From: Dossy (dossy@panoptic.com)
Date: Thu May 02 2002 - 20:04:05 MDT
On 2002.05.02, Lee Corbin <lcorbin@tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> > What's the point of being put into cryogenic suspension if you can't
> > be sure that you'll ever come back...
>
> It's better to be alive than dead.
Explain to be the difference between cryogenic suspension and
death.
Freeze dried vs. the worms crawl in and out?
> > and when you do come back, how can you tell you came _back_
> > to where you left and aren't actually elsewhere and simply
> > being deceived?
>
> For the same reason that even you have spent less than five
> minutes today worrying about whether your brain is in a jar
> in Moscow. If it is, there's little you can do about it.
> Enjoy life instead. Also, re-read Eugene's recent answers for
> what a number of Extropians think.
This is like saying: Suppose there's an afterlife. Instead
of cryogenic suspension, just die. You'll keep on living in
the afterlife, it won't be like this world that you're leaving,
but enjoy life regardless. And if there is no afterlife, you'll
be dead, you won't miss a thing.
Why bother with cryogenic suspension? Death is a win/win
situation if you don't care whether or not you come back to
the world you left.
The only reason to opt for cryogenic suspension is because
you DO care. Given the fact that by the time you're
resuscitated, it is a very real possibility that the world
you're brought back into is nothing like the world you left,
then what's the point of being brought back from suspension?
> > And, if when you finally are resuscitated, if the world
> > is nothing like the way you left it, is it worth coming back?
>
> You can't know unless you try it. Try to be positive, try
> to stay alive. Besides, quality of life has become better
> and better over the course of the last ten thousand years.
> That's quite a track record! My hunch is that you simply
> cannot imagine how great life'll be centuries from now.
This is very true. However, if you take a man pre-electricity
and give them a computer and a television ("Look how wonderful
life is today compared to the time you came from!") how
much "better" would he perceive life as being?
The only reason why we think life has become better (which
is purely subjective) is because we're comparing today to
yesterday. However, compare tomorrow from today and that
Brave New World might not seem too enticing unless you were
eased into it by living through the transition.
Would your quality of life really be any better by waking
up into a world far advanced from the one you left, leaving
you to learn everything anew as to how to live, interact and
socialize in this new world? If you're terminally curious,
maybe ... but that's like taking terminally curious Grandpa
who built his own ham radio back in his earlier years and
teaching him how to ride a razor scooter and watch DVD movies
on an iPAQ. Is he really going to be enjoying "this new
life"?
> > My point: If your only hope at life extension is to go into cryogenic
> > suspension until such time that you can enjoy life extension, you might
> > as well just die -- it wouldn't make a difference.
>
> Maybe you should proofread your sentences a bit; that one
> doesn't hold up very well, so far as I can see.
If you are at the point in your life (I hesitate to say "age"
as age really isn't the only factor in life span) but before
the requisite life extension technique is available to allow
you to keep living, and you're faced with the choice of death
or cryogenic suspension ... given the fact that you may not
wake up into the world you're leaving (fact is, it's very
likely that the world you wake up in will be much different
than the one you're leaving) ... why would you ever choose
cryogenic sleep over death? It wouldn't make a difference,
and at least death is something new and unusual that you've
never done before that you can enjoy today, not some undetermined
N years in the future.
> But the main thing is---and this you can bank on---being
> alive in the future will be vastly better than being dead.
I think this is a naive view of the future and how we will
fit into it.
As you said: "You can't know unless you try it." You're right.
I can't know and I hope to have the opportunity to try it (live
into the "future") ... but only if I can do just that, live
into the future, not just wake up in it.
-- Dossy
--
Dossy Shiobara mail: dossy@panoptic.com
Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/
"He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70)
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