X-Message-Number: 20243
From: 
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 15:57:55 EDT
Subject: Re: CryoNet #20233 - #20239

Regrading the inevitability of progress, I stand by my previous post, but my 
comments have been misinterpreted.  It is quite possible that our present 
very fragile cryonics movement could be wiped out by malevolent forces at any 
time.  We have no reason to be sanguine about that!  However, in the long run 
the essential ideas of cryonics will not be erased from human memory. Once 
written and recorded, then widely disseminated, it is essentially impossible 
to stamp out ideas, even though it has been tried often enough. If our ideas 
are sound and based on an ever-expanding knowledge of science with its 
accompaniment of assorted applications, as I believe it is and will continue 
to be, then the movement will be revived and will eventually achieve success. 
 Unfortunately, that is cold comfort [pun intended] for present-day 
cryonauts, both stored and prospective, because we are vulnerable, like any 
fringe group with radical ideas, to legal and non-legal challenges.  Our 
frozen members have moral and symbolic value to us even though most of us 
probably suspect that many or all of them are actually doomed because the 
circumstances of their demise and the fact that our past and current know-how 
is so limited. 

My guess is that our future will not be secured until it is clearly 
demonstrated that whole organs of some complexity can be frozen and then 
thawed for re-use, most likely in the burgeoning transplant business for 
which it would be a huge step forward.  Once those people are in the game, 
there will be a great expansion of both knowledge and applications for what 
is thankfully now a widely accepted and established socio-technical system [I 
saw a recent NOVA piece which clearly demonstrated this.  Transplant medicine 
has come a long way.  We, of course, will be on the periphery of all this, 
but the plausibility of our premise will shoot up and some establishment 
types will begin to come over.  Then, perhaps, whoever remains frozen will be 
safe to be preserved very long term in their current state, however 
inadequate that may be.

Now back to the question of 'progress' per se.  Without meaning to sound too 
pompous, I have given a lot of thought to that subject and am in the middle 
of drafting a book on that very subject, tentatively entitled "The Forward 
Function."  Others have written extensively on this subject before me and I 
recommend, in particular a fine, hugely researched but very readable tome by 
C. Owen Paepke, entitled "The Evolution of Progress" Random House, 1993.  
Paepke ignores cryonics, no reference to Ettinger, but it is still a hell of 
a good source.  He is also far too pessimistic for my taste, not, in my 
opinion, seeing where his own research path has to lead.  

There was no doubt a long period in human pre-history where nothing much 
happened.  For literally millions of years, a time frame which is hard to 
grasp, we were,simply what our genes dictated even though we were a very 
successful adaptation which managed to spread out from Africa and populate 
almost all the land surface of the earth before we made anything we would now 
call progress.  Of course, there must have been an evolution  of both 
language and social organization and probably many extinction of particular 
languages and social organizations along the way.  That all began to change 
when we started to build permanent structures and started making records of 
what we did to pass on to future generations.  Since then it has been a 
fairly continuous upward treck, punctuated at times with horrific wars, 
famines, and plagues.  It is not a straight line function by any means.  
However, it is not nearly as discontinuous as some of you seem to believe.  
Take the middle ages, for example.  Years ago at Harvard I took a course in 
the history of science from I.B.Cohen, at that time the reigning guru in that 
field.  One thing I took away from his course was how much advance their was 
, particularly in technology, during the so-called "dark ages."  One huge 
advance was the development of the first universities in Italy, France, and 
England. Perhaps another key item was a great advance in ship building and 
navigation which allowed for world-wide exploration and trade by the end of 
the fifteen century, but there were many other inventions and transfers of 
knowledge made possible by extended travel, especially from the far east 
which had good paper and movable type as well as the infamous gunpowder.  
Once we had printing and wide distribution of printed items, there was no 
stopping the rapid advance that followed.  I am not sure there was any one 
key item because knowledge and invention went from a trickle to a stream to a 
torrent in the last five hundred years.   

Regarding the acceleration of progress, I haven't quite figured out how to 
document what I strongly believe to be true.  In the mid 1980's I ran a 
project where we studied the early development of the personal computer, its 
all-important user interface and the internet, all efforts largely mounted in 
universities and funded by the Department of Defense.  I am astounded now at 
the spead with which the Internet later took off from its origins almost as 
an academic toy dreamed up by computer nerds [the idea was to simply fugure 
out how one mainframe computer at one university could communicate with 
another of a different make and standard at qanother university.]  Since then 
I have also become aware of the incredible advances in bio-tech which really 
have their origins in the Watson-Crick discovery of the double helix [only 50 
nyears ago, a mere twinkle in time].

I will not go on with my 'proof' here but I think the record, if we could 
possibly summarize it, would clearly demonstrate my point.  Now back to 
cryonics.  One of the burdens we bear is the skepticism of our fellow humans 
about progress in general and science-technology progress in particular.  The 
prevailing ethos among both liberals and conservatives is that in the long 
run we are DOOMED, so that the founding premise of cryonics that there will 
be a very bright future for human kind which we want, somehow to be a part 
of, is pie in the sky.  Religious people may be 'optimistic' that there will 
be a day of judgement or something but it has no earthly connection.  The 
secular humanists, on the other hand, are mostly consumed by a vision of the 
limits of growth and a fear that  'advances' in science and technology will 
lead to a relentless environmental degradation and untold future horrors 
[e.g. Kevin Costner's 'Water World.]  Science fiction mostly reflects these 
negative stereotypes. All I can say, folks, is that these visions of the 
future have no basis in history.  It is onbly when we look backward that we 
see an ever-declining level of human life quality to the meanness, 
unpredicability, and brevity of our pain-and-huger filled lives.

Sorry for the long post
Ron Havelock, CI member, hopeful for my long term future but with plenty of 
doubts, not about the future but whether I and my current fellow cryonaurts 
will be able to get there.

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