X-Message-Number: 4830
Date: 02 Sep 95 12:09:33 EDT
From: Mike Darwin <>
Subject: CRYONICS

David Stodolksy quotes:

>Indeed, an entire virtual community can atrophy or perish in the wink of 
an eye. 

The point being that people are now confronted with something new: instant 
loss of their community and that this will result in some new form of DMSM 
diagnostic entry and that, presumably, the savant who came up with this 
insight has something fresh to say about the human condition....

This is one of the least historically informed statements I've read in at 
least 48 hours. As Jay Leno's Mr. Brain would say:  Fooool!

What common rock do these people crawl out from under?

Obviously this guy hasn't been watching TV or reading anything other than 
romance novels (this is probably a disservice to romance novels) since the 
day he was born.  Certainly he wasn't read fairy tales as a child nor has 
he seen any TV since it was invented.  Dr. Moravec, please fess up and tell 
us the truth: you've done it!  You've created an artificial intelligence 
and thus, for the first time in history, a fully conscious entity can truly 
claim it was "born yesterday."

Some examples of nonvirtual communities atrophying or disappearing "in the 
wink of an eye:"

1) You live in Cambodia and Pol Pot's political correctness instructors 
visit your village with lots of blue plastic bags and Chinese AK-47s.

2) You live in a small town in Bosnia NOW and your surname is Al Rashid.

3) You live in Kobe and your entire neighborhood and most of the people in 
it are pulped by an earthquake.

4) You are a female chimpanzee in a stable group and the neighbors come 
calling, kill your baby and drag you off to someplace where they take their 
sweet time playing "poke in bushes" with you (see #s 1&2 above if you are 
female human in those situations).

5) You live in Europe and watch a ship with rats (and their accompanying 
fleas) pull into port in Italy shortly before the start of the Dark Ages.

6) You live in an old lower middle class, very stable ethnic neighborhood 
in Indianapolis, Indiana in the 1960s and the I--465 freeway is approved 
for construction.

7) You surname is Rosen, you are an accomplished physician with a lovely 
family, and you live in a very nice Jewish neighborhood in Germany circa 
1938.

8) You live in Pompeii in Classical Roman times and Vesuvious has started 
smoking.

9) You live in Oklahoma circa 1930 and notice the dirt isn't staying where 
it usually does.

10) You are on holiday en route to Italy and you have a layover in Paris. 
When you wake to catch your train you discover there has been a nuclear war 
and only Paris has survived.  Suddenly you realize you will have to spend 
the rest of your life with French people and you are American and the 
language you studied in high school was German.


Give me a BREAAAAAK!  People have been dealing with this kind of loss 
BEFORE they were even people.

Mike Darwin


"God must love stupid people, look around you."


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