X-Message-Number: 24854
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 10:54:55 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #24826 - #24839

Lots of things in this Cryonet worth replying too:

1. To Doug Skrecky: If I understand rightly, you live in Vancouver, in
   Canada, in the area ruled by the only government which forbids
   cryonics societies totally -- British Columbia.

   When you say we will all be "dead" by age 110, just what do you mean?
   Would we qualify as "dead" in your terms if we've been suspended
   using vitrification, but were first declared "legally dead"? Or
   are you saying something much stronger, that none of us will be
   successfully suspended and ourselves and our personalities and
   our memories will be destroyed before we reach the age of 110?

   Have you studied vitrification at all? And especially to the point,
   have you made arrangements with ANY cryonics society?

2. For Mark Plus: You know or should know that if the price of petrol
   ie. gasoline becomes high enough we'll make it from other things
   than oil coming out of oil wells. I've mentioned on Cryonet that
   a company already exists able to make oil from mined tar sands;
   when it was internationally boycotted, South Africa made gasoline
   from coal. These are perfectly well established technologies 
   which wouldn't even need much research to implement NOW. 

   And of course thinking longer term, several companies, including
   several auto companies, have created cars which run on fuel
   cells, either completely or with a gasoline engine to start up
   the car. Buses and trucks running on hydrogen already exist.

    So what is your purpose in raising these silly fears? They do
   no more than distract some people from supporting needed research
   for cryonics, most particularly the technology involved with
   vitrification. 

3. For B. Coetzee: When we begin to talk about lifespans of trillions
   or even billions of years, we find ourselves in the midst of
   cosmological questions for which we presently have no answer.

   However, I will point out that literal immortality is logically
   entirely possible. Instead of having a fixed deathrate, however
   small (how small we make it determines how long we'll live on
   average) we can easily imagine a situation in which we have
   a deathrate which decreases constantly with time. It's mathematically
   easy to show that with such a decreasing deathrate, some people
   will live literally forever. How fast the deathrate decreased
   controls the proportion of people who live forever. There will,
   of course, remain a large or small fraction of the number of
   people who die before they reach that immortality ie live for
   a finite time only.

   Given this point, some consequences: no one will actually know
   EVER that they'll live forever. Perhaps they'll find themselves
   in the unlucky fraction. Again, if we propose to constantly
   decrease human deathrate, then this means that research to
   extend lifespans continues forever too. 

                  Best wishes and long long life for all,

                       Thomas Donaldson

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