X-Message-Number: 17174
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 01:13:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis Epstein <>
Subject: Catchup July 11-14

CryoNet - Wed 11 Jul 2001
-------------------------

    #16942: war and peace among immortalists [Thomas Donaldson]

>Yes, longevity may also have negative features. However we have to be
>careful here because a negative feature, just like any other disease,may
>end up being scrutinized and worked over until means exist to prevent it.
>It's features of just that kind that make me think that "immortality"
>just can't all come at once ie. somebody finds a drug which does away
>with aging and all its faults, and we all live happily ever after. We'll
>find diseases which only occur at the age of 200 and beyond, and have to
>deal with them. (Don't ask me what thsoe diseases may be; if we're both
>over 200 years old someday, then its time to ask me).

Well,this is still an assumption.
There would have to be particularly
slow-acting processes that don't ever
reach a detectable stage now...and
that's difficult.Aging is something
that happens at different rates...
but why wouldn't something that would
reach a certain stage in 200 years if
it moved very slowly ever be recorded
among people who age faster?

There is no such thing as a 112-year-old
who doesn't "look 20 years younger".

>In terms of the setup you envisioned, with a group of people feeling
>even more strongly about one another than anyone does now, it's not
>at all obvious that such a setup could occur. We're talking about
>people hundreds of years old, with lots of contacts. It would take
>a major effort to get a group to cease its contacts outside and deal
>only (or in large part) only with those inside, and for such people
>to have the same sorts of feelings about "insiders" and "outsiders"
>as people now have who never experienced anything else.

Groups differ.A contemplative monastery
of people who join at 20 and die at 80
would not be more gregarious if its
members lived to 800,I think.

There's a presumption here,of course,that
it's wrong to be focussed on your close
associates.I tend to believe that it's a
healthy thing to cultivate permanences and
certainties.The implication that contacts
between individuals should be ever-changing
is I think not soundly based.

>Such groups do exist now, and the existence of such a group in the
>future depends a lot on what happens to them now. I do not know of
>any IMMORTALISTS who feel that way, to start with. Those who are not
>immortalists may take whatever attitude they wish, but unless they
>become immortalists their attitudes will disappear. However, by
>becoming immortalists, such group members will either leave their
>group, or the group itself will become a group of immortalists ...
>and late or soon, realize that the actions of other nonmembers play
>an important role in their lifespans.

But is there only one correct reaction
to such a situation?

If immortality is achieved in a passive
way,it will become a passive condition;
people who are not in any way attached
to immortality will nonetheless have it
through catching a "plague",getting what
is considered routine pediatric care in
their society,etc.There won't be a uniform
attitude towards it.

    #16943: Re: Something of grave concern for stem cell and other
	related research [Ivan Snyder]

>   In my previous post I told how we are now able, at least to a limited
>extent, repair and rejuvenate some organs. Maybe in the future this will
>become routine. I am optimistic about the picture painted in Halpern's
>book The First Immortal: Imagine a not too distant future where old age
>does not equate with poor health. Senescence is treated as an illness.
>Your health insurance plan covers treatment. Government is all for it
>since this cancels out social security, etc. We will still die,
>occasionally, from accidents and incurable disease. Cryonics will be your
>insurance when that comes.

Well,government will certainly have to
rejigger "Social Security,etc" to accomodate
longer lifespans.The present schedule keeps
the age for full benefits at 67 with no
further increase planned.(Nobody 63 or under
can get full benefits at 65,the hike to 67
is being phased in slowly).

The idea of "old age benefits" will likely
undergo a major rethink as efforts are made
to make the covered portion of the population
stay at an affordable percentage.

    #16948: Re: CryoNet #16924 Simulation [Azt28]

>We are too few a part of that simulation to be its main purpose. You don't
>create 10^20 stars to watch GWB in the White House or anything else on
>Earth. In God I don't trust, and I don't think the Universe we see has been
>built by anyone, less by anyone with the objective to watch us. We are
>nothing and we have to learn this fact.

We can't be NOTHING and still BE.
Even 999999999999999999999999999999999^99999999999999999999^9999^9999^999
multiplied by ZERO would still be zero...so
the Universe would itself be zero,if we were nothing.

That we are of no significance compared to God
is obvious,except to atheists.


