X-Message-Number: 17460
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2001 12:09:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #17451 - #17458

> I agree with Mike Perry.  But I say *all* persons, as the meaning of *life*
> will have a ridiculously profound meaning in comparison to our thoughts of
> it now.  In other words, you will try very hard not to step on an ant.

You make a good case, Bobby June. But the question always remains: Would
you stake your life on it?

Personally I think an equally good case could be made that in a world of
information entities, complex information will be highly valued, simple
information will be less highly valued, and noise (entropy) will have no
value at all. This is another way of stating that humans (who are very
complex, from an informational point of view) will still be more valuable
than ants.

However, the implications are disturbing. If we allow that very powerful
information entities will evolve, humans will seem antlike by comparison.

Would you bother to make incredibly complex molecular repairs to an ant
that was frozen a century ago, merely to see it wander around for a while?
Well, maybe as a high-school science project you might revive one or two.
The rest? We probably have more interesting things to do.

A common argument is that nanotech will make repairs "trivial." Even if we
accept this (which I do not), someone still has to take the trouble. There
are many trivial tasks, such as doing the dishes, that I have not bothered
to do lately.

We like to think we're important and worth preserving, and consequently
more interesting than doing the dishes. Alas, by future standards, we may
be of no greater interest than bacteria.

Add it all up, and any sane person surely would feel a VERY strong need to
have him(her)self preserved in such a way that the unpreserving can be
done as easily as warming a TV dinner. Why present our friends of the
future with a hideous complex reconstruction/repair problem if we can
avoid the problem by taking more responsibility for our situation now?

--CP

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