAN'T happen when it comes to the future of cryonics. IF YOU DIE NOW OR ANYTIME SOON you will leave something behind for future technologists to restore to life or you won't. I have often said that most people make their decisions emotionally and then use their intellect to rationalize their decisions. Or to put it more simply, most people would rather be dead right and buried six feet under than to be wrong. So here is my question to those who are attacking the current state of cryonics as inadequate. Are you God? Long Life to Those Who Choose It, George Smith Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15370