From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Wed May 09 2001 - 20:27:27 MDT
Ben Goertzel wrote:
> [Lee Corbin wrote]
>> Your scenario about being unable to afford eternal life
>> provided by the Singularity---because somehow your cryonics
>> expenditures impoverished you---just does not hold up.
>>
>> In the first place, you don't seem to understand the scope
>> of the transformation that comes with a Singularity. To
>> imagine yourself pitifully ensconsed in your wheelchair at
>> age 90, able to somehow make it into your dewer to get frozen,
>> yet unable to benefit from the Singularity, is silly. If you
>> live through the minutes preceding the Singularity, whatever
>> issues that you find that you still have to worry about, well,
>> concerns about money and cryonics won't be among them.
>
>
>Sure. But being unable to afford the eternal life afforded by
>pre-(Singularity-in-the-strong-sense) technology is a very real
>possibility...
I think that I understand what you are saying. You're saying
that some non-cryonic life extension capabilities that might
be available pre-Singularity might be pricey.
Yes, that's true. I hope that they also, like Cryonics, cost
just a few dollars a day. My mother is on social security in
the U.S. She collects more than 20 dollars per day. I dare
say that in the U.S. and quite a number of countries, people
won't have a problem funding both cryonics and the life
extension capabilities that I think you are referring to.
We must not forget the point that Ann Marie Tobias made in
this thread a while ago, namely, that most of the resources
targeted for cryonic suspension---i.e., life insurance
premiums---are eventually convertable into resources that
could be used for other eventualities.
Your remark gains its greatest saliency when we consider that
the cost of certain life extension techniques might be dear.
This will provide difficult tradeoffs in more than just the
one way that you bring up.
Lee Corbin
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