X-Message-Number: 7200
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7184 - #7193
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 13:17:57 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

Some comments about this Cryonet:

1. To Kelly Ann Moy:
   One major feature of cryonic suspension suggests to me that your scenario
   (refusal to revive us because it would mean "too many people") simply 
   won't happen.

   Unlike many other medical procedures, THERE IS NO REASON WHY THE PATIENT
   MUST BE REVIVED AS SOON AS THE MEDICAL PROCEDURE CAN BE DONE. The answer
   to the problem you raise is simple: just don't revive suspendees until
   there is room for them. Or revive them only after sending them to a 
   planet of another star. Or revive them in small lots so their revival 
   does not create a big load on society. 

   Why hurry, when you have thousands of years?

   There are also other issues, too: given that our revival will only happen
   after means to cure and reverse whatever is wrong with us, it's almost
   guaranteed that we won't be revived all at once (sure, maybe the delays
   I list above, or others, have happened, but that's not certain). AS the
   means to fix all the many conditions for which we were suspended arise,
   patients with condition X will be revived. Then there will be a delay
   until patients with condition Y are revived, while Condition X but not
   Condition Y have been found curable. And so on... (I belong to that group
   which believes that cryonics will always have a use, though as our average
   lifespan increases it will be used less and less).

   The thawing of embryos has nothing at all to do with the technology and
   a lot to do with the extreme myopia of current medicine and society. Most
   people are unwilling to look even 5 years into the future. Since few
   people saw any use for these embryos, they were thawed. Though I myself
   would not claim that they were full human beings, I will say that destroying
   these embryos basically meant that some couple, unable to have children
   by any other way (say, 10 to 20 years from now) will be deprived of one
   opportunity, and so damaged. Not that they would know of that damage, but
   that's not the point.

2. To Steve Harris:
   I agree with you about scientific method, of course. I will say, though,
   that Bob's comments bear a bit more weight than you give them if you read
   them --- despite his unfair claims about "youth" etc --- as statements of
   doubt and problems with the current ideas of scientific method.

   If we are to be philosophical about it, and logical too, we'd have to
   concede that events such as the replacement of Ptolemaic Theory by Galilean,
   and later Newtonian Theory by General Relativity, are at least not obviously
   instances of "progress". One interesting fact about scientific progress
   is that it does seem closely associated with technology progress --- as you
   say yourself, when you raise instances of technology (rockets or computers)
   they are instances of TECHNOLOGY, not science. Does this mean that what we
   should really do is put technological abilities in the forefront and methods

   of doing science just as one way in which we can help technological progress?
   
   As you know, some devices or ideas work even though no theory exists at the
   time to explain why or how. Fire gives the best example of all. AS a rough
   stab (one which can surely be criticised) we might surmise that science has

   proven valuable because its thrown off many ideas for technological progress.
   At the same time, we have no grounds, yet, to believe that only the 
   practise
   of scientific method will do that, or for that matter that there may be
   other societies which also practise scientific method (on some other 
   planet far away) and also produce many new technological devices: while 
   THEIR theories of how the universe works turn out to be very different from
   our own. (This is a roundabout, but conceptually provable, suggestion that
   scientific method, when practised by two societies in isolation, may not
   produce the SAME science at all --- and thus questioning the idea of 
   "scientific" progress).

   Or could there be some form of thinking even MORE effective than scientific
   method at producing technological progress, but less effective in making 
   any "scientific progress"? After all, the Chinese were very slowly
   progressing, with no overt "science" at all. Europeans overtook them most
   likely because Europeans invented science. But then someday some new 
   society appears ...

   Finally, and by the way: what paper will you get published in the Proc
   Amer Acad Sci? Can you send me a preprint? And a citation, if it's already
   been published? Thanks very much.

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson


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