X-Message-Number: 30319
From: Mark Plus <>
Subject: Re: Implicit meanings
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:35:40 -0800

In Cryonet #30311, Kennita Watson writes,


>To me it sounds more like "we've described one way to get people back, and 
here's an entirely different way that may be quicker and easier" 


Vitrification differs fundamentally from cell repair machines because 
pro-cryonics cryobiologists can produce laboratory demonstrations of the former 
today, along with strategies to improve the process.


By contrast, as far as I can tell, Drexlerian nanotech currently exists only in 
some people's imaginations even though Drexler started to draw attention to his 
proposals nearly 30 years ago. 


I suppose you could argue that that kind of nanotech has just proven harder to 
engineer than its proponents thought in the 1980's. But then, you could make the
same excuse for all the other strangely delayed technologies we should have had
by the early 21st Century, like fusion power, hypersonic airliners, asteroid 
mining, space colonies and even the "immortality" predicted for the 2000-2010 
decade by a number of "futurists" who have ironically died according to the 
actuarial schedule by now. In the absence of tangible progress, eventually the 
excuses set off people's "baloney detectors" and they stop taking these ideas 
seriously.


"Around 2010 the world will be at a new orbit in history. . .  Life expectancy 
will be indefinite. Disease and disability will nonexist. Death wll be rare and 
accidental -- but not permanent. We will continuously jettison our obsolescence 
and grow younger." F.M. Esfandiary, "Up-Wing Priorities" (1981).

Mark Plus

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