X-Message-Number: 10757 Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 06:12:12 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #10745 - #10756 Hi everyone! First, this is a quasi-apology to Bob Ettinger. I mean "quasi" here because I still think that the job of working out how to revive a suspension patient is simply NOT going to be trivial, regardless of the level of scientific background we may reach. But it is an apology because I did misquote Bob, and apologize for that. And second, this gets us into the issue raised by Scott Badger and others. I would say that you will be revived by CRYONICISTS (though that name may not stick the basic idea of storing someone until means can be found to fix them seems to me the essential point to cryonics). Why? Because we are NOT going to get the kind of complete control of the universe in which no one will ever get injured or damaged except in ways we know how to repair at the time. Yes, human beings are finite, but when we talk of injuries and damage we're talking of what the universe might do to us, and that is far larger than us. And so once established, cryonics isn't going to go away. Moreover, if you expect someday to be suspended (or stored by whatever means) then it's very much to your interest to see that those who are revived are not mistreated. To do otherwise is to ultimately put yourself at risk. Cryonics should not be seen as a make-do which we adopt until we learn how to reverse aging. It is a general strategy required if you want to live indefinitely long. For instance, some have worked out estimates of how long we'd live if we died only from accidents (they weren't immortalists, nor did they consider possible advances in technology of repair, but their basic point still holds). They figured that we'd live for about 600 years. And what is 600 years compared to immortality? Accidents remain interesting here because they change with technology itself: no one in the 18th Century died of an overdose of radiation, nor of electric shock, for instance. And if we all come to expect to live indefinitely, I promise that we'll feel that a life of only 600 years is a terrible curtailment of our possibilities. Finally, to Tom Mazanec: No, Drexler's molecular nanotechnology simply isn't the same as other forms. According to NANOSYSTEMS, it involves the construction of machines with parts the size of molecules. (To me it remains an open question whether or not we'd find a strong limit on just how large and involved such a machine can be: after all, if only one fault will bring the whole machine down, the bigger and more complex it becomes the more likely such a fault will be --- even if a fault in any given component is very unlikely). Biotechnology, with which I'm quite familiar, uses a very high level of redundancy to avoid this problem completely: the basic idea is to have lots of small machines in a liquid, all working together. If you mean that ultimately however we do our nanotechnology we'll have means to attain the same EFFECT as Drexler's molecular nanotechnology, I would agree. But there are lots of different ways to fly. We may well find that each method has its own optimal sphere in which it works better than others (biplanes are still used to spray crops, for instance). Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10757