X-Message-Number: 9090
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 1998 18:40:13 -0500
From: "John P. Pietrzak" <>
Subject: Re: Issues of Faith (#9082)
References: <>

Thomas Donaldson wrote:

> I will say, though, that I vehemently disagree with any claim (which
> I believe you implied) that we get ourselves suspended out of faith.

Well, if I only implied it, let me make it explicit: I do believe that
a lot of the current use of suspension requires some amount of faith.
Right now, today, you can't be taken to liquid nitrogen temperatures
and back and expect to survive.  Survival _depends_ upon future changes
in science, technology, and society, such that the complete cycle of
cool-down and warm-up is possible.  It also depends upon the fact that
the current half of the cycle (cool-down) is performed correctly.  There
is no way to know either for certain.  Moreover, the cool-down process
is so damaging right now, we _know_ that more than just rewarming, but
repair, is going to be needed at the other end.  Whether the damage can
be completely repaired is a question as well.

There are a lot of questions, and few answers.  Because it is not
possible to determine with any certainty what the final outcome will be,
if you believe that suspension will help you, then you must use faith
to do so.

> The best thing to do --- the one which most increases our chance of
> survival --- is to be cryonically suspended.

Actually, I agree.

> This is no more a matter of faith than someone reaching for a life
> preserver in the middle of the ocean is acting out of faith.

Actually, I don't agree.  The life preserver is a simple device, which
has been perfected over the years to perform a very simple operation:
keeping a human being buoyant in water.  To the extent that this helps
a person keep from drowning, it deserves the name "life preserver."
Cryonics is an attempt to keep a person alive, by stopping every cell
in their body from acting, essentially by directly slowing down the
atoms that make up their body.  While equivalently simple in concept,
it's much more complicated in realization.  Moreover, in itself it
changes nothing in the person (whereas the life preserver has a
direct effect); if used to help a dying person, suspended animation
not only depends upon reanimation becoming possible, it also depends
on a technology able to heal the person after that.

(Me, I believe that reanimation can be done.  But, I'd prefer to know
that it can be done first, if only to know how to best perform the
freezing.  Maybe I won't have a choice in the matter, but I intend to
live for a while yet, and as such I want the science to advance.)

> Something quite fundamental has happened to cryonicists, and I hope
> it happens to you. WE no longer feel passive in response to death, at
> any time and in any circumstances. And if all else fails, then we want
> to be frozen.

I don't think I'm quite ready to be labelled as passive yet. :)  I don't
like the fact that I'm aging, that I'm heading towards certain death,
even if it is a natural process.  My first instinct is "if there's a
problem, fix it."  Personally, I can't see any significant life-
extending technology (other than suspended animation) being possible
before the end of my natural lifespan.  (Well, there's caloric
reduction, but at best that would give me a 10 - 20 percent extension,
I believe.)  The problem is, suspended animation doesn't work right now,
and I can't even tell whether the entry into cryonic suspension is good
enough yet.  I need answers, and I'm just not getting them.

> One other issue, very important. You ask how long "it will take". One
> major feature of cryopreservation is that it can literally continue
> for centuries.

Yes!  This is both good and bad.  It means that the cryoee can afford to
wait until a solution comes around.  It also means that the cryoer can
afford to wait until it appears affordable to craft a solution to the
original problem.  Given this mindset, efforts in cryonics over the
last thirty years have focussed on the logical task of making it
possible to get people into suspension.

Well, I don't like it.  We aren't all that far away from a successful
complete suspended animation technique, if recent results can be
believed.  Regardless of immediate needs (bloodthirsty as this sounds),
at some point somebody has to get moving and get the research done.
(Which, I suppose, is what is happening at 21CM, and (of course) is the
point of Prometheus.  So, what can be done to help these guys along?)

> And I am flabbergasted that you and so many others seem to think,
> when your thoughts are reduced to basics, that death is preferable to
> freezing.

What I think is not that death is preferable to freezing, it's that
there isn't much of a difference.  If the chance of survival is in fact,
say, one in a million, that may be better than nothing, but not by
enough that I'm happy.  If it can only be described as "unknown", I'm
still not happy.  I'm quite willing to say that I'm so greedy, self-
centered, and conceited as to want _more_ than that.


John

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