Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> The more that you think about it, the more senseless
> death becomes, especially in light of the ridiculously
> modest resources that it would require to keep someone
> alive forever. A cubic millimeter would easily suffice
> for the complete emulation of quite a few people, even
> at the rate of 1 second per second.
We're not **really** on opposite sides of the fence here.
It's just a matter of emphasis and aesthetics, I think. Your
paragraph above describes a sort of Eganesque scenario in which
uploading is well-established, cheap, and reliable
technology, like owning a computer and being on the
Internet is today in the U.S. If it were the year
2975 in the world of _Diaspora_, would I seek out an
Introdus portal and join the world of the polises? Yes,
almost certainly (I'm assuming it would be a Moravec
transfer; I **don't** want to be duplicated!). I'd
have butterflies in my stomach, but I'd do it.
> Worth preserving??? ...
>
> We are going around and around on this. "VALUABLE TO
> WHOM?", I fairly want to scream.
Yes, yes, yes. I was just trying to convey the flavor of a certain
insouciance or detachment that I affect, at least on a verbal
level, and which I think I genuinely feel, about the significance
of my own life. I understand the objections that Eliezer, for one,
has to such an attitude of detachment towards human lives, and I
admire him for it in a way, even if I can't really bring myself to
share his earnestness. Maybe that means that I'm morally underdeveloped,
and really not a very nice person.
This detachment **doesn't** mean that I'm unsafe behind the
wheel of a car (I'm not like the brother in _Annie Hall_ ;-> ),
that I don't look before crossing the street, that I don't pay
attention to what I eat, or go to the dentist regularly, or any of
the other things that ordinarily prudent people of American middle-class
means do. It doesn't mean that I wouldn't be damn scared to be diagnosed
with cancer, say, or that I'm not dismayed by the evidence of physical
decay that being nearly 50 confronts me with every day. It may mean
that I can contemplate, with more equanimity than some, the
prospect of sheer nonexistence. I did step over the edge of that
cliff once upon a time, quite deliberately (I'm not suicidal any
more; haven't been in a long time; but it does cross my mind from
time to time that if that attempt had been successful, the evidence
that I had ever existed would be almost completely expunged from the
world by now -- I would be seldom, and hazily, remembered even by the
people who knew me in 1982; it makes me feel a bit like a ghost).
It's this feeling of detachment that makes the idea of cryo, with its
air of desperate grasping at straws, of being willing to pay
a large monetary price for what seems like a pretty low
probability of payoff (and without, as I mentioned, the
possibility of avoiding discomfort on the near side, and possibly
on the far side, of death itself), distasteful to me (and, yes,
slightly comical, with media associations like _The Loved One_).
It's really just a matter of personal taste, though, and I brought it
up solely as an act of self-revelation, not in order to cast
aspersions on anybody else's choice.
> Can you see what a transformation of values that cryonics
> stands for? Nothing less than the repudiation of death for
> all sentient beings.
Weeelll... It's not going to be cryo that ushers in **that**
revolution, any more than Charles Babbage's difference engine
could have ushered in the Internet revolution. Show me that
cubic millimeter of computronium you mention above, then we'll
talk ;-> . Again, I don't want to get in anybody's face here,
but if you asked me if I honestly think anybody undergoing
cryonic suspension today has a chance in hell of being revived,
I'd have to say no -- it seems no more likely to me than that there's
some sort of Tiplerian Omega Point awaiting us all, whether
or not we want it or have bothered to sign up with Alcor (The
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised, incorruptible...).
> The heart leads the mind, and if your heart were to whisper
> to you, "It's all right to live forever, and it's all right
> for everyone to live forever", can your mind really object?
Not in principle, no. I hope I don't sound like I'm
contradicting myself!
Jim F.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 10:00:02 MDT