X-Message-Number: 9102
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #9077 - #9078
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 21:45:48 -0800 (PST)

Hi everyone!

To Bob Ettinger:

About calculation of probabilities: NO. Yes, you can form subjective estimates
as much as you want, but no amount of math put on top of them make them
other than subjective estimates. Not only that, but we don't even have a set
of independent events which known probabilities on which we might base our
calculations of probability. That's actually one of the major problems caused
by the fact that we have some effect on these events.  

As for von Mises etc, I don't follow experts. I listen to reason and 
what I know. If the expert explains something, I will listen, but that is 
because of the merits of his/her explanation rather than whether or not they
are counted as experts. 

I will end this by pointing out that while I doubt that any calculation of
probability has meaning in cryonics, WE DON'T HAVE TO CALCULATE PROBABILITIES
TO SEE ITS WORTH. All that probability stuff is just smoke. The worth of 
cryonics comes from one major fact and one supposition about the future.
The fact is that freezing to LN temperatures or close to them will make 
biological specimens (including human brains) unchanged for thousands of 
years. If means to recover you don't exist in 2050, then you have 2150, 2250,
and many other years to wait. The supposition is that we'll know much more
than we now know not just about how our brains and bodies work, but how 
to fix them if they go wrong. And this supposition becomes even stronger
because it does not require, again, that we have sufficient knowledge at
ANY specific time in the future. The future is not one time by an infinity of
times. 

Given these two premises, I find no need for probability. If I need cryonics
then by definition I've found myself with two choices: I can either die 
and have my corpse dealt with in some traditional manner, OR I can be 
suspended. And I most certainly know the probability of revival (if you
like probabilities) if I rot or am cremated. Being suspended looks to me 
like a far superior choice. And naturally, given that I've made such 
arrangements, I do what I can to make events come out as I wish. 

And maybe all of us together can manage to take suspensions far enough 
that we'll at least be assured that our brains are preserved. That would
be nice. Hardly the end of the matter, but nice.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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