[ExI] [New_Cryonet] Re: Economics of Cryonics

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from holyspiritdenier <holyspiritdenier at gmail.com> -----

From: holyspiritdenier <holyspiritdenier at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2012 10:00:06 -0700
To: New_Cryonet at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [New_Cryonet] Re: [ExI] Economics of Cryonics
Reply-To: New_Cryonet at yahoogroups.com

Cryonics costs money and involves things you can do in the here-and-now,
whereas transhumanism costs nothing and involves make-believe about things
in "the future." I suspect these facts create a barrier which many
transhumanists refuse to cross.

Transhumanists also have more and more trouble maintaining their illusions
about "technological acceleration" when their own celebrities like Peter
Thiel (a speaker at several transhumanism-themed conferences) argue that
most forms of engineering & technology have stagnated over the past 40
years.

I have to admit that I saw this differently as an unsophisticated youth
from Oklahoma. Robert Ettinger makes an explicit connection between the
goals of the cryonics movement as he saw them and a transhumanist outlook
in his book *Man Into Superman,* a book I read as a teenager in 1974 and
which got me interested in cryonics. Ettinger even predicts accelerating
change in that book, back when the idea seemed plausible given the
introduction of new technologies after the Second World War. With a longer
baseline behind us, however, we can see that except in computing, we've
wound up depending on many technologies which haven't changed that much
since the 1970's.

Given the disconnection between the transhumanist conceit and the
observable reality, I would like to see the cryonics movement decouple from
transhumanism so that we can pursue our own practical goals apart from the
geek fads of the month.

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 7:34 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> **
>
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> -----
>
> From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2012 06:37:09 -0700
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Economics of Cryonics
> Reply-To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>
> On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 5:00 AM, Giovanni Santostasi
> <gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It is a pity the transhumanist community is not more active to reply to
> > articles like this:
> >
> >
> http://io9.com/5889638/the-economic-problems-with-cryogenically-freezing-your-body?popular=true
> >
> > And to create information that is depicting cryonics in more realistic
> and
> > positive light.
>
> As articles go, this one is relatively accurate.
>
> I don't know how much overlap there is between cryonics and
> transhumanism. I get the impression it's more than 10 percent but
> considerably less than 50%.
>


> Anyone have an actual figure? Max?
>
> Keith
>
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> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
> --
> Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
> __________________________________________________________
> ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
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>
>  
>



-- 
Mark Plus

"If wishing doesn't work, try working." (Robert Ettinger)

----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE