X-Message-Number: 310
From att!CompuServe.COM!71750.2413 Thu Apr 18 20:32:07 EDT 1991
Date: 18 Apr 91 20:02:53 EDT
From: "Russell E. Whitaker" <>
To: <>
Subject: Isolate the eloi?
Message-Id: <"910419000253 71750.2413 EHE21-1"@CompuServe.COM>

To:>INTERNET:

18 April 1991

Hal Finney states:

>One of the things I worry about for the future is the possibility that
>people will be much smarter.  If they have all this control over DNA,
>etc., wouldn't it make sense to use it to enhance intelligence?

This is a worry?  I'm tickled pink at that possibility.

>If this were to happen, a frozen person with his primitive mind might
>be effectively sub-human.  It might be hard for these future people to
>find a place in their society for such a person.  True, there will be
>other 20th century cavemen frozen with him, and perhaps a little
>colony could be set up somewhere for them to live in, but is it really
>kind to revive a person into such a life?

I see arguments such as this and wonder why certain implications don't 
make themselves immediately evident to their proponents.  Hal 
assumes that, while we're building ubermenschen, no one will 
be designing system upgrades to the Mark I models.

While it should be easier technologically to "make better babies"
de novo, the medical market will, likely, cater to the installed 
customer base.   

And I don't see where these possibilities are mutually exclusive.

His scenario minimally requires accomplished resuscitation.  
Any technological society that far advanced will surely have 
developed an interesting culture, or subculture, of 
self-modification.  Speaking for myself, I'd like a few more 
clock cycles/time slice.  :-)

What does he mean that unaugmented H. sapiens patients
would be considered "sub-human"?  I really doubt that.  I 
don't disagree that the average baseline of human capacity 
will be greatly expanded; however, the difference will be one 
of degree more than kind.  We're already passed the critical 
threshold of self-reflective intelligence.  All the rest is upgrade.

And again, as others have here expressed... it's not likely that 
suspension patients will be resuscitated by outsiders to the 
whole business.  Cryonics, at least as practiced by Alcor, is 
not simply a "freeze 'em and forget 'em" proposition.  If the 
organizations survive the next few years, you're going to see a 
lot more in the way of research relevant to resuscitation.

Much of it will be done by people we know.  Heck, I'll probably 
be there at one of the greeting parties; I'm 24.

Russell E. Whitaker


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