X-Message-Number: 346 From att!compuserve.com!73647.1215 Mon May 27 19:09:36 EDT 1991 Date: 27 May 91 18:38:59 EDT From: Thomas Donaldson <> To: <> Subject: some comments Message-Id: <"910527223858 73647.1215 EHA42-1"@CompuServe.COM> Hi everyone! I know it's been some time since I last got online (to this forum, at least). My net node is still as ridiculous as before. But I had a few comments to make that I thought I'd share. 1. "DEATH IS NECESSARY TO EVOLUTION" Many of us will have heard this claim or variations of it. While I also have an answer to it, I think one class of answers simply fails. The class I refer to begins by: "and we'll have so much control over nature and ourselves that we will escape evolution entirely ..." --- or again, variations of this idea. Brian Wowk came out with the last version. The reason it fails is that evolution is a consequence of nonequilibrium thermodynamics rather than "life". No matter how and of what we choose to build ourselves, we remain subject to physical law and its results. However there's a flaw in the reasoning of the title which may interest many on this forum. The issue is: JUST WHAT is it that does the evolving? That is, what are the UNITS that are selected for/against? Biologists haven't ignored this question and for a fascinating discussion of the issue I'd recommend LW Buss "The Evolution of Individuality". So here is what I think will happen. Presently we individual human beings are the units of selection (uncomfortable!). No law says that we must remain so; and in fact, if we make a practice of modifying ourselves and our genes (or any other practice involving transmission) then we will cease to be units of selection. Sure, we can still look like people. But something fundamental would have changed: our genes themselves, so long as they form compatible families, would have become these units. (I also can't fail the notice the idea of "memes", which Keith has so vigorously promoted. So long as those memes must exist in some kind of material receptacle (us?) which does NOT start self-modifying its specifications, that receptacle will remain as a unit of selection. 2. "SO BACKWARD THAT WE MAY AS WELL THROW IT AWAY AND BUILD ANOTHER" My comments here relate to my previous comment. They also bring in other matters, too. If we are revived at time T, when many people may have changed themselves greatly, I think it helps to remember that these people were once very much like us. We don't have to SUDDENLY turn into one of their kind. Part of revival, (perhaps especially for someone who has waited a long time for revival) would consist of our going through (perhaps with a guide) the same sequence of changes which people had gone through in the t hundred years since our suspension. Or, as some biologists said in the past: "Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny". 3. "WHEN NANOTECHNOLOGY COMES..." This comment is a tangent more or less unrelated to the others. It has consistently disturbed me that many cryonicists, particularly those using the above phrase or its variations, speak about cryonics in very much the way 19th century born-again Christians might speak about the Millenium. I've heard a lot about nanotechnology, but just what is this Nanotechnology which is supposed to be coming? (The Christians, of course, had a different word for it. But that's OK. Just change the words and what do you have?). Would Eric Klien or some other exponent of this world view (theology?) explain in simple terms just what this Nanotechnology is? And please note the capital letter: as I said, I already know a lot about the uncapitalized form. For instance, I had a very strange experience not long ago. Someone who (I think) is a Believer claimed that when Nanotechnology came, the tiny critters could be used to cure cancer. When I pointed out that almost the same thing, and to the same effect, was happening now by experi- mental treatments in which lymphocytes were modified and cultured up in large number to attack a patient's cancer, he seemed not to notice, shrugging it off with the statement that Nanotechnology will do much more. Best and Long life Thomas Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=346