X-Message-Number: 11472
From: 
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 13:45:49 -0600 (CST)

Subject: Why is cryonics (or anything) desirable?  Partial answer to Garry 
Wright's message #11468

In Message #11468, Garry Wright wrote in part:

> ...there is no reason other
>than selfishness for cryonics.  For civilisation to not stagnate, it
>depends on
>change and evolution.  

But why is "change and evolution" for "civilization" desirable?

This comes from some particular viewpoint or perspective, right?


Yet if "selfishness" is somehow wrong, WHO is it that suggests that civilization
should benefit?


If "civilization" is viewed as a worthy enitity, then IT is being "selfish" to 
sacrifice US!

Sooner or later if values are assigned, SOMEONE will benefit.


Now the question really is, just WHO wants to volunteer to die for 
"civilization"?

(So far all of humanity has been involuntarily drafted into that cause).

Or as an even shorter version:

If "selfishness" is somehow bad, exactly WHAT is the alternative?


(All in favor of selfLESSness please line up in front of the Mother Nature 
firing squad to your 
left).

But then I read....

>The relatively new theory of memetics suggests that the very concept of
>self is
>an illusion - merely the result of Darwinian evolution of so called memes. 

But illusions exist too.  

You see a movie and enter into its story as a real experience as it happens.


And current cinema is a very poor imitation of direct experience (2-dimensional,
blurry, etc.).

If the sense of self is an illusion, so what?

The illusion is experienced as real.

Again, FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE, in your EXPERIENCE it IS real ...illusion or not!


(Which is one reason why the "upoading" of the human personality into a computer
may 
someday prove valid).

>The
>concept of a conscious self is a powerful meme for obvious reasons.  There
>are
>experiments, also described in Penrose's book, that demonstrate that we do
>not
>actually possess free will.

Again, so what?

We possess at the very least the ILLUSION of free will, yes?

THAT is your experience.  
>
>Having said all this, I am not against anyone who wishes to be preserved,
>and I
>wish the movement well.  It is certainly a more interesting thing to do
>with a dead
>body than burning or burying it.  I just think that it is pointless, and
>the efforts of
>these intelligent people could be better utilised in trying to create the
>next level of
>intelligence, rather than trying to preserve the current one beyond its
>usefullness.
>
But, again, what is the POINT of doing THAT?

WHO desires "the next level of intelligence"?

And for what purpose?


My firm suggestion is to seek to live long enough to discover the answers to 
these questions.


Cryonics is a sensible part of any serious attempt to live long enough to get 
there.

In the meantime, enjoy your experiences, illusions or not!

-George Smith

Member of the "CAPS make more sense than ** or _ _ or other wierd-looking 
efforts to emphasize 

words in the currently primitive mode of e-mail" International Group for Better 
Communication 

(and no I am NOT SHOUTING when I type uppercase letters on a keyboard because 
pictures are NOT 
sounds ...unless you have been dropping too much acid).

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