X-Message-Number: 22139
From: 
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2003 08:54:36 EDT
Subject: blue sky

--part1_1d9.d4aedc2.2c39760c_boundary
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Alan Mole asks whether anyone is comforted by the idea that everyone will be 
saved regardless, through eventual superscience, possibly including time 
travel. "sooner or later we'll crack that nut."

Frank Tipler (The Physics of Immortality) and Mike Perry and others have 
similar views. But Dr. Perry acknowledges that there are hierarchies of 
speculation, and does not recommend forgoing cryonics in favor of just hoping.

Supplementing brain with computers is something that I (and doubtless others) 
talked about long ago, but that doesn't touch this particular question, since 
it presumes you still have an organic brain. 

Uploading into a computer is by no means assured even as a possibility for 
the remote future, and I have detailed reasons to doubt it.

Time travel likewise is the merest speculation at this stage, and one can 

question whether it is even meaningful. Certainly time travel into your own past
would be a logical impossibility. In any case, there is a huge difference 

between saying, on the one hand, that something like revival of frozen people is
likely within a century or two, and on the other hand saying that "sooner or 
later we'll crack that nut" about something that is not even known to be 
possible in principle.

We don't know, and may never know, how many people bypass cryonics because 
they think they don't need it, that they will be handed immortality on a 
platter. But surely there are some. Heinlein ostensibly bypassed it because he 

believed in reincarnation. Some believe in scriptural heaven. Others believe in

silicon heaven. Some cryonicists believe in either or both, but still want belt
and suspenders. 

I tend to think the blue-sky stuff hurts cryonics, not just because it gives 
the blue-sky dwellers ostensible reason to relax, but also because, in the 

view of ordinary people, it lumps cryonics with fantasy. Compared with stuff 
like 
time travel and uploading, cryonics is down-to-earth here-and-now 
engineering. 

The average person doesn't want a future of radical change, just the present 
without the warts and with more money and longer vacations. At most, the 
Jetsons, not cyborgs or anything beyond that. Stretching the imagination into 

fantasy is fun, but in most cases it isn't the way to win hearts and minds, let
alone dollars.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
www.cryonics.org

--part1_1d9.d4aedc2.2c39760c_boundary

 Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=22139