X-Message-Number: 534
Date: 11 Nov 91 02:41:14 EST
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: answer to #531 (part 2)

Clearly Niven, at best, has not seriously listened to cryonics ideas, where
the importance of CONTINUOUS MAINTENANCE and revival BY THE CRYONICS       
SOCIETY (NOT by society at large) is stressed. The opinions of society at
large should make no difference unless they are actively hostile; while 
that hostility may indeed happen at some periods of history, it will most
likely result in simple interment of these so-called "dead" patients. 
Against, of course, persistent, organized, and extreme opposition by the
cryonics societies.

2. "To be used as slaves." (or variations of slaves). Let's look at this 
idea. Here we have a society which must necessarily have far more powerful
computers, computer knowledge, and AI experience than presently exists.
Once we have such a technology, of course, I cannot imagine what we might
want with once-human slaves for ANY purpose. Oh, all right, some quite
perverted people might want to keep slaves so that they can order other 
people around (notice that this is not Niven's scenario!). If Niven's 
society wanted slaves solely for THAT purpose, it would have far worse 
problems than any Niven has suggested --- and they'd extend to normal 
people who were NEVER corpsicles. What's so special about "corpsicles"?
Why don't they go slave raiding against one another? I doubt that such a
situation could last very long at all even if it did come into existence.
Remember that these slaves served no positive economic purpose at all.
As for the trouble they would have making slaves of "corpsicles" still in
the care of cryonics societies, refer to Point 1 above.

I stopped reading science fiction about the same time I became a 
cryonicist, frankly out a feeling of disgust. Almost all sf authors make
no serious attempt at all to create a basic scenario which is self-consist-
ent and does not suppose quite unlikely responses from the human beings
involved. On that ground alone, their ideas about cryonics are going to 
lack any REAL pertinence to the REAL problems cryonicists face. It is much
like murder stories: they almost never reflect what really happens in a 
murder. Instead, we have victims who blithely drink poison from people whom
they have every possible reason to mistrust, etc etc. I would not go to
sf to find out about cryonics problems any more than I would go to murder
mysteries to find outhow to protect myself from being killed.
					Thomas Donaldson

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