47 replies to this topic

[foolishmortal]

Faith against gravity wont make you fly but action against gravity will.

(Hence ImmInst.org)

[acrid]

Faith against gravity wont make you fly but action against gravity will.

(Hence ImmInst.org)

Exactly, Thats why I think faith is secondary, just a way of thinking. However thinking is what people do that makes our actions so special. If we have faith in our abilities that we can defy our bounderies, I think that could incite good, productive action.

[bgwowk]

What is the physical differnece between someone the moment before they die and the moment after they die?

None. Zero. Zippo. When blood circulation stops, there is just a cascade of chemical reactions that makes resuscitation an increasingly complex problem. First the brain gets hit by chemistry going awry, and then other organs, until after 30 to 60 minutes only advanced nanotechnology would be able to put things back they the way they belong. But someday advanced nanotech will do that, pushing out the limits of resuscitation medicine far beyond what can be done today.

Im not an expert but as far as I know the electricity is still there as is the exact structure of the brain,

Electrical activity stops after about 40 seconds of cardiac arrest, but that doesn't matter anyway. When people are resuscitated after several minutes of cardiac arrest, they have short-term memory loss, but everything else is still there. RAM vs. non-volatile storage.

so why are they dead?

Death is a legal/societal label, not a physical event. Being pronounced dead is like being pronounced married. People can be in the same biological state (say, suffering from two minutes of cardiac arrest), and one will be declared dead, and one not. It all depends on whether they have a mark on their chart called "no code" or DNR (do not resuscitate) status.

How is it possible to bring someone back from this state?

As you now see, there is no such state. There is therefore no problem. I highly recommend the essay

http://www.alcor.org...nalogWorld.html

---BrianW

[onsre]

I think that Cryonicists are the only truly immortalists. We really seek physical immortallity and rely in technological advances for our eventual reanimation. Hurray to Cryonics!

[jbmichaels]

To honestly believe that there is some logical reason for the creators of Cryo institutions to actually revive the dead is the equivalent of an impotent man having a goat penis transplant. I do believe in SF we have found the death gene, or at least one of them and can extend life 6x in the near future, but the idea of freezing
people who no one really cares or wants revived is beyond logic.

Perhaps an Einstein or great musician or writer or poet, perhaps - but of what good is a person who really adds nothing to society, will be a grade A gene disaster after regulated cloning and gene revolution for all future born humans, such a person would be worthy of only a zoo exhibition if that.

Silly is the word coming to mind, with Viagra starved oldsters blowing up their hearts or old sagging female faces blown up with silly putty injections which make their lips look like old Congo women (no racial slur intended) in the dusty archives
of National Geographics.

Money is the word here. Money made playing upon the ignorance and desperate hope, as a medium conducting a seance trying to contact the dead.

The Cryo corps will be closed down one by one and plugs pulled and then and oh so - how terribly trajic as the worms commence their delayed feasts or the incinerators rumble in the background.

Oh brilliant brilliant men and scientists, how you are so like native witchdoctors dancing around a fire. Doctors ignorant of energy fields and non invasive way
to cure disease, rushing in an flood phenobarbital into the dying brain as you split the skull and bore holes which in the resurrection would be as about as useful as
the cracked organs which would massively hemorage upon revival.

Worthy of a good comedy film or Mad magazine article - forget freezing people -
conquer death and unlock the mystery of the genetic links which are our own
deadly assassins. There is a sucker born every minute, and now instead a frozen
peoplecicle.

John Bell
CEO
Crystalware
Immortality Research and Super Computer TA15 inventors

[bgwowk]

...but the idea of freezing
people who no one really cares or wants revived is beyond logic.

See http://www.alcor.org...aq07.html#today

Perhaps an Einstein or great musician or writer or poet, perhaps - but of what good is a person who really adds nothing to society...

See http://www.alcor.org...ablequotes.html, where you will find:

"The individual who freezes himself or herself to come back in the future makes the assumption he will be a contributor to that society and that they would want him."

Comment: To suggest that human beings have no intrinsic value, but only have value based on whether they "contribute to society" or whether others "want" them, is ethically questionable. If someone made this suggestion regarding care of the handicapped, the elderly, or indeed any medical patient, people would be shocked.

Money is the word here. Money made playing upon the ignorance and desperate hope, as a medium conducting a seance trying to contact the dead.

See http://www.alcor.org...yths.html#myth1

The Cryo corps will be closed down one by one and plugs pulled and then and oh so - how terribly trajic as the worms commence their delayed feasts or the incinerators rumble in the background.

Do I detect a note of eager anticipation?

Doctors ignorant of energy fields and non invasive way
to cure disease...

You're kidding, right?

