X-Message-Number: 588
Date: 25 Dec 91 03:11:08 EST
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: cryonics: #586 - #587

Hi Steve ... and here's some more on population.
In fact, immortality will mean very little to any population problem. We 
can see this very easily: if growth of population really were exponential,
then immortality would at the most add a term of order x (where x is the
population at a fixed time). But exponential growth means e^x, which 
very soon makes any extra contribution of immortality quite negligible.

We can conclude from this that population arguments cannot be made 
against immortality. If we are not to resort to killing one another at a
rate FASTER than the "natural" death rate, then birth control is
inevitable. And as I understand human history, birth control has been
practised for many thousands of years: the only issue is that of just how
hard that practice is on the women, and how far it goes (do we simply
expose the unwanted babies or do we kill them outright or do we prevent
them from being born in the first place). 

(For those who want to look more closely at the math: with immortality
everyone born would not die. We would therefore have the INTEGRAL of
e^x rather than e^x. But the integral of e^x is .... e^x. This is an 
elementary relation which critics of immortality seem to forget).

				Best
					Thomas

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