X-Message-Number: 23048
Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2003 20:40:45 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Off-topic/On-topic

Ron Havelock in #23031 calls for postings to be more on-topic, not the 
first time someone has so requested, and it's a reasonable request to make, 
though it's often hard to draw the boundaries because cryonics/immortalism 
really covers a lot of ground. He says in particular,

>If GWB supports
>nanotechnology, maybe that's a plus.  If he opposes stem cell research and 
>cloning
>research, that is a big minus because these topics impinge directly on our 
>prospects
>for the future of cryonics.  Other issues such as the Iraq war and the
>never-ending middle east crisis do not.

But the terrorism problem does impinge on cryonics, and so do the other 
problems in the world involving violence--we have to worry about the 
stability of cryonics organizations in the face of such threats, whether we 
should consider moving our operations to rural areas and making our own 
liquid nitrogen and so on. (As a more radical possibility that isn't always 
considered, if the world is really headed for rough times, maybe we should 
be focusing on some type of ambient temperature storage, high-quality 
chemopreservation, rather than cryogenic storage which requires continuous 
maintenance. Just how bad _is_ the threat to civilization, anyway?)

This is not to say he doesn't have a point, however. As for libertarianism 
and the debates about it, I am probably about as culpable as any about 
straying off-topic (and/or seeming to) and will try in the future to stay 
more relevant or devote more effort to pointing out the relevancies.

Mike Perry

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