X-Message-Number: 8054
From: 
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 18:38:48 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Cryonics and the Third Alternative

In Message #8045 John K Clark <> said:
>Everything, including our behavior, happens because of cause and effect or 
>it does not, and if it does not then it is by definition random, there is no 
>third alternative.                          

John and Others,
I mistakenly interpreted this as a challenge and constructed a
Third Alternative today.  Unfortunately, it bodes poorly for
cryonicists who hope for sub-cellular-level reconstruction after
a century of being frozen.  But not for the reasons you might expect.

Those interminable arguments about determinism vs. randomness are
posited for an ideal world in which one has nearly universal knowledge
and computational capability.  I don't live in that ideal world, though.
Everyone I know has only limited knowledge and computational abilities,
and, furthermore, has to allocate those limited resources among many
competing interests.  That is the source of the Third Alternative:
ignorance, complexity, and competing demands.

The Third Alternative is "inexplicable", as in "I don't understand it
and it's not worthwhile trying to figure it out."  That is what makes
humans interesting, to other humans.  But this Third Alternative is not
an absolute, but instead is relative to the capabilities of the observer.
To a "god" of enormous capability, humans are merely (deterministic or
random) automata.  (So _that's_ why Dame Nature so casually maims
and kills us!)  Similarly, anyone who is able to revive a frozen human
by reconstructing the components of each cell also has the capability
to make himself much more than human.  In comparison, the human will
be a mere automaton.

So much for "Our Friends of the Future".  By the time someone can
revive people frozen with the techniques of today, 20th century humans
may no longer count as "real people".  We have a much narrower window
of opportunity than most of today's people acknowledge.  It's important
to improve our cryopreservation technology today so that we can be
revived _before_ we no longer are interesting as people.

    Kevin Q. Brown
    

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