X-Message-Number: 22144 From: "mike99" <> Subject: RE: #22134 - No, I am NOT comforted Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2003 16:15:27 -0600 Alan Mole wrote: > Subject: Logical hope besides Cryonics > > Hope Beyond Cryonics > > We base our hopes for immortality on cryonics and nanorepairs, betting > there's almost nothing technology won't be able to do in fifty or > a hundred years. > Which is probably true. But taking this argument one step > further, maybe we > don't need Cryo. > > Vernor Vinge, and ray Kurzweil postulate brain-computer melds in ... the Singularity. > > The same logic that says future technology will be able to revive > the frozen > soon -- well, sooner or later -- must hold that it will advance > beyond that > point, until in five hundred or surely in five thousand years, > all this will be > in our capability and will get done. So, frozen or not, you get saved. > > Anyone comforted? Sorry Alan, but I am not comforted. Why? Because you assume that we will all still be alive when the Singularity arrives (and I do think it will arrive). If we die before that moment and we are not cryopreserved, then we will NOT be revived.* *(NOTE: Or, to be more precise, we will not be revived anytime soon. If Mike Perry is correct, then our continued existence will occur by other means at a time and place far removed from our current earthly timeline.) So by all means, I think we should work on the technologies that will lead to the Singularity. But at the same time we should provide ourselves with the ultimate insurance policy: cryonics. Don't leave home without it! Regards, Michael LaTorra Member: Extropy Institute: www.extropy.org World Transhumanist Association: www.transhumanism.org Alcor Life Extension Foundation: www.alcor.org Society for Technical Communication: www.stc.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=22144