From: bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Alcor
Date: 21 Jul 92 05:06:50 GMT
Reply-To: bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart)
Organization: Citicorp+TTI

In article <1992Jul18.235034.17291@gucis.cit.gu.edu.au>,
dconnors@gucis.cit.gu.edu.au (David Connors) writes:
> bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart) writes:
> >Can your mortician "guarantee"
> >that you won't be dug up to make room for a strip mall?  And if not, is
> >that sufficient reason to characterize burial as a fraud?
> 
> There's a big difference there. You pay a funeral parlor a certain amount
> of money for sticking you six feet under and placing a whole bunch of 
> flowers around your grave for the burial service - that's it.

Yes, that's usually all the fine-print says.  They talk about "eternal
rest" and "eternal repose," but that doesn't necessarily mean nobody's
ever going to build a taco stand over the Dear Departed.  As long as
that's really Aunt Edna in the box, and the box gets buried as per the
contract, the funeral parlor has done its job.

> I don't
> beleive that any agreement is consciously reached on  either part that
> as a part of the "deal" you *MUST* stay buried forever. Whether it is assumed
> or not is a different matter altogther.
> 
> However, in the case of cryonics, you are frozen  under the pretence
> that one day you *WILL* be unfrozenand *WILL* be brought back to life. That
> to me sounds like fraud. 

That sounds like fraud to me, too.  However, it DOESN'T sound like my
suspension agreement.  In that agreement, Alcor promises to freeze me
(if possible, and if certain other conditions that I specified are met)
using their best effort and the best techniques available to them at the
time.  They also promise to TRY to revive me IF that becomes possible. 
That's a whole lot different than "WILL be brought back to life."  It's
more akin to "we'll do our best."

Obviously, I BELIEVE that there's a chance I'll be thawed and revived,
or there would be no point in making these arrangements in the first
place.  But nobody's made me any promises of success, only promises of
best effort.

I'm starting to think this one belongs in the FAQ.  One of the most
common misconceptions about cryonics arrangements is that people "sink
their life's savings into it," when in fact most suspensions are paid
for out of life insurance benefits.  The other one that I'm seeing a lot
of is that "cryonics organizations promise what they can't deliver." 
The "promise" always turns out to be something that NO cryonics
organization actually promises, but people who haven't gone to the
trouble of writing away for the literature, filling out the MOUNTAINS of
paperwork, and so forth may not be aware of what the actual promises are.

By the time you get all signed-up, however, it's inconceivable to me
that you WOULDN'T know exactly what is and is not being promised.  At
any time, if you decide that you don't like the deal, it's easy to back
out of it; just change the beneficiary on your life insurance and tell
Alcor (or whomever) not to bother.

> Cryonics company X's first obligation is to making money. They have wages
> to  pay, electricity and chemical bills, and perhaps even stock holders to
> keep happy.

There may indeed be a publicly-held cryonics company, but I doubt it. 
Alcor has no "stock holders," per se, it's a non-profit agency
structured more like a mutual-aid society.  Its FIRST obligation is to
its patients (which is their terminology for the frozen folks).

They do have bills to pay, of course, and the idea is that the interest
generated by the money you pay for suspension is supposed to cover the
cost of refrigeration and so forth.  (That, by the way, is how ordinary
insurance companies make their money: not from premiums, as is widely
believed, but from the income that they get from investing the premiums.
 I've even seen one solicitation from an insurance company that promised
to GIVE BACK EVERY PENNY of my premiums, if I just keep the policy in
force for 15 years.  They'll make enough by investing my premiums for 15
years that they don't need to keep my original capital, it's like an
interest-free "seed loan" to them.)  The Alcor suspension contract also
has provisions in it to cover the eventuality that, due to economic or
political hardship, there ISN'T enough money.  If you think the minimum
charged by Alcor is unrealistically low, you certainly have the option
of paying more and having the extra money used as you designate, either
for the general well-being of all patients in suspension or for you,
personally.

Beyond that, while you're warm you pay what amounts to annual dues, at
least with Alcor, to cover the cost of operating the organization. 
Alcor doesn't have "customers," it has "members."  Not all cryonics
agencies work that way, but that's what's so nice about having several
from which to choose.

> If you think that these people would freeze you out of some
> sort of moral obligation, or because they like you, then you're very very
> naive.

I think they'll freeze me because I'm paying them what they asked, and
then some, for the service.  No more "because they like me" than when I
pay the guy at the gas station to tune up my car.

> As an aside, has anyone explored the ideas of what happens to the "soul" 
> (if you believe we have one)

There's been after-hours chitchat about it, of course, but it's not a
scientific  question because there's no way to make hypotheses about it
and test them empirically.  Just determining whether there's a "soul" in
the first place is apparently an insurmountable task, as far as the
scientific method is concerned.

That doesn't mean the question is unimportant, it just means that it's
not within the scope of science.

> and the effects cryonics would have on the mind 
> (as opposed to the brain).

By "mind," do you mean memory?  Personality?  There has been some animal
research, and so far it looks promising, or at least plausible.  But the
more one delves into issues like "personality," the closer one
approaches nonscientific questions like the one about "souls."  If I
freeze a rat, revive it, and it can still negotiate mazes it learned
before it was frozen, I can make some conclusions about retention of
memory.  But can I say whether the rat's "personality" or "identity" was
preserved?  How could you tell?

There have also been analyses, here and on sci.nanotech, about what
constitutes "identity" under a variety of circumstances.  We've only got
a few hundreds of messages in sci.cryonics, so far, so hopefully someone
still has some of those articles?  Is there an archive site?  If not,
I'm pretty sure you can get the same discussion from sci.nanotech (which
I'm reasonably certain IS being archived) since the same issue arises in
their context.

---------

A fanatic is someone who does what he knows that God would do if God knew the
facts of the case.

Some mailers apparently munge my address; you might have to use
bsmart@bsmart.tti.com -- or if that fails, fall back to
72027.3210@compuserve.com.  Ain't UNIX grand?