X-Message-Number: 7162 Date: Mon, 18 Nov 96 23:57:58 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Capital Punishment, Quality Control Bob Ettinger wrote (#7152) >There has been some discussion of capital punishment >and what people "deserve." > >On the highest or most abstract level, no one "deserves" >anything, either good or ill, in the sense that (s)he has >"earned" it. We are totally the products of heredity and >environment, over neither of which we (initially) had the >slightest control. We are all equally victims or >beneficiaries of circumstance. ("We're depraved because >we're deprived," in the terms of West Side Story.) This is something I agree with. But I think it can be used as an argument against rather than for capital punishment. It ought to be possible in the future to cure or otherwise render harmless and helpful those dangerous people who are killed today for their misdeeds. As we--and they-- advance increasingly into a more-than-human future, the misdeeds of the past should matter less and less, assuming there was an appropriate change of heart (which in turn will ultimately reduce to a "programming" problem). Darth Vader ended up good in the end, remember? This I think was better than if he had been destroyed. (At least it was clear he wasn't destroyed in an informational sense, what- ever the particulars.) Think how incredible it will be if even the most evil humans from real life are also rendered benevolent. Better, more interesting and valuable to us in the long run, than if they are just plowed under foot. As for society supporting murderers in comfort, we do that for people judged "criminally insane" or otherwise unfit to care for themselves anyway. I don't think it's too much "comfort" as a rule however. We shouldn't offer cryonics as a "reward" for criminal behavior. In principle, though, I would favor freezing those in prison or other institutions who die. But in general there should be routine freezing of people who die (other than those who have clearly expressed wishes to the contrary and were mentally competent when they did so). But I doubt if this will be an issue anytime soon--many changes must happen first. I would hope though that society's "need" for revenge is not so strong as to necessitate killing of the most hated to placate the more restless. On another subject--while I don't condemn Drexler's book the way Steve Harris does, I do think Steve made some good points on the need for quality control in cryonics (#7154). Nanotechnology (whether you capitalize it or not :-) won't be a cure-all, certainly, and we can't take it as given that it will be able to undo the damage now being done to patients on their way to LN2 storage. But on the other hand it--or whatever future technology we may develop--should be able to carry out resuscitations of people when there is enough information to go on in the frozen remains. So then you have to worry about whether there is "enough information"--which ought to include memories. Unfortunately we still don't know enough to assess how well our current procedures may preserve these vital traces. And so on. We need to put a great deal of emphasis on checking and testing our suspension procedures, and trying to improve them, until we can be sure we are doing a good enough job --which I doubt will be soon. Mike Perry http://www.alcor.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7162