X-Message-Number: 15570
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: Clarifying the details.
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 20:12:55 -0800

Here is an example of what I have been saying in terms of thinking about the
"Big Picture":

In Message #15561 Jeff Grimes wrote in part, in response to my previous
questions:

JEFF: "So here is my answer. Obviously I don't want to take a lot of trouble
obtaining insurance coverage and signing up with an organization if its
procedures seem not to make sense and are not based on real science."

ME: Obtaining insurance coverage makes sense NOW even if you do not choose
to sign up for any cryonics services currently available BECAUSE you can
never be certain if you will REMAIN insurable.

The name of the game here if you delay getting insurance now is "You Bet
Your Life".  My suggestion is that if you think there might EVER be a
cryonics or other suspension service that WILL meet your standards, get
insurance NOW while you still can be certain that you can.

Jeff continued:

JEFF: "This is a value decision. You may feel it is worth paying the money
for any tiny hope at all."

ME: Yes, I do because (1) the money is very little (less than my
subscription to broadband internet to write this) and (2) SOME "hope" is
better than NO "hope".   (I prefer the word "chance as more accurate to
describe own perspective).

JEFF: "But where do you draw the line? Would you buy a freezer and ask your
wife to put you in it after death, because it offers a "tiny hope"? Or would
you prefer to arrange for something a bit more plausible?"

ME: If my only choice was to buy a freezer at home and I could do so, I
would.  NO ONE CAN KNOW whether such preservations might not be reversable
in the future.  But because there do exist cryonics organizations which
already offer stable, supervised storage facilities, I am signed up with one
of these now.  Some chance is better than no chance.

JEFF:  "I could use the money now to enjoy myself, if the chance of the
cryonics procedures working is negligible. So far I am not sure whether it
is negligible or not. I had was more convinced at the beginning, than I am
now."

ME: And that is the problem as I see it.  You CANNOT REALLY MEASURE what
CAN'T happen in the future to decide if the chances are "neglible" or not.
What may be seemingly "impossible" or ridiculous" to modern day scientists
may be exactly what can be possible in the future.

The entire thrust of history demonstrates this over and over.  As I recall
it was Robert Heinlein who first suggested that when a respected scientist
publically declares something to be impossible you can count on it happening
within two years or so.  His sarcasm was not all that inaccurate.

This is the heart of the problem.  You are rejecting the POSSIBILITY that
what is available now COULD work and are substituting CURRENT BEST GUESSES
regarding what will prove to be sufficient for your restoration in a future
NONE of us can know about with any certainty.

JEFF: "In order to make a better informed decision, I asked some questions
that seemed very obvious, such as, how do you preserve people, and why? I
mean, what could be MORE obvious than that?"

ME: I would suggest that what was more "obvious" at least to me were
questions such as "DO you preserve people?" and "How long have you been
doing so?" and "Is your organization financially sound?" and "What does it
cost to do this?".

I already knew that any methods beyond simple freezing itself were, at best,
SUPPOSITIONS about might help in any future revival attempt.  I was already
familiar enough with the continued failure of scientists in the past to
predict meaningful advances in science in the future to ASSUME that today's
scientists would be any more accurate.

Then Jeff went on to complain that he felt his requests for simple answers
were ignored, that he was badly treated, and then concluded that there must
be only three possibilities which involved whether or not anyone knows the
details about the details, whether there are "secrets" about the details or
that CI is "emabarrassed about the details.

My own feeling is that these are all just that DETAILS.  Not important since
NO ONE ultimately knows which "details" in protocal will make a difference
later at the other end of the time trip to the future or not.

I certainly know nothing about "viaspan", or precisely how many hours and or
minutes it takes to move a body packed in ice from point A or B to the CI
facility in Michigan, or if "stepped" introduction of this or that
"cryoprotectant" or "vitrification fluid" will be used or not.

All I know are the answers to the questions I first asked about ten years
ago to satisfy me that I could afford to have my body and the bodies of my
family SOMEHOW preserved for possible future resuscitation if any of us died
AND that the institutions involved had a proven track record to indicate
that they could be trusted to do so.

I didn't have and still don't have any agenda to prove or defend which
current scientific protocol is more likely to reduce injury or better insure
a successful resusitation.

After all NO ONE CAN BE SURE.

I thought that this self evident fact was obvious to everyone.

Thus I have always felt that while the people who have been making the
decisions about this or that protocol or this or that cryoprotectant, etc.,
are simply trying to apply reasonable judgement extrapolating from current
evidence and research, I have NEVER assumed that these decisions may not ALL
prove to be MORE damaging than simply doing nothing other than just freezing
the body as soon as possible and waiting for technology to hopefully evolve
to where the person can be restored to life.

