X-Message-Number: 5255
Date:  Fri, 24 Nov 95 12:30:01 
From: Steve Bridge <>
Subject: Future patient care investments

To CryoNet
>From Steve Bridge, Alcor
November 24, 1995

In response to:  Message #5250
                 Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 20:15:36 -0800
                 From: John K Clark <>
                 Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Uploading

     I don't have comments on most of John's posting; but I do want to
jump on the last paragraph, where Clark replies to a question by Keith
Lynch:

>>What makes you think we'll be charity cases?

>The patient care trust funds are vitally needed to see to it that we
>remain frozen until the nanotechnology age, but at that point I have
>difficulty understanding how giving pictures of dead presidents printed
>on processed wood pulp would be much of an inducement to get the
>inhabitants of that era to do anything. Perhaps our money managers, if
>they are men of genius, could keep up and exchange the old things that
>were considered valuable with the new, but it's a path filled with
>uncertainty and danger. The fact is, nobody knows what will be of value
>in an age of nanotechnology, perhaps just information, if so that gives
>me a little hope because that's what they will get if they revive us.


     John, are you under the impression that cryonics companies keep
their investments under a mattress?  We don't deal with "picture of dead
presidents."  Alcor's investments are in mutual funds of several types,
mortgages, real estate, and some small amount in money market funds.
Unless you assume that the "singularity" will be unforeseen,
instantaneous, and universal, it seems likely that investments will be
shifted into what is valuable as changes are made, as investment
managers have always done.  Just because we cannot know today what will
be valuable in two hundred years (or pick your date) doesn't mean that
we won't know THEN.  You are apparently imagining that human beings will
be incredibly stupid for a long period of time and then overnight upload
and be so extremely smart that everything before that last millisecond
will lose all value.  That's nonsensical.

Steve Bridge


Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5255