X-Message-Number: 19109 From: Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 10:46:12 EDT Subject: Re: CryoNet #19102 - #19108 --part1_d2.18610a89.2a17c334_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 5/18/02 2:00:57 AM Pacific Daylight Time, writes: > Brett Bellmore, #19099: > > >Regarding their dismissal of immortality... It's reasonable, given what we > >currently believe about physics. "Immortality" means that you live > forever, > >that nothing can kill you. And yet, we live in a statistical universe, and > >arbitrarilly violent events can occur, with comparably low probability. > Any > >finite probability, however low, must eventually integrate to unity with > the > >passage of finite time. Living for an infinite period of time IS > impossible. > > I totally disagree. If the probability of all the air in the room you are currently breathing in migrates to one corner of the room, rendering you anoxic, has a probability of 1 in 10 -12, I don't think that after a trillion years, the probability approaches unity. It may have a probability much greater than 1 in 10-12 in that many years (say 1 in 1 billion?) but to say it will eventually have a probability, say of > .99, is simply not true. Therefore, living forever or 'near forever' may indeed be possible. Although the probability of being 'hit' by an accident, interstellar violence, etc. will always increase with advancing age, given intelligence and knowledge, and foresight of how to avoid these mishaps could theoretically keep the probability of a 'lightening strike' very, very low. Ed --part1_d2.18610a89.2a17c334_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19109