X-Message-Number: 15857
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 01:04:40 -0500
From: <>
Subject: Motivation for reviving others (#15846)

David K questions in message 15846 the motivation of future people
to revive us, and also asks whether we would reanimate people frozen
100 years ago.

These are good questions.

The short answer that Bob Smart used to post was: ``I'll be revived
because i paid to be revived''.  The idea is that the funds being
held to generate income to pay for the liquid nitrogen can be
applied (when the nitrogen is no longer needed) for revival.

But even if this weren't the case, i think we'd be revived because
there will be people who like to do this sort of thing.  There just
happen to be people who are scientifically inclined, and like to
create or otherwise do good.

I think there are at least two precedents: organizations that produce
free software, and people who like to restore old cars.  The Free
Software Foundation, for example, produces some very complex software,
including a compiler which runs on virtually all systems.  It's a
labor of love (at least partially), because some people love to
create.  How much better to recreate a human than to debug a program?
And a lot of people just get a kick out of fixing old cars---how much
more rewarding to restore an old human to youthful vigor than to
restore an old car?  (Perhaps the restored person could be
indentured for some number of years to pay for the revival.)

And in answer to the question of reviving people frozen 100 years ago,
if that were possible today, i personally would revive at least one
such person (some complete stranger), even if it cost me thousands of
dollars and labor spread over a few decades.  And i'm sure there are
thousands of people like me (if not millions).  How many religions
send out missionaries to how many potential converts?  The urge to do
good is part of being human.

And once one person from the past is revived, he or she can work on
others.  So even if the cryonics organizations couldn't pay for
revival, and there were very very few good people left on earth,
it still wouldn't take much to get the ball rolling.

dan

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