X-Message-Number: 18908
From: 
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 11:58:16 EDT
Subject: Re: CryoNet #18905 - #18906

In a message dated 4/10/02 2:02:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
 writes:

> Mike Darwin wrote:
>  I personally doubt that I will be cryopreserved well enough to be 
>  resuscitated, let alone live long enough for "immortality." Indeed, as 
>  history as shown it almost hubris to assume you'll get cryopreserved at 
all.
>  (end)
>  
>  Mike, could you please explain in detail this statement?  
>  
>  thank you,

Sorry, but no. This is complex; part is highly personal and involves personal 
circumstances and my personal life, and part is just an assessment of 
emerging technological trends (see Steve Harris' The Return of the Krell 
Machine:
Nanotechnology, the Singularity, and the Empty Planet Syndrome: 
http://www.grg.org/charter/Krell.htm) geopolotical and global socioeconomic 
factors as they affect likely survival of people in my situation over the 
next few decades.

One Comment: Optimism or pessimism regarding individuals' chances of survival 
via cryonics is a matter of judgment which cannot be quantified by any means 
I know of. The world is just too complex and chaotoic a place. I would not be 
at all surprised to find some people cryopreserved today revived, and 
likewise some people now living who are signed up cryopreserved and revived. 
However, who and how many is impossible to objectify. Even with success there 
will be Cryo-Enrons just as there were Cryo-Chatsworths. There will likely be 
many failures as well as many successes if our civilization survives and 
maintains continuity of a high standard of living (in current terms) and the 
core values it began with.

In the last analysis optimism or pessimism are irrelevant if you want to 
survive. If you don't play the game you don't seem to have much chance of 
survival based on our current understanding of things. But then, the Universe 
is a strange place and I would not be at all surprised to find that Mike 
Perry's view of how it will all turn out comes to pass. The older you get (in 
my case) the more humbled you are by the arbitrariness and amazing, weirdly 
wonderful and terrible unpredictability of it all.

There is a wonderful painting I ran across in the Church and Hospital de la 
Caridad in Madrid by the Spanish baroque artist Juan De Loyal Vald s. It is 
entitled In Ictu Oculi (In the Blink of an Eye) and was painted in 1671. As 
far as I know it is virtually unknown in the "popular" world of Western art 
(i.e., outside academic circles); I've never seen it in any books of art 
history or paintings. It's execution is lovely, though not masterful. 
However, its theme, complexity and organization are a triumph. If you ever 
get to Madrid go and see it -- and visit Seville if you want to really get 
some understanding of Andalusian and Imperial Spain. To be had in any deep 
understanding of In Ictu Oculi is the answer to your question.

Mike Darwin

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