X-Message-Number: 15852
From: 
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 10:12:56 EST
Subject: Who will revive you?

David King asked about motivation for future generations to revive cryo 
patients. He says he doesn't know of any good motive, while agreeing that

>If relatives are around and have the means to have me reanimated, they
>may arrange to have it done. 

Not just relatives, but the Cryonics Institute (or other organization). We 
will have the legal and moral obligation, the incentive, and almost certainly 
the means. 

Using the "ambulance to the future" metaphor, we won't just bring you to the 
future and dump you in the street in front of a municipal hospital, hoping 
for charity. We will have our own hospital. 

As for the "usefulness" to future society of revived patients, that is the 
wrong question. People are ends, not means. But even in those terms, there is 
no problem. What use is a newborn? A "reborn" will be "useful" sooner than a 
newborn. (I leave out of account the radical "singularity" scenarios.)

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

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