X-Message-Number: 30922 From: "John de Rivaz" <> References: <> Subject: Re: A review of Mike Darwin's UK lecture, part 2 Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2008 12:09:04 +0100 If humanity had a basic drive to seek ideals beloved of social scientists before considering "deep and meaningful" issues there would be very little or no apparently pointless research, (which proves useful generations later). Therefore there would be very little or no technology beyond the wheel and the lever. That would include all but most the basic of water purification equipment. ("If it passes over two pebbles then it is clean" is a country saying I have heard concerning the potability of stream water.) Certainly inventions such as electricity, radio, refrigeration, electronics, computers etc would still be waiting until the leaders are sure everyone is being fed, housed and clothed equally. No one would even contemplate cryonics and any other advanced medicine until people had discovered how to run hospitals effectively, and without the aforementioned technologies that would be even further off than it is now. I suspect, though, that the real point being considered is what would happen if there is a sudden change of direction "war effort" right now on inequality issues. To achieve this, everyone in the developed world would have to live minimalist lives and give up their present life styles in order to reach equilibrium with the rest of the world. What about all the buildings and equipment vacated? Leave it to rot? What about all the people thrown out of work by such a change? They couldn't all go digging sewers in Africa even if they were capable of it. -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy, Nomad .. and more ----- Original Message ----- From: CryoNet To: Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 10:00 AM Subject: CryoNet #30916 - #30921 #30916: Re: A review of Mike Darwin's UK lecture, part 2 [David Stodolsky] Why aren't we supplying clean water to about 2 billion people? Content-Type: text/html; [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=30922