---BrianW

[acrid]

In America or perhaps Western Europe, people may amount to some value, and thier families and the good scientist and doctors will keep them "well". But no super power remains super forever, and peace is there to be broken, people are selfish killers in general. We created society's to manage survival, we care for family members but john doe can rot, we don't admit it but when it comes down to it, man-kind is primal. I have seen a execution where a young man was put on the ground and decapitated in some russian province. I can't imagine what this kid did to deserve such a brutal fate. People don't have value everywhere, many places people are worthless unless they contribute some way. Just because things are honky-dory now dosn't mean it will stay that way forever, change is imminent.

[acrid]

...just like the fall of the roman empire.

[bgwowk]

...just like the fall of the roman empire.

Same question for you: Do I detect a note of eager anticipation?

---BrianW

[thefirstimmortal]

X-Message-Number: 982
Date: 13 Jul 92 16:40:33 EDT
From: Charles Platt <71042.3557@CompuServe.COM>

It has been suggested that rather than throwing people out,
Alcor could refuse to accept certain people as members in the
first place. But on what basis? Criminal record? Bad credit
rating? I think this idea is really foolish. It makes Alcor
into an authoritarian organization and threatens people, in
effect, with denial of life. Whatever happened to those great
libertarian ideals of openness and freedom?

I am very, very depressed by the tendency that I see here to
clamp down, deny, restrict, and control. It is so incredibly
easy to lose sight of an ideal. It is very hard ever to get
it back. The US Constitution is a fine document whose
provisions have been eroded to the point where some of them
now seem irretrievable. Surely everyone understands this? In
which case, can't we learn from it?

For a couple of weeks, Michael Paulle was going around
saying, "This is the organization that once said they would
have frozen Adolf Hitler. But some of them want to throw me
out. I guess that makes me worse than Hitler."

[thefirstimmortal]

X-Message-Number: 990
Date: 15 Jul 92 10:59:13 EDT
From: Charles Platt <71042.3557@CompuServe.COM>
Subject: CRYONICS


Brian Wowk has a valid point when he says that cryonics
organizations will be reviving people in the future, and
therefore my concerns about "Who will bother to revive us?"
are not justified. However, I think that there is still some
reason to think that generally speaking, one's chances of
coming back are slightly greater if there are fewer people
frozen.

There are many scenarios. I could imagine, for instance, that
cryonics might become regulated by a federal agency, which
would impose a limit on the number of resuscitations per
year. I can also imagine that some cryonics organizations
could go out of business before all of their patients were
revived.

There are dozens of other scenarios. They all share the same
two propositions: 1) It is impossible to predict the future,
and 2) Generally speaking, a resource in short supply is more
valuable than a resource that is plentiful.

[jaydfox]

And why not freeze Hitler? What about doctors without borders? The doctor doesn't decide who gets to live and die, unless there really is an either-or decision to be made (e.g. triage, or whatever it's called).

Besides which, if we're all technophiles who are assuming that the future will have super-duper-advanced technology that will be able to reconstruct our bodies and repair the freezer burn on our brains, then why not assume that the Hitlers of the world could be reformed? Hell, since we should regard this from a libertarian perspective, assume that they won't be forced to be reformed, but that any attempts on their part to return to their old ways will be met by the usual legal roadblocks. And assume that we will be enlighted enough that they will not rise to power in political circles.

Sheesh, if Hitler wanted to go back to being an artist, then why not?

[thefirstimmortal]

And why not freeze Hitler?  What about doctors without borders?  The doctor doesn't decide who gets to live and die, unless there really is an either-or decision to be made (e.g. triage, or whatever it's called).

Besides which, if we're all technophiles who are assuming that the future will have super-duper-advanced technology that will be able to reconstruct our bodies and repair the freezer burn on our brains, then why not assume that the Hitlers of the world could be reformed?  Hell, since we should regard this from a libertarian perspective, assume that they won't be forced to be reformed, but that any attempts on their part to return to their old ways will be met by the usual legal roadblocks.  And assume that we will be enlighted enough that they will not rise to power in political circles.

Sheesh, if Hitler wanted to go back to being an artist, then why not?

No argument here. By the way, your new avatar is spectacular

[jaydfox]

No, I understand the practical concerns. However, at some level the best route we could take would be to discourage such persons from applying to Alcor, et al., or at least to go out of our way to not encourage them from joining. But to go so far as to actually deny them would undermine our credibility of claiming that cryonics is "first aid" or a "medical procedure" rather than just an alternate form of embalming our dead.

[jaydfox]

So we're agreed then? Deny no one. But, no one should send Alcor brochures to members of al Qaeda, Hezbollah (sp?), Hammas, or the Bush family.