Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: alan@oz.nm.paradyne.com (Alan Lovejoy) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: The Cryonic Nation Message-ID: Date: 12 Sep 89 20:58:10 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Paradyne, Largo, Florida Lines: 45 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu In article mmm@cup.portal.com writes: >Suppose all the cryonicists had their own country. With nanotechnology >they would be rich as Saudis and immortal as the gods on Mount Olympus. >Assuming they didn't feel a need to reproduce, their population would be >stable. (They could reproduce at the suicide rate.) >Now think about the outside world. Here would be the teeming mass of >humanity. You can't force them to take birth control pills, except by the >barrel of a gun. Some of them are starving. If you use nanotechnology >to give them free food, they reproduce some more and run out of >something else such as water, living space, or maybe even air. Why assume that only cryonicists want to live extremely long lives? Not all immortalists are cryonicists, and not all cryonicists are immortalists. And for that matter, not all nanotechnologists are either immortalists or cryonicists. Why assume that immortalists and/or cryonicists and/or nanotechnologists will be more willing than average to limit their reproduction? Why assume that non-immortalists and/or non-cryonicists and/or non-nanotechnologists will be less willing than everyone else to limit their reproduction in the face of acute overcrowding? Perhaps the blue-eyed people of the world will form their own "nation" in response to the threat of being crowded out by the brown-eyed devils (or did that happen already? :-))? If the 200 or so cryonicists of the world pose such a threat as some recent postings have suggested, then there just isn't any hope for mankind. There are numerous groups that are far more sinister than the cryonicists whose membership exceeds that of all cryonics organizations combined by orders of magnitude. I never really realized how radical an idea immortalism was until I took concrete steps to express my immortalism by signing up for cryonic suspension. You'd think I'd proclaimed that the Earth orbits the sun! Of course, Gallileo wasn't the first person to discover that his ideas were more controversial than he thought, and he certainly wasn't the last either. He imagined, like I did, that it was merely a question of fact. Not so. Most people don't even seem to care what the scientific basis for immortalism or cryonics may be. That's not the issue that gets people so upset, not at all! The theology of death is pervasive in all human societies, and heresy is NOT taken lightly. ____"Congress shall have the power to prohibit speech offensive to Congress"____ Alan Lovejoy; alan@pdn; 813-530-2211; AT&T Paradyne: 8550 Ulmerton, Largo, FL. Disclaimer: I do not speak for AT&T Paradyne. They do not speak for me. Motto: If nanomachines will be able to reconstruct you, YOU AREN'T DEAD YET.