X-Message-Number: 17163
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 23:33:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis Epstein <>
Subject: July 5-7 Catchup
CryoNet - Thu 5 Jul 2001
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#16870: "Artificial Intelligence" ~I Just Saw It (Cryonics content)
[John Krug]
>.... I changed my mind and saw "A.I." yesterday... I appreciate the
>opinions expressed here by John Grigg, John Clark and anyone I may have
>missed. I enjoyed the movie. Incomplete as it was, I liked seeing the
>inclusion of cryostasis as a plot device.
Haven't seen it myself.Hollywood cryostasis seems
rather far from the real variety...have any films
dealt with neurosuspension at other than the "They
Saved Hitler's Brain" variety?Or shown cryoprotectant
perfusions?
I note that the film has not been a runaway hit.
People prefer apes and dinosaurs.
>"The Future is about Nerve. Who has It. who does not" -Paul Kantner
A rather disturbing appeal to aggressiveness.
They also serve,and are entitled to a future,
who only stand and wait.
Brassy temperaments and eutopias are not a good
match.
#16874: To Kevin Brown [Charles Platt]
>Kevin, it's pointless for you to tell us about the poor impression
>created by anti-gay, pro-exhumation, and other nutty prolix Cryonet
>posts expressing opinions that few sane or balanced people would share.
Apart from my conviction that I am sane and
balanced,haven't people complained about Platt
too?
#16875: I wish I did [david pizer]
>For instance, I see that more people now value the rights of animals.
>More people seem to value the rights of minority groups that they are
>not a part of.
>This is probably because they don't *have to* eat animals to survive
>anymore. And the "them vs us" mentality of the tribes we evolved from
>is no longer necessary for our personal survival. So I am looking for
>technology to change our value systems to such that all life has value
>so long as it doesn't harm other innocent life.
You're presupposing that any amount of
change in this direction is for the better,
rather than reaching an optimum point beyond
which further movement is excess.I consider
it a moral obligation of any species to put
its own interests above those of other species.
Pass the steak.
#16876: R-E-S-P-E-C-T [Deathist Lurker Girl]
><aside to Trygve Bauge> Trygve, I tried to read your web page but it
>crashed my browser three times before I gave up. It would be a lot more
>accessible without 50 little popup windows. If you wish to include
>advertising, banners are less distracting. Not that I'm telling you what
>to do. I'm just sayin'.. </aside>
As I've mentioned before,it is
absolutely impossible to get into
Trygve's "Meta-Portal" from Lynx,
one gets bounced around a few start
pages but can't get past them.
He doesn't care,I take it.
>Goodnight, y'all... from the Deathist *Former* Lurker Girl (how's *that*,
>Louis?)
Well,I've been in a lurk phase myself recently.
#16878: a message for Trygve and the rest of you [john grigg]
>To be honest, I find Swedes to be generally very friendly but Norwegians
>to be cold fish tempermentally(not to say you are!). Of course, this is my
>own unscientific opinion. We do get alot of tourists in Alaska! I tend to
>be reserved and even very shy in the real world so it made me wonder if being
>part Norwegian were part of it.
I'm Norwegian on my mother's side.
I'm certainly rather reserved in person
whatever my posting style,no impression
that my ancestry causes it,though.
>I had a friend who spent two years in Norway. He said the women were
>very beautiful and not too attached to their clothes while on the beaches.
>I think this made concentrating on his missionary duties somewhat difficult
>while near the coastline... lol
My Norwegian grandmother's friend and neighbor
was converted by LDS missionaries there,but it
didn't last that long.(No idea who did baptism
for the dead on some of my ancestors in Norway,
though...I am not aware of any LDS cousins and
was surprised to see that record on a genealogical
search).
#16879: Posting Rule Change for CryoNet [Kevin Q. Brown]
>I just modified the CryoNet software so that the maximum
>message size now is 20 KB rather than 40 KB and so that
>no more than four messages from the same source will be
>included in a nightly digest.
>That brief explanation, for messages excluded from the digest,
>now is improved so that it includes a URL as well as email
>retrieval instructions. As a result, the nightly digests
>now automatically replace the text of messages from prolific
>posters with URLs to those messages, which is exactly what I
>recently requested be done manually.
Of course,not everyone works with
a HTML-using email program.
>I hope that this change is agreeable to the CryoNet readers.
Well,it appears to have met with
support.I note that I would now have
to post my list of supercentenarians,
if I posted it to Cryonet,in four parts
when I would have had to do it in two
before.(Chronological table,notes,
ranked table,progressive tables rather
than Chronological table and notes,
and ranked and progressive tables).
CryoNet - Fri 6 Jul 2001
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#16881: Value [Charles Platt]
>I suggest that in the future, when life can be similated or replicated in
>large computing systems, a crime such as homicide will be redefined more
>generally as the crime of destroying unique, complex data of which no
>copy exists. Personally, I already find the destruction of unique data
>almost as disturbing as the destruction of life.
Hmm,an area of agreement.
I hate hearing of the
destruction of books,or
forced permanence of secrets.
I've recently attempted,to
no avail as of yet,to stimulate
discussions of criteria for
superlative(not merely meets-
the-standard-to-show-an-infinity-
symbol) archival paper.
#16885: One more change please, Kevin Brown [Raphael T. Haftka]
>Rank messages by length?
