X-Message-Number: 11292
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 02:24:25 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: Lovable Relatives

Charles Platt, #11285, writes,

>I'm amused that Dave assumes we would all WANT our relatives to be 
>resurrected. Personally I would be horrified and dismayed by the prospect 
>of seeing some of them brought back to life.

More generally, there are many people with characteristics that don't
particularly inspire us, and the prospect of having such as these among
us again is also not that thrilling, on the face of it. But in my book
I do make a case for Universalism, or recreating essentially every possible
person in continuer form *eventually*--assuming the universe allows this,
which could happen if our time is infinite. The basic ground is enlightened
self-interest, extrapolated to the timescale of eternity. In other words, a
diversity of other beings should lead to a more interesting or more
meaningful life for each individual (maybe not at first, but eventually).
But the cases that are particularly disagreeable could be handled in various
ways. One possibility might be to create a continuer of the person who had
some additional "training" and had so reformed as to no longer be the
unpleasant person he/she was. This would have to be done in such a way as to
retain the original "identity" rather than merely substitute an entire new
personality, but I think this would be possible. Perhaps in many cases the
necessary reforms would be willingly undertaken once the new situation was
made clear. In the most extreme cases we might have to impose these from the
outside. In all, a universal resurrection/immortalization should be an
interesting project. To best prepare for it, however, it makes sense to have
cryonics arrangements in place.

Mike Perry

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