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

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