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

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