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. -- mailto: | Accept Everything. | http://www.zip.com.au/~pete/ | Reject Nothing. | Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5304