On 3/10/2003 12:12:35 AM, Nathaniel Bonadore
wrote:
>My first
>turn-off to materials
>presented is their clear bias;
>the Cryonics Institute keeps
>informing me to "read more
>about cryonics for myself" and
>that it may be "the single
>best decision I make for
>myself." The material provides
>such nice, pat answers that
>sound perfectly reasonable --
>they are all rather thin on
>second glance.

To be fair, I've only given you the Frequently
Asked Questions which are aimed at laypeople.
There are many scientific papers on issues in
cryonics, and, as is pointed out, no published
peer-reviewed article which argues against its
feasibility. I was struck by the fact that they don't
give you the hard sell. They primarily attempt to
answer the objections of naysayers and say that
you should check it out for yourself. They don't
paint people who believe in an unproven
immortal soul as suckers or lunatics. They say that
if you deicde it's not for you, then that's fine.
>
>First of all, I don't believe
>that we'll have the technology
>ready to revive someone within
>fifty years, or even a hundred
>years. Examine your history.
>What were scientists
>predicting we'd have now a
>hundred years ago? What about
>fifty?

It's interesting to see how they have
UNderestimated technological progress. For
example:

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will
forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and
humane surgeon."-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British
surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to
Queen Victoria 1873.

"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped
with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons,
computers in the future may have only 1,000
vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons." --
Popular Mechanics, 1949

Technology has been increasing in geometric
proportion, with the pace of advancement
"snowballing" at an ever-increasing pace. A
hundred years ago people were still getting
around by horse-drawn coaches and trains and
the steam engine and the pocket watch were state
of the art technology. Some sciences such as
"fuzzy logic", artificial intelligence, microchip
design and genetic engineering are only in their
infancy. Computing power doubles every 18
months, so if you extrapolate this out to 50 or 100
year, the implications are staggering. People
used to scoff at the idea of sustained, mass air
travel or going to the moon.

>But who's going to
>pay for your re-education?

As technology increases, it will also become more
user-friendly. Most people who are using a
computer have never taken a class in computers.
The web is all point and click and lots of free or
low-cost tutorials are available on-line for more
advanced topics.

>Oh, and why would you even be
>revived in the first place?

Afred Nobel's put his money in a trust fund in the
19th century and it's still going strong after all
these years. There's no reason to think cryonics
patients' assets can't be similarly guarded and
perpetuated. Of course there COULD be a
nuclear war, world-wide super-plague, astroid
collision with earth, etc. But the U.S. is one of the
largest and most stable countries on the planet,
both economically and politically.


>Would we really
>use it to revive a bunch of
>outdated frozen people? Or on
>the currently living? Here's a
>better way to think about it:
>at that point, who's in a
>better position to decide?

The abortion rights lobby is always telling us that
we should give precedence to the already-born.
Wouldn't that apply here? Maybe people should
stop having so many chidren.

> So
>cryonics patients are people
>who have more faith in future
>man than in God; this is not
>the kind of moral fiber that I
>would wish to invite into my
>future society, because I have
>faith that my descendants
>would be more morally
>developed than myself.

If they're more morally developed, wouldn't they
allow you the personal freedom to continue your
life? Cryonicists admit it's a rational scientifically-
based gamble, but a MORE rational gamble than
believing in an immortal soul and an afterlife.
Successful cryonics is a rational extrapolation
from current technological trends. Belief in an
immortal soul is based on faith in ancient religious
texts or subjective personal experience.

Prof. Borrowdale
borrowdalej@lanecc.edu