X-Message-Number: 875
Date: 03 Jun 92 01:45:18 EDT
From: STEVE BRIDGE <>
Subject: Reanimation and Immortality

Re: #870 - Re: Motivation for Reanimation ()

>> Hopefully, the "cryonics" organizations won't make the same mistake.  
>> They are in the immortality business--NOT the cryogenic freezing 
>> business.  We as individual immortalists and we as organizations 
>> dedicated to selling immortality should never forget what business we 
>> are in.  

     Great posting, Alan!  The idea that "Cryonics organizations are in 
the immortality business, not the cryogenic freezing business" should be 
embroidered and framed on the wall of every cryonicist.  We need to keep 
this perspective so that we remain open to new ideas and currently 
unimaginable future approaches.

     I recommend you add some things to this, such as the question that 
started the debate and perhaps some of the other ideas presented here 
(with appropriate permissions, of course), and work it into an article for 
CRYONICS Magazine.  This is an important "meme" for cryonicists.  The 
comparison with railroads was especially apt.


     I have only one basic idea to add to this debate.  I am also not 
worried that any cryonics company which SURVIVES and keeps my remains 
intact will be uninterested in reviving me.  As I said in a posting last 
year, this worry seems predicated on an unspoken assumption that a bunch 
of people will be frozen today, then no one will be frozen for a hundred 
years, and those original patients will still be in suspension.

     That scenario is impossible.  The ONLY way that today's patients will 
even be kept in suspension is if there is a constant and growing interest 
in cryonics, including a steady stream of suspensions.  The young members 
of today freeze the older ones, and then their sons and daughters and 
younger friends freeze and care for them when their own time comes.  At 
the point that reanimation becomes possible, the living members of the 
cryonics company or community will want to revive their friends, lovers, 
and relatives.  THOSE people, once out of suspension, will provide their 
own emotional impetus to revive the previous generation, and so forth. 

     We are not just a company freezing strangers.  We are carefully 
saving the lives of our friends and relatives, along with the occasional 
stranger.  (This is a great reason to make friends with many cryonicists.)

     If cryonics does not continue and grow, there won't have been anyone 
caring for the patients all of those years, so there won't BE any patients 
to revive.  If we are kept in suspension at all, and reanimation is 
possible, we will be reanimated.  I firmly believe it is strictly an 
"either-or" proposition.

     I also like Alan's idea that cryonics companies will be diversified 
by then and will want to show their honesty and abilities.

     (Incidentally, Alan, you forgot your NAME at the end of your message.  
Not everyone can figure out who is writing just from the e-mail address, 
and we are continually getting new members.  Let's not get impersonal 
while we're still warm and breathing.)

Steve Bridge

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