X-Message-Number: 19941 Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 08:38:47 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #19932 - #19940 Again for Bob Ettinger: I brought up energy conservation as an example of something which ways to violate it would once have been thought reasonable, but aren't thought so now. And as for developing technologies which minimize the energy we must put out to get back more than we put in, they provide examples of how you need to specify more precisely just what is meant by "total abandonment". So what DO you mean by "total abandonment"? As I recall, you wanted to find a definition of technologies for which we can work out a probability of their success versus those for which we cannot. If anything, bringing up quantum theory supports what I was saying, not the reverse. The problem with all such estimates of probability, in cases in which we cannot clearly distinguish and completely specify the possible events (as we can with rolling dice, say) is that they have no real support. We can make up numbers and treat them as if they were real probabilities, but that hardly gets us closer to a valid estimate of anything. Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19941