X-Message-Number: 5870
Date:  Sun, 03 Mar 96 23:01:01 
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Immortalism

John de Rivaz, #5866, after making some good points including
how cryonics could provide a means to fulfill the commandment
in the Bible to "raise the dead," says, 
>
>Immortalism is really a 
>minsomer, because one cannot have immortality without invulnerability. 
>Present statistics suggest that if fatal accident was the only cause of 
>death, people would live on average to 600 years. With improved repair 
>technology and other methods which we needn't go into here this can be 
>extended, but not to infinity.
>
My feeling is, contrary to this, that literal immortality through 
scientific as opposed to supernatural means is not ruled out at 
all. Immortality does not require invulnerability but only that the 
probability of dying in a fixed time interval drop to zero fast 
enough to leave a nonzero "residue" as time goes to infinity. For 
example, let's suppose that, at some future year D, for person P the 
probability that P will die between D and D+1 is 1%, i.e there is a 
99% chance of survival *for one year*. Next suppose that, due to 
progressing technology, etc. the probability that P will die 
*diminishes* with time, but never falls to zero. Let's say that it 
follows the rule that, for dying between D+n and D+n+1, it is 
!%*2^-n, i.e. it falls by half with each passing year. So, for n=0,
it is 1%, (our original assumption), for n=1, 1/2%, for n=2, 1/4%,
etc. Even though a condition of total invulnerability is never reached
(and it would be unrealistic to think it could be reached),
the overall probability of dying is only about 2%, i.e. there is a 98% 
chance of literally infinite survival. 

Though this example is completely artificial, it illustrates the 
point I am trying to make. (More interesting possibilities 
relating to infinite survival under continuning vulnerability are
discussed in my paper, "A mathematical model of infinite survival"
in *The Trans Times* April and June 1995--copy available upon
request.) More generally I advocate the position 
that science can literally give us eternal life and more or less, 
everything God or the gods are supposed to be capable of (and more 
and better besides). This *is* a 
challenge to supernatural-based or mystical belief systems, and one I 
hope will be pursued with vigor! However, such systems are also a 
challenge to each other already so in a sense the "threat" of 
scientific immortalism is nothing new.

Mike Perry, 


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