J. R. Molloy wrote:
> I think he mentioned just five people. So, who did you vote for?
The people at the top of my personal list are already signed up, or are aware of the issue and thinking about it. If we specifically exclude them, that leaves me with several dozen people and no clear way to rank them. So, I don't really have an answer to the question.
> >Would you say the same thing about life extension technology
> in general?
>
> Probably not.
Why not? From a moral/philosophical perspective, what is the difference?
> > Today it promotes an irrational acceptance of mortality that greatly
> > impedes life extension research, and is thus likely to lead to hundreds
> > of millions of unnecessary deaths.
>
> Hundreds of millions of suspension patients does begin to
> sound like it might cost more than a few bucks.
I was referring to the longstanding resistance to any sort of longevity research. This barrier has begun to erode recently, but it has cost us a lot of time. The more time we lose, the more people will die before we have an effective life extension treatment.
> No biggie, I just meant that overpopulation presently (not in the future
or
> the imagination) constitutes a problem which humans will need to solve
> _before_ putting hundreds of millions of people into suspension.
> So, cryonics doesn't matter as much as addressing the issues of who should
> live, which has the potential to ignite a global conflagration as
desperate
> humans compete for longer lives.
A "global conflagration"? How? As Anders would say, this is a Hollywood meme.
Rationally, we would expect a treatment for old age to follow the same course as any other medical advance. It starts out being so expensive that only the wealthy can afford it, and gradually becomes cheaper as its use expands. Anyone who can afford it can buy the treatment, and the cost falls steadily with time.
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com