X-Message-Number: 8378
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 01:17:10 -0400
From: "Andrew S.Davidson" <>
Subject: Nagging questions

>I have been contemplating signing up with CryoCare or Alcor for a long
>time, and wonder why I, a person not otherwise prone to procrastination,
>continue to defer making this decision.

I am in a fairly similar state.  My thinking is that, as I am 45,
I have about 20 years before the problem becomes pressing.  If I
die before then it will probably be unexpected and so
difficult to recover from.

>It's not the money.  As soon as I started to contemplate this, I
>purchased a life insurance policy that will cover it.

Ditto.  I could pay the cost of suspension out of savings right now but
there is no financial incentive to pay up-front in this way.  I am surprised
that cryonics orgs don't offer this choice, given their current need for
capital.  Some legal problem with insurance company licensing, perhaps?

>Is my analysis incorrect?  I've found that standard argument for cryonic
>suspension (Some probability of revival is better than none) is weak if
>the probability of satisfactory revival is no better than 1 in a
>BILLION, which I estimate.

It still works for me - it's nice to have some comfort that death is
not necessarily the end.  What's stopping me is the faction fighting in
Cryonics - the key players seem too flaky.

>1. Cryonicists seem to ridicule "simple cloning" as far less desirable
>than suspension followed by revival.  It would seem to me that "simple
>cloning" followed by a "reeducation program" in which the archived
>record of the person's memories, experience, etc., were told to the
>person upon revival is a reasonable alternative: You come back with a
>guaranteed healthy physical copy of the person.  Given my
>already-starting-to-fade memory, seeing my personal archive of memories,
>etc., might not result in too great a loss from my current self.  What
>am I not understanding?

Perfect recovery of identity is impossible - you cannot step into
the same river twice.  Your scenario is a reasonable fall-back to me -
one step up from living on through your descendants.  The question is,
is it worth financing, given that it is likely to be of comparable cost
to current cryonics?

>2. What's the current thinking on the pros and cons of CryoCare vs. =

>Alcor?

A good question.

Andrew

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