X-Message-Number: 19125
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: Hubris alert
Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 11:21:28 -0700

In Message #19113  wrote about a number of things
which I agreed about.

I also think his suggestion to contact the expat communities regarding
cryonics is wise.  These people are already willing to defy some strong peer
pressure concpets by going beyond popular concepts such as "citizenship".

However he also wrote:

"Our biggest problem, as Charles Platt and Saul Kent have pointed out, is
that we really do not have a 'product' yet. We need a decent
neuro-preservation technology so that I can say as a sales/marketing person
that "yes, we can preserve your brain, and that stem-cell regeneration will
do the rest once we get a cure for aging". I can't say that right now,
because we still don't have a decent neuro-preservation technology. This
lack of "product" must be overcome
before we can sell effectively into the expat market."

For those of you reading this forum and trying to decide for or against
cryonics for yourself, please understand that this view is NOT shared by
many of us in cryonics.

There is a sad tendency amongst even our "best and brightest" members of the
cryonics community to try to play God and guess what will prove to be
"impossible" in the future based on our current comparitively primitive
medical technlogy today.

Cryonics relies upon FUTURE technology.

Do not be fooled by this age old human tendency to believe that we can TODAY
determine what CANNOT be achieved tomorrow.  History is replete with example
after example of these predictions being dead wrong.  We DID go to the moon.
We DIDN'T need to close the patent office.

Cryonics is entirely based on an optimistic expectation that the technology
of the future will be able to do what today most scientists believe to be
"impossible".

The ancient Greeks referred to the assumption of Godlike powers (like
omniscience) by mortals as "hubris".  Unfortunately we still have a lot of
hubris here in the cryonics community.  Don't allow hubris to confuse you
about the basic issues.

WITH cryonics you may have a chance to survive death.

WITHOUT it, well... that is the current situation at the cemetary.

Choose wisely.  Don't try to play God.

George Smith
CI member and Immortalist

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