X-Message-Number: 1111 Date: Thu, 6 Aug 92 20:24:48 EDT From: (Perry E. Metzger) Subject: CRYONICS Re: nanodebate >From: Charles Platt <> >Re the nanodebate between Perry M. and Keith L: I am only >just beginning to study and understand the Extropian mindset, >but am I right in thinking that one of its dominant >characteristics is impatience? Impatience with limitations, >for a start; plus impatience with the slow pace of change, >with conservatism generally, with the imperfections of human >biology, and of course impatience caused by the sense that >time is running out. I feel these forms of impatience myself >to some extent, but I see them write large on the face of >Extropianism. And as a result, perhaps the impatience >sometimes spills over onto *other people*, especially people >who place inconvenient little stumbling blocks on the path to >human transcendence. Is that the offense committed by Keith >L, which caused such a surprisingly terse, dismissive >response from Perry M? I really didn't intend any hostility towards Keith; I merely felt he hadn't substantiated a fairly big claim, which was that we would need to go to LHe temperatures to do reconstruction work. I was not being dismissive, although unfortunately electronic mail as a media tends to distort and render more dramatic one's slant. I merely was soliciting evidence for his position. >If so, I can't help feeling that the >optimism advocated by Extropianism is akin to wishful >thinking, because there is no way around the endless boring >practical inconvenient annoying detail of MAKING THINGS WORK. No one would argue otherwise. >When our brains are encoded in silicon, or our blood is full >of nanomachines (which can't be soon enough for me!), I hope >no one thinks there will be less need for engineers such as >Keith. Just the opposite; there will be ten times as many >things to go wrong. Fortunately, we may hope that they are >easier to fix, with the right tools for the job. But that >very pertinent matter seemed to be the focus of Keith's >posting. I *AM* an engineer, Charles. I've got a fairly good notion of what real design work is like. I was hardly hostile to Keith for suggesting the job might be harder than previously suggested; I'd be the first one to suggest that the problem is VERY HARD. I was slightly upset that he made a very significant statement with lots of apparent confidence without giving any good evidence, and that this statement was in contradiction to what is generally believed. I'm a rationalist; as such, I'm ready to discard any belief at almost any time; I've no particular emotional stake in doing reconstruction work at 130 degrees k or 77 degrees k instead of 4 degrees k; my complaint was merely that I hadn't been given any evidence that would lead me to discard with my belief. In any case, the whole thing is in the nature of a family dispute; we are not, I think, fundamentally hostile to each others positions, merely having a dispute on a small point. Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1111