X-Message-Number: 15571
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #15561 - #15564
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 22:46:23 -0800

In Message #15564 Kitty Antonik Wakfer had some criticism of my thoughts in
"Mr. Smith's Thinking".

And before I write another word I should first mention that anything I
disagree with Kitty about may be proven quickly wrong due to the
indisputable fact that RNs are almost always right anyway.  (Ask any
doctor!).  I have learned this after 26 years of marriage to an RN and I am
NOT being sarcastic.  I know my limits.  I am only human, whereas a nurse is
a nurse!

(And further, because I also know how good marriage to an RN can be, I also
want to take a moment to congratulate you and Paul on your recent wedding
and wish you a wonderful future together.  And I mean THAT too!).

Kitty wrote in part a response to an earlier posting of mine in which I
wrote:

ME: "Some chance is better than no chance."

KITTY: "Cryonics isn't the ONLY "lifeboat" to the future.  Other
life-extension practices - calorie restriction the major example - have far
more likelihood of getting me to the future where rejuvenation methods are
proven and in practice than cryonics.  Cryonics for me is a band-aid, "just
in case"."

ME: I am actually not against doing other things too.  If I conveyed that, I
was wrong.  But the critical words here are "just in case".  Just in case of
... DEATH.  TODAY.

My point (repeated over and over for which I have been properly chastised by
others) was that right NOW if someone dies and they are NOT signed up with
SOME cryonics provider, their body goes into the grave or the crematorium.

Because of the STAKES (your life) I feel that the gamble needs to be clearly
understood to be between choosing CERTAIN DEATH or POSSIBLE SURVIVAL.

KITTY: But to be urged to "sign up", without thinking about - especially not
carefully - on the service quality of existing cryonics organizations, is
not doing a prospective member justice.  There are value judgments to be
made in such a decision after a review of the science (or non-science
involved) and respect for that is greatly lacking in Mr Smith's "advice"."

ME: In an earlier posting today I addressed this other point.

The problem as I see it is that despite posturing and preening, today's
scientists and their very best guesses about what may or may not be
important in preserving a body cryonically (cryoprotectant solutions,
protocols, etc.) may later turn out to all be wrong for all we know.

Strip away the rhetoric and everything right now is still only a GUESS.

Thus the issue of "service quality" CANNOT be measured because we don't know
FOR CERTAIN YET what will prove later to be absolutely useful or useless or
even harmful in the future.

What the science of the year 2001 considers reliable may prove in fifty
years to be irrelevant or even dead wrong.

Science being dead wrong about the future has, with amazing consistency,
happened before and I see no reason to expect that only THIS time everyone
has somehow gotten it precisely right.

(Now THAT would be FAITH!  Other religions, please move over!)

Thus, I disagree that all the discussions on protocol and research are
definitve regarding what will later be known to be correct one way or the
other.

I DO think it's just fine to TRY to get "there" from "here" with discussions
and even disagreements, but I also think it is important that we not end up
kidding ourselves that our most cherished assumptions about what is
"scientifically true" in regard to what will be important to future
resuscitations may turn out to be dead (sorry, pun intended) wrong.

No one knows.  Thus assessing what is "science" or "non-science" is a guess,
not something that can be absolutely relied upon.

What I believe CAN be relied upon is that if someone signs up for some kind
of bodily preservation NOW they have a CHANCE to have that body restored in
the future should they die NOW.

I feel that taking advantage of the monitored storage facilties of
established cryonics organizations (such as Alcor or Cryonics Institute) to
accomplish this makes more sense that trying to arrange a permafrost burial
or hiding a body in one of the northern glaciers.  My reason for placing
trust in these organizations is because they have been successful in storing
bodies for quite a few years now.

But I cannot see the sense in taking the gamble that NOTHING BAD WILL HAPPEN
IN THE MEANTIME by NOT making solid arrangements to preserve one's body and
the bodies of those we love most.

I'm sorry but I am too many autopsies and criminal death reports down the
line to believe that bad things can't happen when least expected.  Too much
military.  Too much law enforcement.  Too much reality.

