[extropy-chat] Fwd: Robert Anton Wilson 1932 - 2007 (2)

[Robert Bradbury]

On 1/13/07, Jay Dugger <jay.dugger at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I agree with you that cryonics shouldn't serve as an article of faith.
> Humanity has quite enough blind belief, and could use a lot less of
> that. I agree with the obvious: cryonics remains unproven.
>

Depends upon your definition of cryonics.  I think I've seen a number in the
press sometime in the last year that there are ~80,000 people walking around
alive on the planet today whom I would classify products of "reanimation"
(via freezing & thawing of embryos used in IVF).  So, *only* if you narrowly
define cryonics as the freezing and reanimation of an entire human being can
you assert it is "unproven".

Indeed, if you *press* people who will readily eat frozen fish, frozen
shrimp, frozen meat, frozen vegetables, even entire frozen entrees, and who
can hardly claim that freezing eggs, sperm, embryos, skin cells, etc.
doesn't work, I think you will find them floundering in circa 1966 "It is
impossible to go to the moon" argument land.  The basis for the argument
isn't that it is "impossible".  The basis for the argument is entirely
"nobody has done it -- yet".  Indeed, probably 99.99+% of those 300,000,000
people don't know enough to begin to explain *why* suspension and
reanimation of entire human beings doesn't currently work.

Robert
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