X-Message-Number: 18158 From: "George Smith" <> References: <> Subject: Nightmares you can never experience. Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 15:37:35 -0800 Tracey Simon (#18153) wrote: "If only the brain is held in cryostasis, as is the case for many patients, how are they to obtain a new body. It is one of my nightmares to think that we could end up in the bodies of robots, without free will!" Tracey, if you lack free will how will you be able to choose to care that you don't have any? If "you" (however you end up deciding to define your identity) are not there, exactly WHO would be complaining anyway? If "you" ARE there, then congratulations! That was what cryonics had hoped to achieve. In other words, this is a no lose situation from a subjective standpoint, from YOUR standpoint. At some future point in time there is either YOU as a surviving identity ... or "you are not there" (to paraphrase Marley's Ghost from "A Christmas Carol" by Dickens). If the future screws up and makes a "souless" duplication of your personality which is an "empty" imitation of you, then YOU will NOT be there to know it. You died and that was that. (Of course, if your simulation fools everyone else, THEY will be satisfied and their grieving will end with joy at "your" return. This seems to me to be more desirable than having them simply suffer in grief without hope). And if you DO make it, there you are. Hooray! (I am skipping over the possibility of imperfect reanimations with paralysis, stroke effects, etc. I am assuming that if we have the technology to bring you back, we CAN actually bring you back and that these problems will have been solved before that time). The Cryonics Institute only suspends whole bodies. The assumption (always subject to new information as it will arise) is that once we have the technology to reanimate a healthy and restored brain we will also be able to reanimate a healthy and restored body. At least that is my understanding. Thus we are assuming that we will not require ("need") cloning to do this. I doubt that there is any active policy to FORBID the use of cloning or any other technology to accomplish the cryonics goal at CI or ALCOR. Finally, in this gray zone of future reanimations I would seriously question whether having a head only (neuro) which basically grew back it's own body could be considered a clone any more than when I cut my skin and grow back those missing or dead skin cells. These issues are interesting but only the future will ever resolve them. In the meantime it is critical to get signed up with cryonics immediately. You never know when you might suddenly be killed by a car, struck down by disease or otherwise have a visitation from the Grim Reaper. One second too late is too late. Of course, if you are dead you may never know that you didn't make it. But everyone who cares about you will grieve your loss. It is for the good of those you care for that each of us owes them the option of TRUE "life insurance": cryonics. It is exactly the same reason people will buy "ordinary" life insurance - out of a concern for those they leave behind. As I see it now, most of the people of this world do not give a damn that they are leaving behind those who will grieve their loss without hope. If there is anything more cruel in this world I cannot imagine it. Now for the first time in recorded human history we have a realistic option to "return from the dead." Those who take this option assuage the depth of grief for those they leave behind by offering some degree of hope. Those who take this option also demonstrate their dedication to life and to this earth. Those who take this option also show others that it is an option they feel is worth taking and do more than anything else I can imagine to help others make that same choice. We lead by example. At some point in the future, perhaps ten or twenty or thirty years from now, people will wonder what was wrong with the people of our time who chose to go to he grave or the crematorium over taking an option on life. They will shake their heads and wonder what in the hell was wrong with us. But not ALL of us. Just my opinion, George Smith CI Member Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18158