X-Message-Number: 21647 Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 10:02:10 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: some replies to messages in last issue Well, everyone, a number of comments: First, for Bob Ettinger: where did I say that we would not intervene to help lower animals? If you took me to mean that we would not change the evolution of ALL lower animals into intelligent creatures, I would agree with that... though I don't know anyone who seriously believes we should do that. I said that when these intelligent creatures arrived on Earth, they would not find anything like a human being at all. At most they might find a few primitive monkeys, perhaps not even that. This would happen because the whole of their history and evolution had taken place MILLIONS of years before us. And so they arrive on the Earth, in the form it had in Cretaceous times, and settle it, killing off any animals which might bother them... not because they might someday become intelligent, but because dinosaurs wandering about in your colonies were a much more immediate danger. I will repeat: we don't even EXIST when they arrive, and their mere presence would mean that we would never exist. Second, for Ashraf: Welcome to Cryonet. Virtually everyone here is interested in cryonic suspension, not because we think it is the only means for immortality that will ever exist, but because after looking at the world around us, we concluded that it was the only one with any chance at all of helping us to live long enough to take advantage of that immortality. And note that I said immortality, and meant it. A mere 140 years falls far short of immortality. It could be useful as a step towards it, but any such treatment would still leave us unprotected and possibly needing suspension. For Mike Perry: 1. Quantum computers don't just compute faster. They compute instantaneously (for some problems). Nor is a qubit the same as a bit. Regardless of what Deutsch or any other philosopher may say, a quantum computer doesn't look to me at all like the device moving slowly over a tape marked with single bits which was the original Turing machine ... and out of which the definition of a Turing machine came. 2. You claim, despite my examples, that a language could be developed that would be clear to any creature capable of symbolism. Mathematics itself did not come purely from our imagination but from our attempt to deal with the world. As mathematicians discovered in the 19th Century, systems of axioms for geometry could have several interpretations. Yes, math does have one advantage, in that we could begin our discussion of it with numbers ie. * 1 ** 2 *** 3, etc. But in doing so we are attaching symbols to things in the world, once more. 3. As for civilizations expanding, your answer, from an IMMORTALIST, seems short-sighted. OK, so it takes thousands of years (ultimately it could probably be done in much less, but still well beyond the lifespan of present human beings) to travel from star to star. To immortal or very long-lived creatures, thousands of years is trivial. You are imposing ideas due to our present very short lifespans onto our behavior (or the behavior of some other hypothetical creature). We would hardly break up with the people who live right next door, only 1000 LY away, would we? And as for dangers, what about the supernova that will occur 100,000 years from now, in a star which will then be close to us? [I will put in here an ad for my own fiction, about people whose ideas and behavior are altered by immortality in just that kind of way. TALES OF SKASTOWE]. That's all for now --- not that I seriously believe anything is settled. But its late here and I want to go to bed. Best wishes and long long life for all, (even Ashraf) Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21647