[extropy-chat] hope you can comprehend

[KAZ]

----- Original Message ----
From: Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org>
To: KAZ <kazvorpal at yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 10:16:08 AM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] hope you can comprehend
 

On Thu, May 18, 2006 at 07:04:57AM -0700, KAZ wrote:
> > Five thousand years ago, the rational thing to do was mummification; what could you lose?
 
> It wasn't a rational thing, it was a religion thing.
 
No, because religion was as close as they had to science, at the time.
 
Remember, religion started, in part, as really poorly thought-out science.
 
"Why is there thunder? Well, I figure it's because giants are rolling the moon across the clouds".
 
They just didn't have scienfic method, yet.
 
If you were an ancient egyptian, you were pretty sure that NOT being mummified meant you were just plain dead, therefore getting mummified was your best shot at an afterlife. It's not like they had cryonics and the hope of nano-rebuilding of human cells.
 
> The difference between mummification and cryonics is the same
> difference as voodoo and modern medicine.
 
Precisely. At one time modern medicine didn't exist, and a shaman was better than nothing for many kinds of ailments.
 
> Remember, they poo-pooed sterile technique and microbial
> theory of infection, too.
 
Indeed, and now they've gone too far the other direction, where "germs" and "disinfection" are a societal substitute for "that is unclean, taboo, it must be purified", and people over-clean their homes until their immune systems atrophe and they become more vulnerable to illness instead of less.
 
> > Today, it's cryogenics.
 
> It's cryonics. Cryogenics is the science and technology of deep temperatures.
 
thpbpbpbp
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