X-Message-Number: 22138
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2003 04:26:53 -0700
From: James Swayze <>
Subject: Not comforted
References: <>

>Message #22134
>From: 
>Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2003 16:32:28 EDT
>Subject: Logical hope besides Cryonics
>
>Hope Beyond Cryonics 
>
>We base our hopes for immortality on cryonics and nanorepairs, betting 

>there's almost nothing technology won't be able to do in fifty or a hundred 
years.  
>Which is probably true. But taking this argument one step further, maybe we 
>don't need Cryo.  
>
>Vernor Vinge, and ray Kurzweil postulate brain-computer melds in around forty 
>years leading to a vast increases in intelligence.  So vast, that when we 

>look at an Enhanced One we'll be like a dog watching his master discuss quantum

>mechanics on the Internet--not only will we not be able to follow the argument,
>but we won't  know what he is doing and we won't even grasp his motivation.  
>Vinge calls this the Singularity.  
>
>And what will the hyper intelligent do? "Telepathy" perhaps, to let them fly 
>as an eagle or swim as a whale.  Time travel perhaps -- sooner or later 

>they'll crack that nut, and experience battles as Alexander the Great--or his 
merest 
>soldier.  And record Alexander's mind somehow, and keep him around to talk 

>to.  And record the mind of everyone who ever lived, likewise.  Including me 
and 
>thee, and making cryo redundant.  
>
>The same logic that says future technology will be able to revive the frozen 
>soon -- well, sooner or later -- must hold that it will advance beyond that 

>point, until in five hundred or surely in five thousand years, all this will be
>in our capability and will get done.  So, frozen or not, you get saved.  
>
>Anyone comforted? 
>
>  
>
No. Here's why. Two theories I'm aware of on time travel, assuming it's 
even ever possible, are that, 1. you can't go backwards in time farther 
than the date of the creation of the machine, and 2. if you can go back 
in time ever at all it won't be possible to go back to one's own 
timeline/universe or else you encounter paradoxes, the main one being 
interfering with your lifeline making it problematic for you to have 
ever existed to even enter the time travel machine.

If my parallel universe other me was made immortal, to me it's no more 
special to me than my twin brother, if I had one, being made so. Now 
let's not let this ressurect the perenial identity debate, just take 
this as my opinion and leave it at that. I'm not comforted by theories 
of other me's being one day or already immortal. I'm only interested in 
this me becoming so.

James

-- 
Cryonics Institute of Michigan Member!
The Immortalist Society Member!
The Society for Venturism Member!

MY WEBSITE: http://www.geocities.com/~davidpascal/swayze/

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