X-Message-Number: 10513
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1998 08:59:41 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #10502 - #10512

Hi again!

To George Smith:

While I respect Bob Ettinger a good deal, I specifically do NOT believe
literally that "it is never too late to give up hope". Nor do I consider
my belief (that if the only thing we have of you is your skeleton then
you are dead) to be an instance of hubris. If we take Bob's statement
literally, then why even bother to suspend people? We can always hope
that some future (unknown) technology will work out how to revive them.

Cryonics is not and should not be just about hope. It should be about
action: what we can do to keep the information we have about someone
and preserve it until we (collectively) can use it to revive them. 
That is true even if the information is largely unreadable (we cannot
now read out all your memories from your brain). Sure, we act because
we hope that our action will result in keeping someone alive, but the
real emphasis is on that action.

Yes, someone can always work out a theory of the universe which will
allow us to revive skeletons. And if pressed I would even say that 
such a theory (if not self-contradictory) may be true. But such a
theory remains irrelevant to action unless and until it tells us in
DETAIL just what to do to bring someone back from their skeleton, and 
this detailed statement actually WORKS. I doubt that such a theory will
ever arise.

The best we might do with a skeleton (IF the DNA has survived, which
is not obvious) is to create a twin of you. That would be scientifically
interesting but just isn't a revival of YOU. 

Not only that, but death will never leave us. If you believe skeletons
might someday be revived, what about the gases left after you've been
directly hit by a hydrogen bomb? How extreme must I get to convince you
that death is possible? As immortalists we have taken on the task, not
just of avoiding old age, but of avoiding ALL those events which might
kill us. And our hope comes out of our belief that we can DO something
about those events. (Shelters can be built able to take a direct hit of
a hydrogen bomb, too --- not to mention other more advanced notions, such
as that of storing our entire memories and personality elsewhere in 
several places, to provide the needed information for revival). 

Yes, immortalism is a philosophy with ramifications we have only begun to
follow. But our hope comes from a belief that we can act against those
dangers, it is not passive at all.


			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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