X-Message-Number: 131
From arpa!CS.CMU.EDU!tsf Mon Sep 25 20:01:32 EDT 1989
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          25 Sep 89 20:01:53 EDT
To: kqb%
Reply-to: Tim Freeman <>
Subject: CRYONICS - We're all Nazis!
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 89 20:01:32 EDT
Message-ID: <>
From: 

[[note to KQB -- I'll understand if you want to censor this.  TSF]]

Here's some flamage that went by on alt.cyberpunk I thought y'all might be
interested in.  I made a calm reasoned reply, but I doubt that calm reasoning
is going to make any difference to this particular person.

I found this post somewhat painful to read.  What can you do when
someone calls you a Nazi?

Article 1220 of alt.cyberpunk:

Path: 
pt.cs.cmu.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!mmm
From:  (Mark Robert Thorson)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
:Subject: The Cryonic Nation
Message-ID: <>
Date: 20 Sep 89 16:37:47 GMT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 43

[This is a continuation of a thread from sci.nanotech.  The discussion
started with technical aspects of cryonics, but has since shifted into
the possibility of the black future which may result from the rise of
cryonic technology.  My contention is that a cryonic society would be
incompatible with a non-cryonic society.  The moderator of sci.nanotech
considers this thread no longer appropriate for his group.]

Andrew Klossner   (uunet!tektronix!frip.WV.TEK!andrew) says:
 
> A group that controlled nanotechnology could sterilize anyone they
> chose by releasing appropriately targetted nano-devices into the
> environment.  Such a group might well decide that involuntary (and,
> possibly, unwitting) sterilization would be the least of all evils.
 
This is exactly the point of view held by Cryo's who've given the matter
some thought.  They see the vision of a cryonic Utopia, a depopulated Earth,
a garden of Eden planet.  How to get to that goal, there's the rub!
 
You could of course simply kill everybody.  But that offends the sensibilities
of some of the younger Cryo's.  So instead, just forcibly sterilize them.
Then go to sleep for 100 years, and when you wake up the same result is
Command:
achieved.
 
There's other options too.  If you believe that a person is not dead if
the technology exists (or will exist) to revive them, then it isn't murder
to freeze them.  I can easily imagine the cryonic Auschwitz with the ovens
replaced by refrigerators.
 
 (Alan Lovejoy) says:
 
> If the 200 or so cryonicists of the world pose such a threat as some recent
> postings have suggested, then there just isn't any hope for mankind.  There
> are numerous groups that are far more sinister than the cryonicists whose
> membership exceeds that of all cryonics organizations combined by orders
> of magnitude.
Command:
 
The same could be said for the Nazi party in 1923.  This is why it is
so important now to bring into the open the temporary nature of peaceful
coexistence between Cryonism and humanity.  One must triumph and the other
must perish.  At this point in time, it is still possible to stamp out
Cryonism.  If we wait till they get nanotechnology, it will be too late.

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