From: bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Why should they?
Date: 21 Jul 92 03:36:14 GMT
Reply-To: bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart)
Organization: Citicorp+TTI

In article <L5WMB6MT@cc.swarthmore.edu>, cdanfor1@cc.swarthmore.edu
(charles danforth) writes:
> In article <1992Jul15.125020.17071@shearson.com>,
pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes:
> > >the frozen person would have to adapt to
> > >undreampt of technology and great ammounts of sociological change,

Maybe yes, maybe no.  In some respects, human societies haven't changed
appreciably in all of recorded history.  People in the far future may
dress funny, or not at all; they may work at jobs that we don't have
names for today.  But peasants in the 15th century probably sat around
drinking and bitching about their in-laws, and in fact I've read a
letter written in (I think) about the 9th or 10th century bemoaning
"these kids today," complaining that they don't respect their elders and
they won't do their homework and if somebody doesn't do something,
Civilization As We Know It will soon come crashing down around our ears.
 It was written by a monk-schoolmaster to his king, but it could have
appeared in any newspaper today and not seemed anachronistic or
otherwise out of place.

Yes, a world with nanotechnology, interplanetary or even interstellar
travel, and all the rest of that "Buck Rogers stuff" will be different
from our own in many ways...but if history is any guide, I think people
will still be people, petty and noble and kind and greedy and wise and
stupid; that's certainly been the way other massive technological
revolutions have worked out.  Despite the introduction of cars and
telephones, we still have many of the same social institutions that our
ancestors had.

So I'll buy "different," even "massively different."  I balk, however,
at "incomprehensibly different."  It's not an easy jump from a
third-world society to an industrialized one, either, and not everyone
wants to or is capable of making that jump...but millions of people do
make it, every year, by ordinary emigration.  And sure, some of them
don't like it after they get to the Big City, and some of them wind up
drunks or worse...but some adapt, which shows that this kind of
adaptation is possible, at least under some circumstances.

> > And there are other things you neglect, the most important being that
> > birth rates decline rapidly as wealth increases. Future development in
> > the third world is likely to reduce the birth rate. 
> 
> Maybe I missed something, but I haven't seen most of the third world
increasing its per-capita wealth very much in the last bit.

I think the expectation that the "third world" will be more prosperous
is linked to expectations of cheap manufacturing and refining that are
supposed to come from nanotechnology.  Perhaps access to nanotechnology
will be jealously guarded by a few, particularly if the startup costs to
begin using it are enormous.  But I believe the premise is that if cheap
nanotechnology makes it possible for me to satisfy MY wants
inexpensively, there's really no incentive for me to withhold it from
anyone else.  Under those circumstances, "wealth" is no longer a
zero-sum game where the only way I can be "wealthy" is to deprive
someone else, so I have nothing to gain from holding you back.

For a more thorough analysis of this issue, you might want to check out
sci.nanotech, if your site carries it.

---------

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?
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics