X-Message-Number: 22941
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 17:28:44 -0500
From: Paul Antonik Wakfer <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #22929 - Posterity Paradox
References: <>

> Message #22929
> From: 
> Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 10:15:18 EST
> Subject: Posterity Paradox
> 
> Randy Wicker writes in part:
> 
> One thing which puzzles me about those who dream of hundreds, thousands, 
> millions cryogenically preserved.
> Why do they assume anyone would be interested in reviving them.  Perhaps a 
> few special people would
> appeal across the ages.  However, if you could go out into a country 

> graveyard (even Arlington Cemetery) and bring back all those buried there, 
would you 
> want to do it?  What about their need for housing, food and jobs?  Don't you 

> think a social debate about reviving so many of the dead would lead to a 
social 
> debate in which many would argue it was more important to take care "of our 
> own", those living now, instead of burdening an overpopulated with revived 
> "additional people"?
> This has been discussed many times at great length in various venues. I'll 
> just note a couple of aspects here very briefly.
> 
> Prospective patients rely on the honor and good will of the people in their 

> organizations and sometimes their own relatives and friends; and they rely on
> society's interest in maintaining its own viability. This means, among other 
> things, that contracts must be honored. 
> 
> The "value" of unusual people, or even interest in them, is nonsense in the 
> long haul. In the relatively near future, Einsteins will be a dime a 

> dozen--maybe they are already, judging by what I read in the journals. Any 
individual 

> ultimately has special value only to himself and those near him. The survivors

> will be mostly self-selected--evolution in action, as Larry Niven used to say.
> 
> The question of rational values, and of the relation between values and 

> ethics, is much too large for brief discussion. But many philosophers have 
taken 

> absurd positions, e.g. that potential people deserve as much consideration as

> the living--or even that rocks have rights. (That we can help or hurt possible

> people of the future, and that this should weigh in our decisions, is 
sometimes 
> called the Posterity Paradox. "What has posterity ever done for us?")
> 
> Robert Ettinger

Though Bob and I have certainly had our differences in the past, I fully 
agree with what he said above (except perhaps for the extremeness of his 
"dime a dozen" expression regarding the "value" of anyone in the future).

I would like to add that no one should or needs to be relying on the 
"generosity" of any of those in the future. Self-perpetuating contracts 
(such as were devised in the CryoCare Patient Advocate model) are the 
only way to assure that one's funding will remain intact and one's 
restoration in the future will be fully attempted (given that society 
does not revert or disintegrate).

--Paul Wakfer

MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org
Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality
The Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org
Rational freedom by self-sovereignty & social contracting

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