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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12779