X-Message-Number: 19110
From: "Brett Bellmore" <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #19108; Immortality via dispersal
Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 13:36:01 -0400

"....Living for an infinite period of time IS impossible." Me.

Mike Perry:
"Not necessarily, one possibility being to extend oneself by backups or
redundancy so that, for example, a given catastrophe is likely to have less
and less effect, relatively speaking, as time progresses. One's components
would not have to be physically connected, just communicate, and might
eventually stretch to considerable distances in space. As Ettinger says in
*Man into Superman*, "If a star goes nova, only a few planets may be lost--a
trifle, a toenail." I elaborate on this idea in my book too, and no doubt it
has been considered by many others. My feeling is that this is one more
instance where the SciAm "experts" are straining a bit unduly to put down
any thought of serious life extension."

Nah, I've actually looked at that. Given the speed of light as an absolute,
there's no way the volume and mass available to you can continue to increase
exponentially, as that scheme requires, for more than a short while. Not to
mention the fact that other people might ALSO find some use for the
universe...

Secondly, the scheme ignores the possibility of some common failure mode
which could propagate through the dispersed network, taking them all out.
Such as the dispersed person becoming suicidal?

Further, for dispersal to actually constitute survival on an ongoing basis,
the dispersed units would have to be in communication. There too, the speed
of light limitation gets you; The further apart the units get, the slower
that communication, and if they're to remain in sync, the slower your
subjective experience. So even if you did get an infinite objective lifespan
that way, I think you'd still end up with a finite subjective lifespan,
though I admit I haven't done the math. Maybe I will, when somebody starts
advertising this service. ;)

Alternatively, in as much as what we really want (Well, what I really want)
is an extremely long subjective lifespan, anything which accelerates your
thought processes without shortening your objective life span would have to
be considered a form of life extension, right? There's probably the
potential for a thousand to million-fold expansion of our subjective
lifespans right there, without violating any known physical laws, by
implementing our brains in nano-electronic form. That alone, without any
increase in objective lifespan, would give us subjective lives longer than
the time apparently remaining to this universe. And in that time, what
schemes couldn't we hatch?

Brett Bellmore

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19110