KITTY: "And what happens to cryonics members once they sign-up with a
respective organization?  Do they stop thinking independently? (Consider how
few of any but the "regulars" have said *anything* here on CryoNet re. this
discussion.)  Do they stop thinking (if they ever did) about the procedures
used by their organization?  How informed are the members?  How much do the
official organs print of the procedures/practices on the order of Cryonics
back in the '80s/early 90s when Mike Darwin produced that magazine?"

ME: And again, as I explained in an earlier posting today, I have ALWAYS
considered these to be DETAILS and not critical issues.  Since no one knows
what will be truly important later, these are exercises in trying to guess
the direction of the future.

The error here, I feel, comes up when emotional hubris interferes with
serious prioritized thinking. I call this hubris "temporal chauvinism" in
the sense that it is the belief that THIS TIME "modern" scientists have got
it ABSOLUTELY right and can be trusted to predict the direction of the
technological future with great precision.

This hubris is the assumption that present day scientific assumptions and
research can be straight line projected into the future.  But, as Robert
Heinlein (I'm prejudiced in favor of Annapolis graduate engineers) and
others have pointed out many times this NEVER has worked out.  Otherwise we
would be traveling over the oceans in steam powered dirigibles and
astronauts in orbit (shot by gunpowder cannons into space) would be highly
skilled in the use of mechanical slide rules to determine re entry
trajectories.

KITTY: "If the members of cryonics organizations consider themselves to be
in "lifeboats", then it is imperative that they see that these are in the
best condition possible and updated as research results are obtained from
reputable science based projects.  To do otherwise is to fail to constantly
monitor and modify their "survival package", just as one should do with
his/her investments."

ME: A perfect analogy since the "common wisdom" of the investment market
today is that one cannot "time" the market yet for over 23 years one silly
but stubborn technician (and now his son) have consistently done so to make
an average over 20% return in any measured five year period by successfully
avoiding every major downturn.  This flies in the face of academic "expert"
belief in the "random walk" theory which holds that the market is chaotic
and unpredictable.

Those persons who have consistently followed this simple timing appraoch
anyway have beaten ALL the money fund managers over those 23 years, but it
required NOT assuming that the current crop of "experts" were absolutely
correct in their assumptions.  It required an almost simplistic, almost
"unthinking" clinging to the overall big picture of realizing that long term
trends can be identified through moving averages, and by switching funds out
of equities into cash when a down trend is thereby identified and thus you
can avoid the devastatng impact of potential crashes and bear markets.

But futher, when you DO build a sum in the markets do you ignore the
probability that sooner or later if you are in the lawsuit crazed United
States someone will decide to gain a judgement against your assets?  Do you
fail to structure your financial situation through overseas trusts outside
your domicile to defeat legal predators or grabby governments?

Or do you leave your assets exposed while you argue about whether or not
current financial experts are right or wrong about random walk theory?

I'd suggest you would be wise to cover your assets.

Insofar as possible DEATH, I recommend following suit with the same concern
for adorning one's physical posterior.

The trick,  if it is a trick at all, is to NOT assume that current experts
are precisely right about the future but to do what you can with what you
have.  Again, there is NO way to be certain that the research results we
obtain today will turn out much later to be correct or not.  If these
results can enhance what we think might help future resuscitations to work,
great.  It's a smaller gamble with the details.

But if you don't preserve the body SOMEHOW none of these details will matter
to you ... or to those you love.

KITTY: But if the leadership of these organizations discourages such active
participation by the rank-and-file membership either paternally or
authoritatively, I can only question their motives.  It would be far better
for all if the leadership (Alcor & CI being the major parties) made their
practices completely known (just look at Cryonics Vol 10(5) May 1989 "A
Suspension in Detroit" for an excellent example) and learned from each other
as well as from the major scientific research effort in neural cryobiology.