    #16949: Re: Why beings of the future WILL reanimate us. [Peter C. McCluskey]
    
> I don't want to suggest that the prior rules on abortion were optimal,
>but it seems to me that cryonicists who want society to give the benefit
>of the doubt to beings whose rights are disputed should at least demand
>that doctors who perform abortions make every possible effort to insure
>that the fetus lives.

Which is the opposite of the purpose of an abortion.
I don't buy that immortalism has to be coupled with
panglobal warm-and-fuzziness,with a Jainist aversion
to flyswatting...if anything,that sort of morality
is associated with the inevitability of our mortality
being regarded as something not to be questioned.

The societal evolution immortalists should seek to
guide is of a stable,prosperous gerontocracy.As
living a long time will be our hallmark,we want it
to be something that will be predictably held in
high regard,and not resented.

    #16950: Re: Argument that life has inherent value [Peter C. McCluskey]

> I am fairly confident that, as long as people can be convinced cryonics
>has a nontrivial chance of working, it will be easy to argue that anyone
>who treats frozen people as dead is callous enough that he might want to
>kill off the comatose, terminally ill, etc. next.

And yet we see people in the cryonics camp arguing FOR
the deliberate death (by everyone else's standards) of the
terminally ill,etc.
As I have said,I favor abortion on demand,
but am VERY MUCH against assisted suicide
and euthanasia and so forth...I feel betrayed
by people who are for both,since that's the
association the anti-abortionists seek to
make and that I regard as completely
unwarranted.

Whether or NOT frozen people are dead,
cryonics appears to be a very good way
to preserve the bodies...I am not positive
that it is the most effective way,but
I do not see frozen people being dead as
a sufficient reason to oppose keeping
them frozen.If dead people have to rot,
why do we allow embalming?

    #16951: The real reason people don't sign up [david pizer]

>I keep chipping away on a moral argument for cryonics. I feel
>that if we have a strong moral argument in place, if and when an
>opportunity comes up, (as in a big, public legal case of some related
>topic) in the public eye that we can tie into, we can begin the long
>process to show people that cryonics is what people ***ought*** to do
>when they die and not bury, cremate etc.

IF,as McCluskey says above,it can be
demonstrated that "cryonics has a non-trivial
chance of working",this should take care
of itself.At that point the viewpoint that
it was inconsiderate NOT to freeze someone,
if not downright medical malpractice or
manslaughter,would start to grow.

>And, if and when someone or some organization, or the government, tries
>to make cryonics illegal, we need to have some moral argument in place to
>protect the rights of frozen beings.  This argument will likely have more
>force if it comes from a person or an organization that does not profit
>from the freezing "dead" people.

A ban on cryonics would risk the preservation
of all persons now in suspension,as the laws
might also forbid the maintenance of existing
facilities.But I think that cryonics may be
safer if the legal perception that the frozen
are dead is not challenged too rudely.Until
we see a formerly-frozen lab animal running
around,the dead-ness of the frozen will be
seen as proven.

Cryonics for persons not legally deceased once
suspended will be a very different kettle of
fish than the present situation.

>The big moral problem for us, as I see it, is that to get most of the
>people to start to believe that cryonics is good and biological immortality
>is good, you would first have to get them to change their beliefs about
>God and Heaven.  Since I do not know if God and Heaven do or do not exist
>for them, I think it would be just as immoral for me to try to change
>their beliefs as it would be for them to try to talk me out of cryonics.

So you consider it immoral to seek to
persuade people to change their minds?

In any event,I have aspired to biological
immortality since childhood and think that
doubting the existence of God is ridiculous.
You do NOT have to be an atheist to want to
keep on living!

>The good news, (for those who want to convince others to sign up and
>increase our numbers), is that there are millions of atheists that have
>not embraced cryonics yet.

Well,I'd like to still be around when the
last atheist is dead or has admitted that
nothing could possibly exist were there
no Infinitely First Cause.And I don't think
atheism necessarily leads to immortalism...

>And I think that if they were surveyed their biggest objections would be
>your number one and two and their measurement of objection to these would
>be in the range of 5 to 7.

...you underestimate the "Death is natural"
argument.Atheism lends itself easily to the
"life's a bitch and then you die" ethos,
complete in some cases with cardboard coffins.

