X-Message-Number: 875 Date: 03 Jun 92 01:45:18 EDT From: STEVE BRIDGE <> Subject: Reanimation and Immortality Re: #870 - Re: Motivation for Reanimation () >> Hopefully, the "cryonics" organizations won't make the same mistake. >> They are in the immortality business--NOT the cryogenic freezing >> business. We as individual immortalists and we as organizations >> dedicated to selling immortality should never forget what business we >> are in. Great posting, Alan! The idea that "Cryonics organizations are in the immortality business, not the cryogenic freezing business" should be embroidered and framed on the wall of every cryonicist. We need to keep this perspective so that we remain open to new ideas and currently unimaginable future approaches. I recommend you add some things to this, such as the question that started the debate and perhaps some of the other ideas presented here (with appropriate permissions, of course), and work it into an article for CRYONICS Magazine. This is an important "meme" for cryonicists. The comparison with railroads was especially apt. I have only one basic idea to add to this debate. I am also not worried that any cryonics company which SURVIVES and keeps my remains intact will be uninterested in reviving me. As I said in a posting last year, this worry seems predicated on an unspoken assumption that a bunch of people will be frozen today, then no one will be frozen for a hundred years, and those original patients will still be in suspension. That scenario is impossible. The ONLY way that today's patients will even be kept in suspension is if there is a constant and growing interest in cryonics, including a steady stream of suspensions. The young members of today freeze the older ones, and then their sons and daughters and younger friends freeze and care for them when their own time comes. At the point that reanimation becomes possible, the living members of the cryonics company or community will want to revive their friends, lovers, and relatives. THOSE people, once out of suspension, will provide their own emotional impetus to revive the previous generation, and so forth. We are not just a company freezing strangers. We are carefully saving the lives of our friends and relatives, along with the occasional stranger. (This is a great reason to make friends with many cryonicists.) If cryonics does not continue and grow, there won't have been anyone caring for the patients all of those years, so there won't BE any patients to revive. If we are kept in suspension at all, and reanimation is possible, we will be reanimated. I firmly believe it is strictly an "either-or" proposition. I also like Alan's idea that cryonics companies will be diversified by then and will want to show their honesty and abilities. (Incidentally, Alan, you forgot your NAME at the end of your message. Not everyone can figure out who is writing just from the e-mail address, and we are continually getting new members. Let's not get impersonal while we're still warm and breathing.) Steve Bridge Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=875