X-Message-Number: 952
Date: 04 Jul 92 14:06:03 EDT
From: Richard  Potvin <>
Subject: Drexler a Deathist?

	Upon rereading Engines, the following paragraph struck me as
something that surely everyone here has refuted and that surely Eric
Drexler has changed his position on:

	"With or without biostasis, cell repair cannot bring
immortality. Physical death, however greatly postponed, will remain
inevitable for reasons rooted in the nature of the universe... To speak
of "immortality" when the prospect is only long life would be to ignore
the facts or to misuse words".
			-Engines of Creation, p.139

	If anyone understands Drexlers assertion here, can they explain
what the "inevitable reasons rooted in the nature of the universe" 
*are* that are going to kill us-- *no matter what*? What facts am I
ignoring? Why can't cell repair bring immortality? Isn't everything
we're thinking about here motivated by the "prospect of
immortality"? 

	How can Drexler say that true, hard core immortality is
impossible, with such assurance? Wouldn't a little more uncertainty be
in order? I realize "atom repair" might seem rediculous in the face of
atomic decay-- or that heat death or a collapsing closed universe are 
serious potential show-stoppers, but this one paragraph alone, for me, 
personally, makes nanotech and mastery of the universe into nothing
more than a much bigger game of Trivial Pursuit.

	I posit that here's nothing *less* than the infinite life of
each of us and the infinite existence of *some* universe for us to
exist within-- at STAKE here. To think of anything LESS being at stake
than our Permanent and Perpetual Physical Presence is unjustified, I
believe, -- but more seriously, devalues our present efforts and saps
motivation-- however slight. Certainly Perpetual Presence is *desired* 
by Eric Drexler, and I hope that in the next edition of Engines, he
expresses that desire in the same paragraph that he states that
"physical death, however greatly postponed, will remain inevitable": 

	"Physical immortality, however unacheivable, will remain
desirable". 

					-Richard Potvin, A-1348

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