X-Message-Number: 5243
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From:  (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: SCI.CRYONICS Why suspension patients WILL be revived
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 1995 11:22:37 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <48l649$>

In article <48l649$>,
>     I have some significant disagreements with Brad Templeton's
>assumptions about cryonics revival.  Brad assumes that if "mind uploading
>becomes possible prior to nanotechnology" that people will get so involved
>in uploading that they will lose interest in the former version of
>humanity that had bodies.  He also assumes that "most of the world" will
>be in this condition.  Therefore, there will be little interest in
>reviving the suspension patients.  I suspect this scenario is wrong.

I didn't say that, I said it was possible.  Also, actually there might
be great interest in reviving the suspension patients, but no reanimation
technology (such as nano), and insufficient interest in the huge cost
of developing complex medical nanotechnology *if* there are alternatives
to it, or *if* the non-uploaded are poor.  You're writing like I think this
is some kind of likely scenario.  It is simply a possible scenario based on
things going, to some degree, the way some cryonicists have told me they
expect and want them to go.
>     Perhaps this is hard for people who focus their existence on computer
>technology to imagine, but NOT EVERYONE wants to become software!  A lot
>of people --even those in love with technology -- like having a physical
>existence.

Well, I'm not really an uploading advocate, but I understand their
argument, which is of course that with good uploading, you couldn't tell
the difference, and while you might know the difference intellectually
you might also be able to even request that this knowledge be temporarily
erased so you can enjoy the experience more.  That's pretty speculative.
(For example, I can see uploading as something that's possible in the
21st century, because you can do it by understanding the hardware and not
the software of humanity.  To alter memory and attitude would require
understanding of the software, something we have *no* knowledge of today at
all.)
>
>     THERE IS NO "THEM."

If you want to talk about the possibility of a so-called "singularity" of
human intelligence caused by machine instantiation -- admittedly a
highly speculative thing -- then there most definitely is a them, and it
ain't us.   Even assuming that my adult mind could pass this barrier
(I somehow suspect it might be open only to a freshly raised newborn
hyper-mind) I can easily conceive that future me would have emotional
attributes I can't relate to, including the lack of desire to revive the
relatives and friends of the current me.   I have trouble dealing with how
different I am from the me of 20 years ago, who was still of the same order
of intelligence as I am.
>
>group of people willing to challenge conventional wisdom and tradition to
>overcome death will not all turn to sheep and ignore their loved ones as
>soon as an escape route opens up.  Besides that, there are many people in

Probably not, but I can see uploading changing that.  Particularly if
it requires them to raise the equivalent of hundreds of billions of today's
dollars to do it since the rest of society doesn't care any more.

>     The first people to be revived will be the last ones who were frozen.

Actually, I think for this to work the first people to be revived won't have
been frozen at all, probably just put in a nano-induced stasis.  I venture
that unless nano requires low temperature, before you can build repair nano
you can probably build stasis nano more easily.

Even if not, the first to be revived may be people were cooled to just above
freezing upon clinical death, and taken to a nano-medical facility for repair
and warming.   Unless nano requires very low temperature.  Why cause
freezing damage?

Indeed I see this as the thing that will pay for cryonics -- the development
of warm-temperature medical nano to repair the living and the very
recently dead.  Society (as long as it is not mostly uploaded) will pay almost
any amount for this.  It would easily offer 20% of the GNP, perhaps more,
to develop this technology, since it's also anti-aging technology.

Society will *not* offer up 20% of the GNP to pay to revive cryonicists.
Unless for some reason the development of revival nano is cheap (you can
hope, but you can't know) this is the only sure fire way it will happen.

Thus the problem.  If something happens that makes the general public
lose the strong interest they currently have in what medical nano could
do, it might threaten its development.  I postulated that one thing which
might cause the loss of this interest would be widespread uploading.

>     "Almost all ... in biological bodies" is not required for cryonics to
>work ;" merely "enough" -- whatever that number turns out to be.  But I
>still think it unlikely that more than 5% of the human race will upload
>exclusively for many centuries.  I do not see uploading as a threat to
>suspension revival.

It's all very speculative, but this claim is just your guess.  Frankly,
if uploading means enhanced intelligence and not just simulated experience,
only a luddite movement would stay behind.  Ever read Flowers for Algernon?
Once you had enhanced intelligence do you really think you would willingly
abandon it, other than for a lark, (the way people take drugs today?)
-- 
Brad Templeton, publisher, ClariNet Communications Corp.	 
The net's #1 Electronic newspaper		     http://www.clari.net/brad/
		...Announcing 1 MILLION paid subscribers! (www.clari.net)


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