    #16952: when will indefinite lifespan finally be here? [john grigg]

>The very interesting topic of just when indefinite lifespan will be
>reached, and who will benefit is being discussed on the extrolist.
>I thought I would share my post about it.

>Reason wrote:
> >
> > ---> Spike Jones quoting Mike Lorrey
> > >>  I personally expect anyone with a more normal expectancy who is
> > >> 30-35 today to make it to the point where practical immortality is
> > >> attained.
> > >
> > >I pretty much agree with Mike on this, which is why I
> > >am willing to go to extreme measures such as CR to
> > >scratch for just a feeeew moooore yeeeears.  Im 40.  spike

I'm 40 too...and hopeful.

>If I remember correctly, in The Alcor Adventure video Linda Chamberlain
>put the timeline where major killers(heart disease, cancer, etc.) are
>stopped at a mere ten years from now.

Well,do look at Charles Panati's BREAKTHROUGHS
for some predictions (in 1980) of technology
that have not come to pass.In their own way,
techies have been as myopic as Armageddon
believers sometimes.

When was the film made?

>So, if I just make it to the 200th anniversary of the L.D.S. church then
>I will be in the age of indefinite lifespan for everyone!  It should
>make for interesting conversation in General Conference...

That would be April 2030,for the reader
who doesn't know.(I'd be 69).

Let's see,Oaks would be close to 98 then,
Holland 89,Eyring almost 97...who do you
see as the permanent president of the
Church,then?

    #16954: 41'st update on fly longevity experiments [Doug Skrecky]

>    This is the 41'st update of my fly longevity experiments.

In all this time,has a recipe for
feeding or breeding Methuselah-flies
begun to be approached yet?

CryoNet - Thu 12 Jul 2001
-------------------------

    #16961: Why People Won't Sign [fair4us]

>David Pizer recently said:  "my deepest impressions of
>the responses that non-cryonics persons give is that they do not tell you
>their real number one reason that overrides all else, they don't want to
>continue on here, they want to get to Heaven, pronto.  For some reason,
>they must feel embarased or silly to state their real reasons, so they
>profess all the other ones. "

>That, I am sure is a primary reason for many.  But I think there is a more
>basic reason for many others that involves not only the religious beliefs,
>but other problems such as the "selfish use of life insurance money," and
>that is the MASS BELIEF prevalent in our culture which demands things such
>as "everyone's time must come," "you can't cheat the grim reaper," and the
>societal pressure of not going against the norm by trying to do something
>more elite than your relatives and friends and what they believe in, or of
>all things trying to defeat "the will of God."

I'm inclined to believe this is a more
accurate assessment than Pizer's.There
is little eagerness-to-get-to-Heaven
among people at large...but it is a
strong part of human culture that it
is a sign of maturity to accept the
absolute inevitability of death,and a
sign of naive denial to attempt to
rely on any escape from it.It is FAR
from socially acceptable to seriously
seek to live forever.

    #16962: Mind on a Chip [Bryan Hall]

>The movie "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" gets it wrong, according to Bart
>Kosko, author of Heaven in a Chip. Instead, it will be far easier to make
>us more like computers than to make computers more like us.

>Some of the commentary's main points include:
>* Chips in 2020 or so will have the raw processing power of the human
brain and will forever exceed it after that.
>* Brains are wet and have random wiring. They need sugar, oxygen and
>sleep.They risk stroke and need a special cooling system for their thick
>skull-based housing.
>* Brains have no backup. They forget old things as they learn new things.
>So memory steadily decays.
>* Chip minds will have a bit-based omnipotence because they could create
>entire virtual worlds simply by imagining them.
>* Chip time will be millions or even billions of times faster.

Well,these are the views of the "chip-ist"...
but I deny the reality of artificial "intelligence"
and even if it is possible,I deny its desirability.
Our survival demands that we neither create nor
tolerate rivals to our status as the dominant
intelligence.We may use technologies to assist our
own minds,but not to supplant them!

(I have no responses to the July 13th Cryonet).