I would suggest that we all swallow a large piece of humble pie in regard to
what may eventually prove to be possible or not in the future.  I am always
willing to eat the first piece.  Anyone else?

The track record for the scientists predicting the future advancements of
science thus far has been truly poor, even ridiculously below chance in many
cases.  (Will men go to the moon?  Will man fly in the air?  Is radio,
radar, computers, electrical power possible?  Chances seem 50/50 in each
case.  Yes or No.  How many experts assured us the answers were NO.  Below
chance so many times that one wonders how it is possible to be SO wrong so
consistently often.  Quite a skill).

Who knows?  EVERYONE so far may be provn wrong in every assumption thus far
made about future resuscitation.

Jeff quoted me saying how "Some chance is better than no chance" and then
continued,

JEFF: "But unless there is some explanation of how the procedure is supposed
to REALLY work, how do I know that there is any chance? Unlike you I am not
convinced that nanotechnology will be able to undo just about any kind of
damage."

ME: Well, shoot, Jeff.  That's the whole point!

You CAN'T know yet.  It's in the FUTURE.

You can only choose to try and take a chance it might work or unnecessarily
risk death if you don't.

Remember that there is NO OPTION #2 if you die NOW.  (I am excluding all
religious alternatives here as I feel we are pretty much discussing physical
survival of death through some kind of technology).

I'll skip here also the section where Jeff declares my questioning his
honest intent as "paranoid" or whether his questions have been
"inflammatory" as these are all subject to personal interpretation.  (Is it
paranoid to be prepared for life threatening situations?  Is it inflammatory
to imply that CI is keeping "secrets"?).  What Jeff wrote next, however, was
less personal and more interesting to me:

JEFF: "I am asking for basic details of procedures which are being applied
to people who want to have their lives saved."

ME: And I am reminding you that NONE of these procedures may turn out to
mean anything in the long run.  These are details only in the truest sense
of the word IF you understand that we cannot be CERTAIN about what will come
about AS the best method.

I also wrote, "If cryonics were highly expensive, you would have a possible
reason for delay.  But it isn't.  Most people can join up for about the same
money they would spend on a pizza once a month."

Jeff replied:

JEFF: "Life insurance would cost me at least 1000 pounds per year, plus
annual membership. This is not trivial."

ME: Jeff, how old are you?  If you are under forty you can secure term
insurance which matches my pizza estimate rather nicely.  If you are older,
WHY ARE YOU DELAYING GETTING INSURANCE?  If you keep waiting you may easily
end up uninsurable.  I discussed this issue toward the beginning of this
post.

ME: "You see,  I suspect that this neverending demand for more and more
detailed answers is a smokescreen for the REAL agenda."

JEFF: "Look, I have not cast aspersions on anyone's motives here,"

ME: Uh, not quite.  You have implied that CI administrators are hiding
embarrassing facts in secret (could that be considered a "paranoid"
conspiracy, I wonder?) and made not a few disparaging remarks which could,
all by themselves, cause someone to decide your intent was not an honest
search for the truth but something else.

I was trying to speculate about that possible "something else".  Frankly I
am coming to believe that you really ARE being strictly honest and view your
own questions as simple and direct, and that your only problem is that you
really don't like the answers you're getting since they are not sufficiently
detailed to please you and they don't support your presuppositions about
what will and will not work in a future that is not here yet.

Jeff continued:

JEFF: "and I would appreciate it if you could rein in your paranoid
fantasies and just take my text at face value. This constant doubting of my
motives is uncalled for and irrelevant. Even if I DID have an ulterior
motive, it would be irrelevant, because the questions I am asking are basic,
and EVERY informed cryonics person, including you, ought to know the
answers. Otherwise, you are proceeding blindly without any proper knowledge
of what is going to happen to you."

Me: We ARE all "proceeding blindly" at this point in time (or at least not
able to see with certainty what the future will hold).

And my entire point is that now, in the year 2001, NO ONE can KNOW what
truly constitutes "proper knowledge" about what will LATER prove to be
useful, useless or even more damaging when we consider the DETAILS of
cryonics.

NOW we are only making "educated" guesses.  Everyone is welcome to debate
what is considered properly "educated" or not.  Me?  I do not know.  And the
fact of the matter is no one really does.

But if you are not signed up for cryonics and die TODAY, if won't matter
whether you were right or wrong about the details.

You will only be dead.

Seems really simple to me.

Don't miss the forest for the trees.

Some chance IS better than no chance.

Hope this makes it clearer WHILE you deal with the details.

And for your own best sake PLEASE get your life insurance NOW so that
whatever you finally decide to do you can afford to do, okay?

Best wishes,

George "Paranoid" Smith
CI member

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