X-Message-Number: 18908 From: Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 11:58:16 EDT Subject: Re: CryoNet #18905 - #18906 In a message dated 4/10/02 2:02:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time, writes: > Mike Darwin wrote: > I personally doubt that I will be cryopreserved well enough to be > resuscitated, let alone live long enough for "immortality." Indeed, as > history as shown it almost hubris to assume you'll get cryopreserved at all. > (end) > > Mike, could you please explain in detail this statement? > > thank you, Sorry, but no. This is complex; part is highly personal and involves personal circumstances and my personal life, and part is just an assessment of emerging technological trends (see Steve Harris' The Return of the Krell Machine: Nanotechnology, the Singularity, and the Empty Planet Syndrome: http://www.grg.org/charter/Krell.htm) geopolotical and global socioeconomic factors as they affect likely survival of people in my situation over the next few decades. One Comment: Optimism or pessimism regarding individuals' chances of survival via cryonics is a matter of judgment which cannot be quantified by any means I know of. The world is just too complex and chaotoic a place. I would not be at all surprised to find some people cryopreserved today revived, and likewise some people now living who are signed up cryopreserved and revived. However, who and how many is impossible to objectify. Even with success there will be Cryo-Enrons just as there were Cryo-Chatsworths. There will likely be many failures as well as many successes if our civilization survives and maintains continuity of a high standard of living (in current terms) and the core values it began with. In the last analysis optimism or pessimism are irrelevant if you want to survive. If you don't play the game you don't seem to have much chance of survival based on our current understanding of things. But then, the Universe is a strange place and I would not be at all surprised to find that Mike Perry's view of how it will all turn out comes to pass. The older you get (in my case) the more humbled you are by the arbitrariness and amazing, weirdly wonderful and terrible unpredictability of it all. There is a wonderful painting I ran across in the Church and Hospital de la Caridad in Madrid by the Spanish baroque artist Juan De Loyal Vald s. It is entitled In Ictu Oculi (In the Blink of an Eye) and was painted in 1671. As far as I know it is virtually unknown in the "popular" world of Western art (i.e., outside academic circles); I've never seen it in any books of art history or paintings. It's execution is lovely, though not masterful. However, its theme, complexity and organization are a triumph. If you ever get to Madrid go and see it -- and visit Seville if you want to really get some understanding of Andalusian and Imperial Spain. To be had in any deep understanding of In Ictu Oculi is the answer to your question. Mike Darwin Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18908