> On Dec 15, 2017, at 3:55 AM, Douglas Lucas <[email protected]> wrote: > > Rudy Rucker on cryonics: > > === > Well, I’ve been friends with the cryonicist Charles Platt for about > twenty years so I’ve grown a little jaded about this. So I’ll go ahead > and give you a somewhat obnoxious answer along the lines of what I might > say to Charles. I’d much rather rot in the ground. What’s the big > problem with dying anyway? I mean, what’s so frigging special about my > one particular mind? I don’t want to be God, I want to be a human with > my spark of God Consciousness. Think of a field of daisies: they bloom, > they wither, and in the spring they grow again. Who wants to see the > same stupid daisy year after year, especially with a bunch of crappy > iron-lung-type equipment bolted to it? In my unhumble opinion, you can > never really reach any serenity till you fully accept the fundamental > fact of your mortality. It’s the great Koan that life hands you: Hi, > here you are, isn’t this great, you’re going to die. Deal with it. This > said, can cryonics work? I think dry nanotechnology is probably a > dead-end. As I argue in Saucer Wisdom, wet nanotechnology, a.k.a. > biotech, is where it’s going to be at. In other words, if you want a new > body five hundred years from now, the way to get one will be to have > someone grow one from a clone based on a copy of your DNA, not by trying > to retrofit your kilos of frozen meat. The hard part, of course, is > replicating your mind — and remember that you have somatic knowledge in > your body as well as just in your brain. I have a feeling that copying a > mind from one host to the next will require a totally new breakthrough, > perhaps along the lines of Quantum Tantra. One final jab at cryonics. We > already have too many people, so why would any future society every put > any significant energy into bringing back the dead? How much energy will > the citizens of Year 3000 care to put into producing a brand new Ted > Wiilliams? You can rant all you like about contracts and trust funds you > set up, but God know it’s a simple thing for crooks to screw a dead > person out of his or her supposedly inviolate trust fund. Enron took > down California for billions last spring, even with a seemingly living > chief of state. > === > > Source: > http://turingchurch.com/2013/02/23/interview-with-rudy-rucker/ >
Thanks, I hadn’t seen that :) Rudy writes such fantastic books. John >> On 12/14/2017 11:40 PM, grarpamp wrote: >> https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html >> (Great blogs BTW) >> https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/knfcx/i_am_signed_up_for_cryonics_at_my_death_ama/ >> http://www.alcor.org/blog/hal-finney-becomes-alcors-128th-patient/ >> >> Cypherpunks will be needed in the future, even if only to break >> out of the Matrix. Avoid info death... >> >> >> Imagine a patient arriving in an ambulance to Hospital A, a typical >> modern hospital. The patient's heart stopped 15 minutes before the >> EMTs arrived and he is immediately pronounced dead at the hospital. >> What if, though, the doctors at Hospital A learned that Hospital B >> across the street had developed a radical new technology that could >> revive a patient anytime within 60 minutes after cardiac arrest with >> no long-term damage? What would the people at Hospital A do? >> >> Of course, they would rush the patient across the street to Hospital B >> to save him. If Hospital B did save the patient, then by definition >> the patient wouldn't actually have been dead in Hospital A, just >> pronounced dead because Hospital A viewed him as entirely and without >> exception doomed. >> >> What cryonicists suggest is that in many cases where today a patient >> is pronounced dead, they’re not dead but rather doomed, and that there >> is a Hospital B that can save the day—but instead of being in a >> different place, it's in a different time. It's in the future. >>
