From: kqb@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (kevin.q.brown)
Subject: Re: Future need for cryonics
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 22:35:17 GMT
X-Crossposted-To: cryonics mailing list

[ I have appended below two recent messages from the cryonics mailing
  list on the topic "Future need for cryonics". - KQB ]

    ------------------------ Forwarded Message ------------------------

> Date: 11 Oct 92 02:09:56 EDT
> From: Thomas Donaldson <73647.1215@CompuServe.COM>
> Message-Subject: Re: cryonics: #1244

Hi Brian!

I know I'm a bit late on this particular debate, but it's a subject
I've thought about for some time. Basically, I've already given my
arguments to Keith Henson on this subject: I don't believe that the need
for long term storage of patients (which we now do with freezing, but 
may not do with freezing forever) will EVER disappear. Sure, there will
be a peak in the number of patients suspended per year, followed by a 
slow decline. But the number will never actually go to zero.

Why? Because we are NEVER going to understand ALL possible injuries so
well that we can immediately repair them or even state that they will be
repairable. Certainly, we will someday completely understand all lthe
PRESENT kinds of injuries, including ischemic brain injury --- but that's
not the point. As we go into space and take up new styles of life, new
inventions, and so forth, there will always be the rare fiendish accident
which messes someone up in a way we can't even specify right now (since
after all we haven't YET taken up thos new styles of life, etc etc).

Certainly we might keep copies of ourselves in places which we BELIEVE
are safe. We can do lots of things. That merely decreases the probability
without taking it to zero. 

And there is a sting at the tail of this decrease in probability, too.
Remember that (unlike the present) we will then think of ourselves as 
having lifespans of millenia, tens or hundreds of thousands of years; 
and so events which we would now simply shrug about (asteroid impacts on
the Earth, the aging of the Sun, etc etc) become real problems to us as
we try to live for our "allotted 10 million year lifespan". So the rarity
of a need for long term storage will be measured not against our lifespans
of today but against those of tomorrow: and that may not even seem very
rare at all.
			Best
				Thomas Donaldsn

    ------------------------ Forwarded Message ------------------------

> Date: 11 Oct 92 02:48:57 EDT
> From: Thomas Donaldson <73647.1215@CompuServe.COM>
> Message-Subject: Re: cryonics: #1289 - #1291

To Edgar Swank:

Since I too work with computers, I too am aware of the idea of keeping
a copy.

However when someone says that ZERO suspensions (suspensions in the broad
sense, not necessarily using low temperatures) will someday be needed,
they are making a VERY strong, virtually religious statement. Perfection
just isn't possible to human beings --- even if they use Nanotechnology
(note the capital letter). In computer terms, I note that despite all the
tape decks and other arrangements we have for storing data, there still
seems to be a need for disk repair software. Hmmm. Again in the case of
computer technology, there's one obvious way backup on disks does NOT
avoid all problems: we call them viruses. That is, the virus may be on
your backup, too, so that as soon as you reload it and restart it, boom,
you lose everything again.

Fundamentally, it seems quite out of the question to me that any techno-
logy will EVER avoid the fiendish, unlikely accident. Sure, all the
problems we NOW know about will be solved, probably by 2100 at least.
But who said that the problems we now know about constitute a complete
set of all the problems with which we'll ever have to deal? Just stating
that proposition makes it look out of the question.

The other side of those unknown problems, of course, is what will make
life in the future interesting. Is there any cryonicist out there who
really believes that we've come almost to the end of science, and soon
will know everything there is to be known? The past record of those who
make such claims has not been such as to create confidence that they
understand very much at all.
				Best and long life,
					Thomas Donaldson