X-Message-Number: 28986
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: Robert Anton Wilson on "immortality" and cryonics
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 08:23:06 -0800

Wilson wrote a number of essays in the 1970's and 1980's on the 
stereotypical "life in the 21st Century" theme. They make for curious 
reading now.

For example, in 1978 Wilson, then aged 46, published an essay, "Next Stop: 
Immortality," which makes wrong and even ironic dated predictions.

Reference: http://www.futurehi.net/docs/RAW_Immortality.html

First, he writes,

"According to the actuarial tables used by insurance companies, if you are 
in your 20s now you prob ably have about 50 years more to live. If you are 
in your 40s, you have only about 30 years more and if you are in your 60s 
your life-expectancy is only about 10 years. These tables are based on 
averages, of course   not everybody dies precisely at the median age of 72.5 
years   but these insurance tables are the best mathematical guesses about 
how long you will be with us. Right?

"Wrong. Recent advances in gerontology (the science of aging, not to be 
confused with geriatrics, the treatment of the aged) have led many sober and 
cautious scien tists to believe that human lifespan can be doubled, tripled 
or even extended in definitely in this generation. If these researchers are 
right, nobody can predict your life expectancy. All the traditional 
assumptions on which the actuarial tables rest are obsolete. You might live 
a thou sand years or even longer."

It turns out that the actuarial tables predicted Wilson's life expectancy 
from 1978 pretty much on the money.

Another assertion involves cryonics:

"Even cryonic freezing   the long-range gambler's approach to longevity, 
when it started in the 60s   is advancing by leaps and quantum jumps. An 
October 1975 McGraw-Hill poll found the majority of experts in the field 
believed cryonic freezing would be perfected and perfectly safe by 2000."

What "experts in the field," other than perhaps Paul Segall, participated in 
this poll, and what "leaps and bounds" did Wilson refer to in cryonics in 
the 1970's? I understand that cryonics existed precariously back then and 
that a lot of the early cryonauts, except for James Bedford, wound up 
conventionally interred. The mainstream cryobiological community in the 
1970's considered cryonics an embarrassment if not an abomination, and 
apparently it still does despite the prominence of some cryobiologists 
friendly towards our strange obsession.

Needless to say, the "perfected and perfectly safe" cryonics prediction for 
the 2000 didn't happen, though Wilson attributes that forecast to the poll 
of unnamed "experts."

Wilson also anticipates the recent retread of the "escape velocity" argument 
for radical life extension for currently living adults:

"The basic Immortalist argument runs as follows. Be as conservative as you 
like in estimating the probable life-extension breakthroughs of the next two 
or three decades. Assume the relatively tame prediction made by Dr. 
Bjorksten back in 1973, when this research was (by com parison with its 
present status) in its infan cy. Say that Bjorksten was right then and we 
can only expect to see lifespan increas ed to 140 years in the near future.

"But this means that, if you are in your 40s, you will probably not be 
hauled off stage by the Grim Reaper in 2008, as the insurance companies are 
betting. You will probably still be here in 2078. And if you are in your 
twenties or younger, you have a good chance of being around until 2098."

Like Wilson, millions of people in their 40's at the time he wrote this have 
either died by now, or will die pretty much on schedule in the coming years.

In fairness to Wilson, however, he allowed that attaining this goal depends 
on how our society uses its vast resources:

"There is no Utopian scenario we can dream of for our descendants that 
cannot be ours, too ... if the Longevity Revolu tion is made our top 
national priority. I can't see why anything else should be a higher 
priority: there's nothing more worth living for than life itself. A crash 
project, similar to the Atom Bomb race of the 40s or the Space race of the 
60s would certainly produce dramatic results within a decade. (We had the 
A-bomb five years after Roosevelt made it a national priority, the first man 
on the Moon eight years after Kennedy made that our goal.)

"We have spent billions on Death since the cold war began 31 years ago; it 
is time we spent an equal amount on Life.

"After all, if reading science-fiction is so much fun, wouldn't living it be 
even more of a turn-on?"

Stating this in current terms, because we have young adults in our midst 
with no memory of the Cold War and no inclination to learn about it: Even if 
we could conquer aging and death, we won't have the resources to do that 
because of the opportunity cost of nonsense like the $1 trillion occupation 
of Iraq.

And people wonder why the 21st Century doesn't impress me. Reading this and 
similar literature from 30-40 years ago speculating about our current 
reality shows why.

Mark Plus

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