X-Message-Number: 5989
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: my comments about cryonics
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1996 22:03:24 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

I'm personally in a bit of a hurry here, and got on the net for a different
purpose entirely, but feel that I must answer your comments.

1. I am not being paranoid. Note that I put what I said in the conditional 

   tense. It is true, though, that we customarily consider as many possibilities
      as we can. Good possibilities usually don't need much thought. It's the
   bad possibilities which do. If you were building a house in California, you
   would think about the possibility of an earthquake. You do this not because
   you are paranoid about earthquakes (I've been through 3 big ones now, with
   no damage to myself or my possessions), but because it is reasonably to 
   plan ahead for bad events.

2. You clearly haven't encountered the feelings of many people about cryonics
   and even about immortality. I have. If you want a sample, try reading
   Hayflick's recent book. THEN we might be able to discuss the problem
   together.

3. I'm sorry but maybe you still haven't figured out what we're doing and
   how we feel. Yes, you may regard our decision to be suspended, despite the
   present state of technology, as a "speculation". But not all speculations
   are wrong, nor are they all foolish. One main reason I want to be frozen
   is because I can guess something about how I might be repaired, for 
   instance. And the lifeboat image is very important: if we want to live, 
   in 1996 we have no other choice. Sure, we're doing as much as we can to
   make that lifeboat as secure as we can. But we KNOW that we'll have to get
   into it. Cryonics is not a "speculation" from which we can simply choose 
   to refrain.

   And for that matter, the one cryobiologist who is also a cryonicist works
   on vitrification for just that reason: to make the lifeboat safer. But
   scientific research is EXPENSIVE. Far more expensive, in fact, that the
   cost of a few suspensions --- not to mention that the money can't be 
   transferred from one to the other. (If I can't be suspended in case I 
   get into fatal trouble now, then it matters little to me what happens 
   after I am buried). 

4. About being rolled over by the stone we are trying to move up the hill:
   are you PARANOID or something? (See my comments under 1.).

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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