X-Message-Number: 17192
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: The Joker was right!
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 12:04:20 -0700

In the original film "Batman" Jack Nicholson playing the Joker at one point
uttered one of my favorite lines when he said, "What this town needs is an
enema!"

Sometimes I feel the same way when I read the same false criticism raised
about cryonics over and over and over again.  Like an old broken record
which keeps skipping to the same line:  "cryonics hasn't been proven yet
(click) cryonics hasn't been proven yet (click) cryonics hasn't... "

This is a truly FALSE criticsm because it flies in the face of the rock
bottom, primary premise upon which cryonics is based.

There is one critical issue to be grasped in cryonics.  It is what cryonics
is all about.  If you don't get THIS, you've missed the whole kit and
caboodle!

Cryonics is a calculated gamble on FUTURE technology.

That means by definition that you CAN'T know YET what will or won't
ultimately prove to work or fail in this calculated gamble.

You can GUESS and PREDICT and try to position your personal wager to cover
the most seemingly likely possibilities.  That's why we have different
cryonics organizations.  They reflect different OPINIONS about what is
probably going to be necessary for success.

Yet I read again in Lous Epstein's reply to Thomas Donaldson (in T.D's
effort to suggest that there is current evidence to indicate brains can
retain information after "death") that

"To what extent can it be confidently
stated that information remains stored
in a brain after death...if such information
has never been recovered?

"This issue is central to the usefulness of
cryonics(as something other than a means of
preserving corpses).The Parnia research
speaks of people returning to consciousness
after a time when their brains appeared to
have stopped functioning,but cryogenic
temperatures were not involved...the Darwin
frozen dogs didn't get into the LN2 range
either."  (from Message 17185)

Come ON, Louis!  What abject nonsense!  OF COURSE, we do not yet have brains
demonstrating recovered information AFTER being frozen at liquid nitrogen
temperatures!

That is YET to happen.

NO ONE is claiming otherwise.

It IS however entirely valid to extrapolate that if brains have been dead at
room temperature and after resuscitation memory is restored, then MAYBE if a
FUTURE technology can restore brains from a frozen state to the living state
the memories may just be there also.

Seems a good argument for that possibility to me.

It is NOT valid to therefore imply that it CAN'T happen.  That's the
"gamble" part of cryonics.

To imply or state that it CAN'T happen is to claim that lack of evidence is
proof.

We can't PROVE it, but then my time machine is still broken too.  (Otherwise
I wouldn't still be back here in this primitive backwater era!).

Please, everybody, stop pretending that LACK of knowledge is proof that
something fairly reasonable (such as future frozen brain repair) CAN'T
happen.

Cryonics doesn't depend upon anything absolutely impossible such as ignoring
the laws of physics.  (Nanotechnology now gets featured on the cover of
Forbes magazine so maybe there is a just a little monetary interest in
furthering this field which could basically do the job).

Asking "to what extent can it be confidently be stated that" ANYTHING about
what will be possible BEFORE it happens in an open ended future is silly and
misleading.  This kind of "question" is a debate tactic and not an honest
argument.

How about everyone agreeing to drop the "straw man" arguments?  Lack of
evidence is not proof.

With cryonics we are not at the proof stage BY DEFINITION.  When we ARE at
the proof stage there will be no more debate anyway.

Just my opinion.

George Smith
CI member (Putting my money and my body where my mouth is).

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