X-Message-Number: 12779
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 22:15:51 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: closure, silliness

Daniel Ust, #12771, replies to some previous postings relating to "lack of
closure" if the "deceased" isn't really dead (as we hope is the case with
cryonics),  and in particular agrees with Charles Platt on some of the
problems, e.g. that if a spouse is frozen the still-animate partner could
face some tough choices such as whether to remarry. And I won't dispute that
these indeed will sometimes be tough. Then there is the problem that if the
still-animate person remarries, and the two of them are eventually frozen so
that all three are reanimated, what do you do? Keith Henson's answer, that
you could make a copy of one person (more generally, enough copies of the
relevant person or people to go around for everybody), is dismissed as
"silly." I don't see it that way, and think that probably conflicted
loyalties, etc. could also be addressed, assuming you have full control over
the person(s) you'd be creating, as I think will eventually be possible.
(Though no doubt it will require *considerable* advances from where we are
now.) This would have to be handled gingerly, of course. But you make a copy
with certain, perhaps subtle modifications to remove the major problems that
would otherwise exist, make him/her unreservedly loyal as the prospective
partner will wish, etc., provided no directives against this sort of thing
were issued previously by the relevant parties. I think it will be possible
to determine these wishes and preferences by extensive, advanced,
computer-assisted analysis beforehand, given recoverable brain information,
without actually putting the persons in question through an ordeal of
realtime interrogations and psychoanalysis.

But in another way, perhaps this whole approach will be found rather silly
after all. For some you might be able to create, from just their brain
information, an "ideal" partner even better than the one that they had to
leave behind would become with possible minor retooling. But I really wonder
what the longterm future of "significant others" will be. An s.o. is cared
about rather *more* than everybody else--right?--at least when things are
"as they should be." Is this the best posture to maintain, indefinitely? Or
should you care about others more equally? The latter seems more reasonable
for an existence spanning centuries, millennia and beyond, and the former,
perhaps, in a world like today's where short-lived individuals must
pair-bond to produce their replacements before it's too late.

Mike Perry

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