From: Jeff Davis (jdavis@socketscience.com)
Date: Tue Apr 20 1999 - 01:28:25 MDT
In response to Emlyn O' Reagan's concern for the feelings of any old farts
who should chance to materialize within earshot of her "Odes to Extropian
Optimism", Eugene Leitl seems to have let slip out:
"...outline the basics of cryonics (even if chances of it working are
currently small)."
Now, I consider Gene's offerings to be of consistently high quality, but
in this case, I must (once again) take exception. Regarding the likelihood
of reanimation following cryonic suspension, SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY.
(Yes, sports fans, we've been here before.) Unlike the last time however,
this time I'm going to tell you why I hold this view. Though I'm only
going to give you
The short version:
(To avoid confusion, let me, from the outset, narrow the scope of my
remarks to technical feasiblity only. If a comet should hit the earth,
nuclear war or Luddites obliterate civilization, or grey, blue, or saffron
goo injest the galaxy,... well, that's somebody else's problem.)
Cryonic suspension--molecular immobilization by solidification, and
reaction rates vastly reduced by ultra-low temperature--virtually halts
structural deterioration. Time comes to a stop. ("What about the effects
of background radiation?" some will reply, when a decorous silence could
have avoided the embarrassment of so feeble an attempt at rebuttal.) This
means that there is effectively no time limit placed on the development of
a reanimation capability.
Forty years, forty thousand years, forty million years, four billion
years,...ooops, KABOOM... the sun goes nova,... oh, well,...times up. Lest
my point get lost in the hyperbole:
Point number One: No time limit.
The future is a very long time, any or all of which is available to be
applied to the problem of fixin' your frostbite.
Drexler studied the question of the feasibility of nanotech. His
preliminary conclusion: No currently known natural law can be shown to
prohibit its development, AND biology stands as a robust, real-time,
functional example of nanotech in action (proof of concept). Whence I
conclude that if you're going to nay say the feasibility of cell-repair
technology, then the burden of proof lies with you.
Ergo:
Point number Two: A clear road ahead.
Nothing is currently known to stand in the way of developing the
necessary cell-repair technology.
Finally, there is the issue which I shall politely call lack of
imagination.
This list allows us to speculate about a future of post-human
enhancements, SI's, self-directed evolution, and the singularity--beyond
which last the fun may exceed our current ability to predict (imagine?).
In light of this, how can anyone feel confident to predict that the
capability of the next ten thousand years of post-humanity and their SI
cohorts will be so limited as to imply only a "small" chance they will be
able to fix cellular frostbite?
Point number three: Future smarts on the job.
The intelligence of post-humanity et al, not the limited resources of
today, will be applied to the task.
The above is the "short" version.
I therefore feel that it is not unreasonable to suggest that in future,
rather than saying cryonic suspension currently has a "small" chance of
working, that you might say rather that it has, say, an "uncertain" chance
of working? Uncertain. Yeah. I can live with that.
Or you could say SUCCESS IS A NEAR CERTAINTY, as I do.
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:03:34 MST