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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=588