X-Message-Number: 15212
From: 
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 10:56:02 EST
Subject: repair vs. fabrication

I recently reminded readers that it will almost certainly become possible, 
using a mature nanotechnology, to build from scratch an adult person similar 
to you (as you are now); and that it will obviously be much easier to recover 
such a person by repair of your frozen remains. 

Well, what is "obvious" is somewhat variable, so perhaps I should have 
explained a bit further. 

Manufacture can be easier than repair, if we are talking about a product 
already designed and with production facilities in place. This is why, 
nowadays, we often junk a broken-down gadget rather than repair it. But to 
recover, as nearly as theoretically possible, a detailed and accurate 
reconstitution of a particular individual, is a different story altogether. 

If you have a damaged old master painting, you can't order a new one from the 
factory; you have to do your best to restore the original--but even that 
analogy is incomplete.

It's a question of information. If you were buried and rotted, any attempt to 
fabricate a similar person would have to rely on external sources of 
information, such as the DNA of your relatives, their memories, public and 
private written records, photos and videos, etc. But if you were frozen, in 
addition to all that there would be available the internal information in 
your frozen body--and this would be very extensive, even in the worst cases. 

I repeat: It is obvious--or it should be--that if you are cryopreserved, 
eventual capability of recovery of a person very similar to you is a virtual 
certainty. The previously mentioned caveats, of course, remain.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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