ME: Sounds good.  But just remember all these "practices" may all turn out
in the end to be wrong, irrelevant or even detrimental.  In the meantime, be
certain to have something to revive.  If you don't, you are choosing DEATH
if you die TOO SOON.  There is today no reliable authity which can PROVE
that the current approach won't be just fine for eventual resuscitation.
Authority supporting hubris which might cause someone to not choose the ONLY
choice NOW available to avoid certain death, cryonics, would cause me to
questions THEIR motives.

KITTY: IF cryonicists inside organizations want cryonics to be a real
LIFEBOAT,

ME: Right now if you die and you are signed up, cryonics MAY be a lifeboat.
It is a POSSIBLE lifeboat as opposed to a CERTAIN DEATH.  We'll only know if
it's a "real" lifeboat if it succeeds.  Until then it is only a chance.  But
it is a chance!  Better than a certain death, I would suggest.

KITTY: then it behooves them to get those organizations in shape, re.
processes and management.

ME: This implies we can be CERTAIN about what are DEFINITELY the RIGHT
"processes".  No one knows.

Additionally, both cryonics storage organizations ARE "in shape" as they are
still freezing and storing members as they die.

What constitutes the best "management" seems another issue, since MY primary
concern is and remains freezing and storing members.  Everything else I see
as only extraneous detail.  The primary mission of both Alcor and Cryonics
Institute seem to be being fulfilled by management quite nicely as is.

KITTY: AND together with those outside of organizations, all cryonicists
should be monetarily supporting research towards perfected suspended
animation. (This last is but one of the uses of the output from the
Hippocampal Slice Preservation Project funded by The Institute for Neural
Cryobiology.)

ME:  The word "should" arises here.  "Should", "ought", "must, "have to" are
all demands that what is "should" be a certain way, which it already isn't.

I usually find I can convert sentences with these "demand words" into useful
sentences by substituting the word "prefer" as for example: "I would PREFER
all cryonicsts to monetarily support research..."  See what I mean.  It
moves from universal statements of necessity to the authentic truth that
this is an OPINION.

But, Kitty, you may be right about this point.

Or maybe we "should" be donating money to nanotechnological research (or
making bold monetary gambles on potenial nanotech-related stock!).

Or maybe we "should" invest in cloning technology as it rises in popularity
to ride the coat tails to technological breakthroughs there.

Or maybe we "should" be carefully researching everything we can about
amnesiacs recovering memory.  Or near death experiences.  Or "past life
memories".   Or whatever.

Or maybe not.

NO ONE KNOWS.

But I'll tell you what I believe I do know.

I believe that it is really a very good idea to stop pretending to absolute
certainty about the future technology
which is not here and upon which cryonics AND ANY FORM OF SUSPENDED
ANIMATION will depend on.

I believe it is important to not allow "scientism" (as Huston Smith
described this perversion in "Beyond the Post Modern Mind" New York,
Crossroad Publishing Company, 1982) to masquarage as true science, that
ideal so seldom actually followed by scientists who all too often surrender
to egotistical hubris and peer pressure as they abandon their intellectual
honesty in favor of posturing pretense.

I believe it is important to tell the whole truth about things as they are.

And the whole truth is that what we DO know is fairly limited at this stage
in our "scientific" knowledge.  When an adult human being is dead for more
than a few minutes we CAN'T bring them back to life ... YET.

What we DO know it that if someone dies RIGHT NOW as they read these words,
they will be buried or cremated if they have not already arranged for some
kind of preservation of their body.

What we DO know is that bothe Alcor and the Cryonics Institute have a proven
track record of freezing and storing those who die.

What we DO know is that we all have a supremely clear choice about this
PRIMARY issue if we are honest with ourselves.

We can choose right now today, February 7, 2001 AD to have SOME chance for
survival if we die NOW.

Or none.

I hope that you and Paul and anyone else still on the fence set aside their
OPINIONS about the secondary DETAILS and act on the only things we really DO
know about the CRITICAL SINGLE ISSUE.

And if this is "selling" I hope you decide to be sold on survival and stop
taking unnecessary chances.

You don't even have to admit it.

Just do it.

Please.

Best wishes,

George Smith
CI member
...and still thinking about RNs.  (Hi, Ruth!)

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