X-Message-Number: 5304
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Virtual Reality & Reasons To Live
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 1995 01:04:00 +1100 (EST)

I was hoping to keep my nose out of this one; after all, I put enough
cryonet noses out of joint recently with my criticism of memetics. However,
Thomas Donaldson's reflection on the supremacy of real reality over
virtual reality kind of bothered me, so here's some bits.

The thing that bothers me about what Donaldson writes is that I can't
see how ordinary everyday reality is anything other than virtual. It is,
I think, evident that what is "real" - the things and qualities that we
abstract from our experience, all our memories and knowledge about the
world, no matter how apparently immediate, concrete or unquestionable -
are personal models.  Very useful models, well tested and with great
predictive power, but, not what is actually going on. What's actually
happening is much grander and more subtle than these models. So the
models themselves are virtual, and any reality that we can model is
virtual.

But perhaps this misses the point. Donaldon warns us that we won't find
our mummies and daddies in the technology. Darwin wrote in the same
thread (very beautifully, as per usual) about actually investigating and
doing and savouring the real world. Both of them pooh-pooh the tendency of
those of us raised by the glass teat to navel-gaze, to abrogate our
responsibilities to the present by relying on the Santa in the machine 
to revive and nurture our whims.

Though I'm given to think that uploading will be possible and desirable
in the future, maybe even in my future, I think that the focus of that
activity will in the main not involve such navel-gazing. There may be some
that will succumb to that temptation, but I rather think that evolution
will put paid to them - the prevalent minds will swiftly be those that
employ the technology to reproduce and extend themselves out to the
stars. What does it matter than if a few masturbators remain behind?

Now as to Brad Templeton's original concern that the nanotech
singularity may explode without us, I don't think it's worth worrying
about. Cryonics is a crap-shoot - you pays your money and you takes your
chances. Who can put a figure to the likelihood of ultimate revival? No
one. It's just the only hope we irreligious (?) bastards have, and hope
is something that even we can use.

Why should they thaw us? Who the hell knows? Sure, maybe the continuity
of loved ones, trustees and trusts will motivate them. Or maybe
curiosity or the desire for technical achievement or scientific or
historical enquiry. A long time ago I speculated that they might even do
it as a practical joke - who would make a better patsy than some guy
who's been cold for a couple of decades? It's just not worth speculating 
about, except as a marketing exercise.

For me, the only thing I need to know is that there's a chance, there's
hope that they might revive me - that's enough.  As to whether I revive
uploaded or meat, or even in Tipler's omega point, I don't care. My
reason for considering cryonics is not to establish some kind of
continuity of identity with the future; in fact I don't think that
identity means anything useful. I think we're waves on the ocean.  I
think that "I" and "you" are just roles, like "left" and "right", and I
don't invest those roles with any metaphysics beyond those of the
context of consideration. Is "I yesterday" the same as "I tomorrow"? To
me that's just tommyrot.

No, my reason for wanting to be suspended, or indeed for wanting to wake
up tomorrow, is purely irrational. It's a creative urge. I like to build
things, to write things, to nurture things and impart things to others.
I don't care so much who receives those things, so long as they find
them useful. Why should I like to do this?  It's just my gig. I like to
do it, and always have. If my recipients are alive now, or if they're in
the crew of misfits and lollygaggers that thaw me out in a few decades,
or in a few thousand years, or at the end of the universe, I don't care
- I find it equally satisfying to hope that one of these ways I might
create more things.

So I don't want to be thawed/uploaded so that I can suck on Santa's teat
some more; I want to be thawed/uploaded so that I can *be* Santa.
Perhaps this is what appeals to other cryonicists? Perhaps this is why
marketing cryonics to SF fans and other teat-suckers hasn't been wildly
successful? Perhaps the people that cryonics needs to reach are those
who like to benefit others - certainly everyone here that I know of fits
into this basket - people who like to create things, writers and artists
and engineers. 

--

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http://www.zip.com.au/~pete/           |            Reject Nothing.            |


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