X-Message-Number: 5010
Date: 17 Oct 95 18:38:24 EDT
From: Mike Darwin <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS:No science please, we're nanotechnologists

"I always voted at my party's call,
 and I never thought of thinking for myself at all." 
--W.S. Gilbert, * H.M.S. Pinafore*

"The worst of them is a great deal better company than most generals in the 
army, or writers of murder mysteries, or astrophysicists, and the best is a 
really superior and wholly delightful man--full of sound knowledge, 
competent and prudent, frank and courageous, and quite as honest as any 
American can be without being clapped into a madhouse."
--H.L. Mencken 

Oh!

I wish I had Ralph Merkle's post about moving discussion of memory, 
freezing damage and ischemia to a different Web page and off Cryonet and 
Sci.Cryonics.  

I agree.

I can think of no less relevant topics to cryonics than the biology of 
memory, the patophysiology of ischemia, and the mechanisms and extent of 
cryoinjury.

I believe Ralph is onto something here, and that I have sadly missed the 
pulse of the times.  

I think though, if Ralph were asked and answered honestly, he would confess 
that the general idea was not his, only its application to cryonics. And 
long overdue, I might add.

Other areas which could benifit (some already have) from a similar division 
of topics are the removal of the discussion of engineering and materials 
science from architecture and aircraft design.  The removal of the 
discussion of arcane areas of business management such as double entry 
bookeeping, budgeting and fiscal responsibility from the management of 
large corporations or the financial management of government and so on.

Finally, I would note that the removal of discussion of the laws of 
thermodynamics would greatly expand the scope of happy possibilities in 
physics, commerce, and even cryonics.  I suggest we proceed apace to create 
Ralph's proposed Web Page.  May I also modestly add that I see no reason to 
link it at all with Sci.Cryonics or Cryonet.  Such potentially disturbing 
speculation or reports of experimental results has no place cluttering up 
the landscape in the cryonics world.

Ettinger, Merkle and others, like Plato, deal in the world of abstract 
possibilities opened when one contemplates our almost certain lack of deep 
and ultimate, or punultimate understanding of physics and the nature of the 
Universe.  This is fine and good, although it lacks certainty. This is like 
a product that comes without a warranty and with a disclaimer about its 
ability to deliver on its advertised or reasonably anticipated utility.

I must say that I share, particularly in Ettinger's case, his world virew, 
far more than might be thought by those who read my posts here. I think 
that it is not at all out ofthe realm of possibility that it will be 
do-able to recover all the legions of the dead who've come before us, and 
will follow after us. To state otherwise would be folly and hubris given 
our current condition and short (by any standard!) path down the road of 
scientific pursuit of the nature of the Universe.

But dying men and women and those who love them who's hand I hold, and into 
who's eyes I look when I cross their threshold to deliver cryopreservation 
services are usually, and often quite decidedly, not interested in 
discussing that kind of resurrection.  Their  concerns and questions are 
focused on upon very concrete matters such as the effects of ischemia, 
cryoinjury, and the biology of declarative and procedural memory.

This I think is good.

And here I would propose another Web Page, removed from Sci.Cryonics or 
Cryonet but definitely linked to them. This Web Page could be entitled the 
Speculative Physics of Universal Ressurection.  All sarcasm aside, I think 
there is a real place for such discussion.  I would however suggest links 
to most other Web sites with the prefixes alt.religion. ....


Mike Darwin


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