X-Message-Number: 8055
Date:  Sat, 12 Apr 97 17:02:28 
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Immortality

Ben Best, #8042, wrote:

>My bottom line is that (1) a focus on the far-future
>is counterproductive to a focus on the near-future.

I like to view the two as a harmonious whole. Although it's important 
to keep things in proper perspective at all times, *some* focus 
on the far future helps inspire me to a *better* and more productive 
focus on the near future. (As for the latter, I've made most of 
my living for the past 10 years at a cryonics facility--maintaining 
patients and other such work--which is a good setting
for thinking out these issues.) It's also important to keep in mind 
that the "right" focus will not be the same for all people but
differ with talent, interest and other characteristics. This is so
even if your understanding of "right" is restricted to near-future
concerns with no thought at all to anything more distant. 

For me, it is genuinely of interest to devote some focus to the far 
future. If that problem cannot be resolved, i.e. if I must experience 
eternal oblivion at some point, then arguably suicide could be 
justified right now. ("Look at the work it would save! And 
anything you 'gain' meanwhile is utterly ephemeral in the long run, 
of no consequence whatever to YOU--so go for it!") As it happens, I 
think immortality is, in some reasonable sense, inevitable, based on 
the information paradigm, randomizing universe, etc. The long-term 
advantage may well be guaranteed. (Though it takes some
arguing, I've argued this in a chapter of the book I'm writing; and 
of course the idea is not new--Frank Tipler makes much the same
point, as have others before him.) But the short-term
advantage is not guaranteed, and that's where cryonics comes in--
you are better off to be frozen than trust your fate to the
alternatives.

Mike Perry

http://www.alcor.org

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