CryoNet - Sat 14 Jul 2001
-------------------------

    #16972: CryoNet #16967 - #16969 [Thomas Donaldson]

>However something does need explaining here. What happens with cryonics
>is that we disagree strongly as to whether patients are/were dead in
>the first place. If our suspended patients are NOT dead, then there is
>no issue about either souls or death on their revival. If they ARE
>dead, then no amount of effort and technology, even in the far future,
>will bring them back.... after all, they were DEAD.

Well...are you saying that irreversibility
is a necessary attribute of death?

If you're trying to change paradigms,
this doesn't necessarily follow.

>A cryonics interpretation of death requires first of all that no
>future technology can really bring the patient back. However there are
>cases, particularly those involved with brain damage, in which a person
>may die in OUR terms but not in those of contemporary medicine. An
>advanced case of Alzheimer's will have virtually the entire upper brain
>eaten away: dead in our terms but not those of present medicine.

Again the Donaldson Exception,no doubt
colored by his own experience with a
brain tumor.But why is brain repair to
be beyond future technology in a way
the remedying of other now-irreparable
ills is not??

>If however a patient is NOT dead, then he's in exactly the same
>situation as someone in a coma. No, we may not be able to help him
>now, but eventually the technology needed will become available and
>he/she can be brought back.

But is death to be thought of as
more like a coma than previously,
or a coma as more like death??

    #16978: Dead people don't have any rights [david pizer]

>This is a problem that I have been considering for a long time.  The "law"
>generaly does not give "dead people" any rights.  And for a cryonics
>service provider to freeze someone, that someone must be legally "dead."
>Otherwise the procedure would cause the death of that someone and that
>would be murder.

>We like to think of the patients as legally dead so we can freeze them
>without having to go to jail for murder.  Also, in the past (this may
>change if we ever get the conventional medical community to take over) we
>did not need doctors and hospitals to do the procedure since we were not
>practicing medicine since we were freezing "dead" people.  So calling
>frozen people dead had some benefits.

And yet you generally shy away from treating
cryonics as a procedure for preserving dead
bodies...which might actually help sell it
to people who are revulsed by the idea of
their bodies decomposing but not prepared
to believe that they can be reanimated.

>But on the other side of the coin, after we get the patient frozen, it
>would be in his/her best interests if he/she was not considered dead, but
>more of in a coma.  That way the patient would have rights.  Specifically
>the right to not be unfrozen, and the right to be reanimated when and if
>that technology ever becomes available.

Those rights can be in conflict with
one another...who decides when thawing
will mean reanimation and not decomposition?

Will the first failure at reanimation make
other attempts impossible for a long time?

Of course,cryonics service contracts make
clear reanimation is not guaranteed.If the
frozen have rights,will such contracts still
be legal?

>But the frozen patient does not have rights if the patient is dead.  For
>people who are going to want certain rights to be respected after their
>death, they often put these concerns in a trust. The *trust* of a dead
>person has rights, even if the dead person does not.  So if your "dead"
>body were in a trust, it might get some indirect rights???  Also, that is
>the place you may want to put your assets while you are considered "dead"
>by the government and until you are considered "alive" again.

For a reanimated person to be considered
legally the same as the previously dead
identity whose will has been executed,
etc.,is going to be a hard thing for the
law to swallow.

    #16979: Bauge fires back at Rick Potvins bogus attack! [Trygve Bauge]

>>At this time, Bauge has indicated somewhere here in this forum that he
>>doesn't think that freezing a person's paper records (reciepts and
>>diaries) would be neccessary.

>I have never come across anyone else than Rick Potvin, that has wanted to
>freeze paper records in liquid Nitrogen. I have posted in a separate article
>why I don't reccommend this.

I don't know how good liquid nitrogen is for
paper.I think that somewhere around water
ice temperature,at ~30% humidity,is considered
optimal.

>But to therefore jump to the conclusion that I am opposed to keeping
>records, or don't do enough to keep records, is a complete and willful
>distortion of what I have said.

>>He HAS indicated that a digited form of those records would be optimal
>>and yet there is NO attempt to gain digitized records of the Australian--
>>digital photos, a digitized autobiography, digitized recordings of
>>interviews of people who knew the deceased etc.

Just how durable are digital recordkeeping
media compared to papyrus,vellum,etc?
May be academic if a century is all that's
needed...but may not be.
Paper records are more accessible than digital.

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