>I want to applaud Kevin Brown for the change just instituted, and I want
>to suggest another small change if his software can accommodate it. That
>is, to post first messages that are under 5K, and only then follow with the
>long ones.I don't mind the disk space, but I find it tiresome to scroll
>through the long messages, which I never read anyhow.
I don't see why length alone would make an article not
worth reading...indeed,the more content,the more value,
I would expect,given that its subject matter is of
interest.
Will people with longer lives have longer attention
spans?One can hope so.
Any thoughts here on the writings of Sharon Webb
where it's assumed that artistic creativity is
linked to being mortal,and a largely-immortal
society has a special cadre of mortal artists?
Somehow,I think that this could only make sense
to a mortal perspective.
Frederik Pohl's Outnumbering the Dead scenario,
where those in whom the anti-aging treatments
fail are so rare as to be celebrities,is an
interesting concept,but we can't tell what form
future life-extending technologies will take.
#16890: Re: Does inherent value exist? [Scott Badger]
>Lee Corbin Wrote:
>"But that's how progress actually will be made. After all, the Golden
>Rule started the same way: I'm sure that many people didn't like the
>sound of it at first,but came to acknowledge that it described a lot of
>their behavior pretty well. And then the way was then clear for their
>intelligence to seek its wider applicability. Dave's rule, approximately,
>is "The interests of every entity should be considered", and it may end
>up having the same history."
>Yes, and as many already know, this shift in focus from self to others
>has already been succinctly expressed in the platinum rule, designed to
>replace the golden rule in the face of increased levels of multicultural
>awareness and appreciation for diversity. The platinum rule is, Do unto
>others as they would have you do unto them.
OY,am I repelled by this attitude!
Constantly subordinating your value
system to other people's value systems
is not a value system.
I've previously indicated my unease
with the worship of diversity(the cause
of every war in history).I am annoyed
enough with the efforts of the mainland
Chinese and the Ivorians to prevent the
English language from being used to refer
to them.
It is better to have standards than
chaos...allowing everyone's selfish
preference to govern everyone else's
behavior is chaos and foolishness.
#16891: values [Robert Ettinger]
>(1) The only case in which self-destruction is reasonable is one in which
>your future is confidently calculated to include a preponderance of pain
>over pleasure, or dissatisfaction over satisfaction.
If this is "reasonable",then why isn't
choosing cremation over cryostasis
reasonable?
One should never engage in self-destruction
because one believes that there will be no
end to one's pain/dissatisfaction.While one
remains undestroyed one can be proven wrong
about that.By self-destruction one hands
victory to one's adversities on quicker
terms than could otherwise have been possible.
#16896: Getting prepared to come out [david pizer]
>After reading Lee's recap, I still think that considering if a being
>has interests, if it can be harmed or helped, and, perhaps, if it is
>interested in harming or helping others, is going to be the strongest
>way to build a moral system for frozen beings and all other beings.
>It will take some work to refine this. I want to have some strong argument
>in place for the rights of frozen persons when the Venturists "come out" in
>a year and take on the status quo of the non-immortalists world-wide.
So what sort of event is planned?
Some sort of big publicity splash
or just a milestone from the internal
viewpoint as Ventureville is launched?
(How much of a point will be made of
the Venturist affiliation in selling
resort usage to non-immortalists...and
will it help or hurt?)
CryoNet - Sat 7 Jul 2001
------------------------
#16900: The Schrodinger's limit, experimental proof? [Azt28]
[Yvan Bozzonetti]
>To summarize in two lines: Elementary quantum mechanics open the
>possibility to recover the past.
To react in one line:
I'll believe it when I see it.
#16905: Me a threat to cryonics?????, give me a break!!!! [Trygve Bauge]
>It is the federal government , the INS. (the immigration and
>naturalization service), that I have a problem with, if that could be
>overcome, then Colorado would have been my choice for organizing a cryonic
>storage facility in. Incidentially the INS has no objection to cryonics,
>just an objection to my stand for freedom of travel and trade.As you know,
>I hold that life-extension and entrepreneurial liberty (including freedom
>of travel and trade) go hand in hand, and that we can't get the former
>without the latter.
I don't think it likely that
the development of technologies
would be helped at all by the
collapse of nation-states,which
would be an inevitable consequence
of Bauge-ian elimination of the
effectiveness of national borders.
Granted,some areas will seek to
retard technologies,witness the
efforts to ban cloning.But equally
there will be no way to stop
anti-tech marauders from doing
their Luddite thing in places
where advances would otherwise be
protected.
#16911: David Pizer's "venturing" forward and also on the subject of
values [john grigg]
>My beautiful list of the four things to transform the cryonics movement...
>1. The development of vitrification by 21st Century Medicine.
>2. The announcement of the Timeship which is to be completed in 7 years.
>3. The proposal by Fred Chamberlain to upgrade Alcor facilities so
>vitrification can be effectively done there. They still need funds!
>4. The Venturist resort/cryonics community project.
>The mind boggles to think where the cryonics movement may be in less then
>a decade! I desperately hope all four projects find success.
Whether it will be to the point where
I am confident it can perform reversible
suspensions is an open question.
These projects MIGHT make the difference.
Are the building blocks in place for
WHOLE-BODY vitrification?...or is
all the effort focused on heads?
Is the Timeship more than a proposal
that may never get built,and does it
complement or needlessly duplicate
or compete with other efforts?
I intend to stay "animated" and see
what happens.
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