X-Message-Number: 28011 Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2006 18:14:25 -0400 From: References: <> Subject: Re: CryoNet #28005 There is absolutely no solid evidence of mass extinctions. No one has ever gone to the trouble of counting the number of species of life on earth. The many doomsdayers who continue to foment alarmist scenarios keep dragging out numbers and "statistics" which, when traced to their sourcesturn out to be mere conjectures by other doomsday prophets. There is no basis for any of them. There are billions of plant and animal species, and then there are the bacteria, some of which are vital to life and others of which are real killers whose extinction would be a blessing to humans. Without extinctions, sometimes mass extinctions, there would be no evolution. Humanity, in fact, is the first species to even care about the preservation of species and we are doing a lot to preserve many species which mother nature would otherwise dispose of. I applaud this effort of preservation because it may be helpful for humanity in various ways, but we should realize that we are counteracting mother nature, not following her. I suspect that the underlying desire of the most vociferous extinction screamers is to stop progress in its tracks, shut down the factories and the laboratories, forget about science as the engine of progress, send us back to the good old days which never were, forget about the third world billions who still live in misery largely because they cling to pre-scientific ideas, and forget about extending life because there are too many people here already. Such an ideology, in my opinion, is fundamentally anti-humanist and also very dangerous for cryonics. At some point they may want to mount a crusade to save the earth from these life-extenders, perhaps in a way reminiscent of the do-gooders in Sagan's "Contact" movie who destroy the spaceship thing Ron Havelock -----Original Message----- From: CryoNet <> To: Sent: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 09:00:03 -0000 Subject: CryoNet #28005 CryoNet - Tue 6 Jun 2006 #28005: Uneasy about the Singularity [marta sandberg] Rate This Digest: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=28005%2D28005 Administrivia To subscribe to CryoNet, send email to: with the subject line (not message _body_): subscribe To unsubscribe, use the subject line: unsubscribe Message #28005 From: "marta sandberg" <> Subject: Uneasy about the Singularity Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 16:09:21 +0800 I am v-e-r-y uneasy about some sort of super-being evolving as part of the Singularity. Maybe a really intelligent being would not harm us, either because it was against its ethics or because it didn't even notice us. Maybe . . . But we are the most intelligent thing on Earth at the moment and we are spending a lot of time and effort in finding new and innovative ways of killing off each other. Meanwhile; almost by accident; we have also caused mass extinctions of a scale on par with any previous mass extinctions. Maybe . . . the next super intelligence won't do what we did. Maybe . . . Long life (maybe. . . ) Marta _________________________________________________________________ realestate.com.au: the biggest address in property http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=28005 End of CryoNet Digest ********************* ________________________________________________________________________ Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email and IM. All on demand. Always Free. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=28011