X-Message-Number: 4724
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #4673 - #4681
Date: Sun, 6 Aug 1995 00:20:13 -0700 (PDT)

Hi again!

To Mr. Leitl:

It is easy to find obstacles. Yes, there are certainly obstacles. In fact, I
don't know any goal at all for which there are no obstacles. And the more
serious and important the goal, the more the obstacles.

If you have ideas about what to do to get over those obstacles, that's fine.
Please implement them, or at least explain them to those of us who are 
trying to overcome them.

The above, of course, is philosophy. However you are also simply wrong on
several matters of fact. The biggest matter of fact is the length of time
a business lasts: there is a high early deathrate followed by a much 
much slower deterioration. Moreover, if you refuse to look at history in
trying to see what will happen in 200 years, then you will have nothing at
all to go on. The Roman Catholic Church did indeed last up until today,
and there are plenty of Roman Catholics about who want it to continue. Sure,
its form will change (celibacy may be abolished, for instance, and women
may become priests) but that is change, not destruction.

Yes, all of my examples were taken from history. Despite all the people going
around talking about how unprecedented our lives are now, I doubt very much
that past history has no lessons for us... including, specifically, lessons
about how to survive as a group.

As for Germany, I note your comment that quite a number of companies 
SURVIVED. Of course they did so by pandering to the local regime. What else
would you do if you wanted to survive? Some may think that was outrageous
and it's outrageous for me to say, but I am not talking outrage but survival.
As an individual, I'd probably try to get out before anything really got 
VERY bad, but companies aren't individuals. 

As I said, I've never been to Germany, so I can't really speak to that
issue. I HAVE been to the Netherlands, and companies (even small ones) did
survive there. Moreover, one thing that can happen with companies is that
they can come back: the principals run away, but when all the shouting and
shooting ends, there they are running a bakery in the same town as before.
(In cryonics terms, both the patients and the principals of the company 
would go away for somewhere else ... and then return later. One important 
thing to realize is that patients who have been neuropreserved can and 
have already been hidden away and moved very quickly. I would agree that
moving whole-body patients is a much bigger job, but one of the main ideas
of neuropreservation was to provide a fix for that).

The most important thing for the survival of cryonics is that there are 
enough cryonicists who want it to survive. Since it cannot survive without
caring for the patients, then they will be cared for. If you want it to 
survive, then some part of the responsibility for its survival falls on 
you. If not, why are you here? 

Finally I will speak about one really long range issue: what if one day we
learn how to fix everyone so that they will never age (and even rejuvenate
if they already have aged)? My own belief --- which I hold because after
lots of thought it is the way I would respond --- is that such a happening
would strengthen rather than weaken cryonics. WE WILL NEVER DO AWAY WITH
DEATH ENTIRELY. And if you expect to live for thousands of years, then 
the risk of dying at the age of 300 will not look trivial at all. Sure, 
it would seem small NOW, but that is because you haven't even seriously
thought that you might reach the age of 300. It would become a possibility
of a life cut short. It's easy, in fact, to come up with all kinds of
circumstances in which a risk of death will occur: no matter how powerful
our technology, it will never become literally perfect, and when it fails
it may fail catastrophically for those nearby. And suspension (not necessarily
with the same technology as now, but with the same purpose) would remain 
a very valued last resort. 

And not only would such an event ("immortality") strengthen cryonics, but
the fact that someone had been revived by then would strengthen it still
more. It will have been shown to work, and as more time passes it will be
shown more and more to work.

And finally, I will point out that if you were suspended before the coming
of this happy event ("immortality") then you will have friends and relatives
who were not. They will want to bring you back. Since they have now become
"immortal", they will have a LONG time to work out how to do that ... even
if they decide to only spend one day a year on that project.  

In fact, there is an analogy with life insurance, which runs very close
in several ways. In the US it took more than 50 years ... going on 100
years, for life insurance to really become available. The reason is 
obvious: how do I, the customer, know that the company with which I 
insure my life will even be around in 50 years when I die? It took some
time for that idea to become established, especially since the first 
life insurance societies did in fact fail. Not only that, but for some
time there was no guarantee that your life insurance would pay off: you
didn't know anyone for whom it had. But people thought it was a good 
idea, and some of those people kept working for it, and now we have life
insurance companies all over. Not only that, but they engage in reinsurance
back and forth so that if one of them fails, their customers won't be
hurt by that. (Does this always work? No. Name one thing that human beings
do which always works!).

(In Britain, life insurance got started earlier because it was set up 
differently, and in a way of which many would probably now disapprove. People
started betting on the lifespan of others. Bookies came forward to accept 
such bets. Some people then got the idea of betting on their own lifespans...
and so after some time there was life insurance (this is a very brief account
of what happened, and a bit distorted, but basically I understand it to be
true). There was also the "tontine", in which a group of people got together
and each put down a given amount of money, which was to go to the last 
surviving member of the group --- but that was a precursor to life insurance)).

So these are the reasons why I believe cryonics has a chance of surviving 
long enough --- if I am among those who support it.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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