X-Message-Number: 7390
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 09:30:59 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: Reality

On Mon, 30 Dec 1996, Peter Merel wrote:

> Throughout the developing world, population pressure on marginal land is
> contributing to massive deforestation and soil erosion. The best land for
> agriculture is already taken. Landless people have no alternative but to
> try to farm land that is not suited for farming, such as steep hillsides
> or forests. 

Even though this is extremely clear, well documented, and seems kind of
obvious to me, I am glad to see Peter spelling it out, because it does
have some relevance to cryonics. It is in the nature of cryonicists,
including me, to refuse to accept limits--such as the inevitability of
death. This is both our strength and our weakness. It is our strength
because it makes us very stubborn, achieving victories (as in the Dora
Kent case) which have no precedent. It is our weakness in that it can
lead to complacency. In that class I would include, for instance, the
"faith" that severe freezing damage can be fixed by future technology.
Well, maybe it can, but should that encourage most cryonicists to feel
confident that technology will somehow take care of everything for us?

The recent upsurge of interest in research, and the willingness of many
people to make pledges, is very heartening; but it's not so heartening if
we remember that the majority of people signed up for cryonics have NOT
made any such pledge and have NOT shown any great interest in research.
They believe, presumably, that everything will work out--in exactly the
same way that many Extropians seem to believe that overpopulation is not
really a problem. 

I don't mean to include Thomas Donaldson with the Extropians (I know he
would object to that) but there is a common thread, here: a kind of rigid
techno-optimism. Going back to Peter's point, you only have to read a few
books about the devastation of Africa to see that these problems are, at
best, nontrivial. Maybe Thomas is right and technology will prevail over
destructive human stupidity. But I tend to feel that Peter's skepticism is
a safer way to go, and is a wiser policy for cryonicists generally.

Bob Ettinger writes:

> Since we DO NOT know for sure that revival
> must fail, its probability is not zero. (In fact, I have published reasons to
> believe it is closer to unity--certainty--than to zero.)

This is the kind of confidence that bothers me. Of course, it's all a
matter of opinion; but in my opinion, chances of revival may be around 1
in 10,000, for many reasons. Still better than burial or cremation, and 
worth (in my opinion) a small annual payment of insurance plus readiness 
fee.

Bob continues:

> It doesn't pay to be diffident in public discussions, to be seen as lacking
> confidence. 

Again, I don't agree. I think excessive confidence tends to encourage a 
"What, me worry?" outlook that doesn't motivate people to work for 
improvements.

Of course, we don't want to be so grim that we begin to see the problems
as being insoluble, causing us to give up. But it seems to me that many 
cryonics believers are at the opposite extreme from this state.


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