X-Message-Number: 31478
From: Mark Plus <>
Subject: Dumb objecttions to cryonics
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:02:32 -0700

I can see now that I'll have to start making a list of these.


Over at the Overcoming Bias blog, Robin Hanson writes that his pro-cryoncs posts
might have influenced more people to sign up:

More Getting Froze
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/more-getting-froze.html


In the comments a blogger named Ebonmuse brings up a variation of the Future 
Alienation objection:

>I've
observed that many cost-benefit analyses of cryonics assume that the
future can only get better. But I don't see any reason to take that as
a given, and if you assume that the future might be worse instead of
better, that significantly changes the analysis.

I responded with:

>"The
future" doesn't exist as a lump given all at once to revived cryonauts.
If we survive to a time where we have realistic expectations of healthy
superlongevity but the immediate conditions don't appeal to us, what
keeps us from toughing it out, especially if we band together for
mutual support, until either we or the conditions change so that things
suit us better? 


In fact, I've brought up in Cryonet #31463 the possibility that we cryonauts 
might have to hold our noses and join the dominant religion in the future 
society that revives us as part of the re-integration process. With 
superlongevity, the prospect of having to endure a few centuries of religious 
conformity looks more like a nuisance than a literally fatal objection to 
cryotransport. 


And who knows? The applied neuroscience of the future could make everyone 
uniformly religious and comfortable with the experience.


"Around 2010 the world will be at a new orbit in history. . .  Life expectancy 
will be indefinite. Disease and disability will nonexist. Death will be rare and
accidental -- but not permanent. We will continuously jettison our obsolescence
and grow younger." F.M. Esfandiary, "Up-Wing Priorities" (1981).
http://www.box.net/shared/static/ay9lub60ha.pdf
http://www.scribd.com/doc/10948503/Up-Wing-Priorities


Mark Plus



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