X-Message-Number: 8872
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #8850 - #8857
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 12:02:17 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

Respectfully to Dr. Strout: NO, not even uploading with guarantee immortality.
Certainly it will help but that is far from the same as a guarantee.

The problem is that with everything we do there is always some risk of mistake
or other kinds of failure. I'm not going to detail what might happen with
uploading because you've already started to think about it yourself. 

If we want literal immortality, then we must never stop working for it. We 
work for it by decreasing the probability that anything can go wrong; and
when you think not in terms of 100 years but in millenia and aons that is
no simple task.

I myself have suggested that this should be the aim of medicine: to make 
everyone a healthy immortal. And just as doctors don't always cure their
patients, there will always be something that goes wrong, though we can
bring that probability down indefinitely. An aim need not be something
that we know we can accomplish in a fixed time.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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