J. R. Molloy wrote:
> I had no intention of interfering or intruding in any way.
> I simply pointed
> out to Randall that it would serve transhuman extropy better to fund
> intelligence augmentation, bionic engineering, and synthetic evolution
> rather than salvaging unavoidable obsolescence.
As it currently exists, transhumanism is incapable of funding significant research of any kind (unless we've got a few closet billionaires I don't know about). To my mind, that makes any serious debate about what we should spend our money on rather pointless - when we actually have some, then it may be productive to argue about it.
> Obviously people have that liberty. Extropians also have the freedom to
> endorse alternative means to arrive at a posthuman destiny. It comes down
> to a matter of personal taste, I suppose. I envision a future in
> which people _create_ better, smarter, stronger people
> rather than dredging them up from the morgue.
Note the assumption that suspension patients are dead. This is self-contradictory.
If they can be brought back, then they aren't dead in any meaningful sense. They are equivalent (in a moral sense) to comatose hospital patients, or people in suspended animation, or anyone else who is unconscious and unable to resume normal functioning without medical attention. We could substitute the word "hospital" for "morgue", with no change in the moral content of the statement.
> Okay, so how does that help us decide "Who Should Live?" (the
> topic of the thread that Scott started).
It was a purely hypothetical question, and it is pretty unlikely that anything like it would ever arise in the real world. Cryonic suspension is not especially expensive (unless you're already 80 when you start thinking about it), so it is pretty hard to find people who want to sign up but can't afford to. If someone knows about cryonics, and doesn't sign up, they've made their decision.
> By the time "we have already eliminated diseases, aging, and just about
any
> other imaginable medical problem" we might conceivably have the means to
> create a better human (transhuman) than any genius who ever lived. So why
go
> backward, when we can go forward? How to justify salvaging what we've
> already surpassed? Not only would the entire list become "old hat" it
would
> become garbage by the time you mention. Which restates my point.
> If, in contrast to this scenario, cryonics succeeds to the point where the
> question, "Who Should Live" becomes more than a parlor game, to that
extent
> it subverts extropy, because it supports stagnation more than
> it supports progress.
Would you say the same thing about life extension technology in general?
> No, not "deathist" whatever that means, but rather extropic.
Deathism is the believe that death is a good thing. It is generally found as part of a belief in some sort of universal harmony, cycle, or order which is more important than the individual, and too sacred to be subjected to human meddling. In the vast majority of cases people with this sort of belief see any attempt to achieve physical immortality as morally repugnant, or even evil.
IMO, this kind of thinking is one of the biggest problems we face today. It may have been a necessary adaptation in the days when there was no prospect of real life extension, but that is no longer the case. 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.
> Okay, fine. As Soupy Sales used to say, "All you insurance salesmen...
Watch
> your policies!" I understand the motives behind cryonics. I also
understand
> that the political realities of a severely overpopulated planet will
> need to change as drastically as any technology in order for cryonicists
to
> survive the next punctuation in evolution.
Either I've completely missed your point, or you haven't thought this one through.
> And I understand that I may have completely
> missed the mark in this respect, and cryonics may really take
> off in the coming years, so that tens of millions of people opt for
> cryonic suspension rather than cremation or burial.
> I may just shoot myself because
> I understand that I've already lived as much as I can, and
> hanging around annoys others as much as it bores me. That probably won't
> happen for another ten or fifteen years. At any rate, I'd better get busy
> and scrape up the money to freeze my shot-dead body.
If you don't want to live, then there would hardly be any point to getting yourself frozen.
> The meme "saving lives" entails entropy because it seeks to stop dynamic
> change and spontaneous natural order. I think that when we more clearly
> understand biology at all its levels, from the molecular to
> the societal and ecological levels, we will begin to appreciate the
> significance of our existence more fully. Extropy gives us order for free,
> and when we intrude on that order, even with the best of intentions (or
with
> selfish intentions) to save lives, we smash against the complex algorithms
> of life itself.
I see. So, does this also apply to life extension research? What about treatments for age-related illnesses like Alzheimer's and heart disease? Or how about cancer treatments, organ transplants, and blood transfusions? These are all ways that we "intrude" on the "complex algorithms of life itself".
> Perhaps my raving here amounts to "deathism" but death and birth eternally
> form the two sides of life. Yet, by the logic of cryonicism, we should
> freeze talented and gifted persons while still young and healthy (you
should
> freeze yourself while you're still young and healthy), so that cryonics
can
> preserve you in good shape, thereby providing a better chance for a
> successful revival -- to save your life for a future time of advanced
> medical technology, especially life extension.
> You think of this as an argument against cryonics, but really it just
argues
> for an answer to the question "Who Should Live?" I say those should live
who
> grab life by the throat every day and squeeze the juice out of every
> moment.
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com