VOLUME 4(3) 3rd QUARTER 2000 #15
News Notes
THE VENTURIST IS NOW ONLINE
You can now look up The Venturist at our website; the URL for the newsletter is: http://www.venturist.org/newsletter.htm. This means it is unnecessary to subscribe unless you specifically want the paper format. We will continue to provide it for those who so desire (people without computers, for instance).
FM-2030 SUSPENDED
A prominent futurist author and longtime cryonicist, FM-2030 deanimated July 8 and was suspended by Alcor Foundation. Born in Belgium in 1930 to an Iranian diplomat, Fereidoun M. Esfandiary had lived in 17 countries by the age of 11, was a basketball star in his teens, and served as a go-between for the U. N. in his twenties, where he put to use a fluency in four languages. In the 1960s he gained prominence for three novels, The Day of Sacrifice, The Beggar, and Identity Card. In the 1970s he started a popular series of books about the future which came to include Optimism 1, Up-Wingers, Tele spheres, and Are You a Transhuman? He changed his name to FM-2030 hoping to live to the year when he’d celebrate his 100th birthday. Those hopes were frustrated, but even in death FM was not about to give up, having chosen instead the option of cryopreservation, which was based in turn on a feeling about life and the future. In the introduction of Up-Wingers he summarizes this feeling, answering critics accusing him of being overly optimistic. “My regret is that I am not optimistic enough. It is not possible to project the fantastic worlds which will continue to open up to us in the coming years. Worlds which far transcend my most daring optimism.”
Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock, commented further on this book shortly after its publication in 1973: ‘The exhilarating voice of a new, non-mystical consciousness and a new, non-petty politics. With this reckless, visionary, headlong, infuriating little book, F. M. Esfandiary dares us to step outside our encaged historical selves and leap to a new stage of evolution.’
FM’s opinion on cryonics was briefly expressed in Are You a Transhuman?: ‘Sign up with a cryonic suspension organization. (There are several in the U. S. and in Europe.) In case all else fails you will be suspended in liquid nitrogen for reanimation at a later date.’ (Though actually the only cryonics organizations that currently freeze and store people are in the U. S., there are assisting groups in the U. K. and elsewhere.)
Not everyone shared his optimism, as FM was well aware. In Optimism One (repeated in Up-Wingers) he attributes this to four main causes: (1) lack of self-esteem, (2) guilt from puritan upbringing, (3) lack of historical perspective, (4) a legacy of theological and philosophical pessimism. To break the grip of this pessimistic outlook FM proposed recognition of recent progress coupled with acceptance of the unlimited potential that appears to exist for future betterment. The betterment will not be of the external sort only (new, improved gadgets and conveniences) but, very significantly, will affect our own physical makeup. It should, for example, include the control and reversal of aging and ultimately extend to a complete remaking of the human organism into something that is more than human physically, mentally, and even morally. Once we accept the open-ended future as our proper destiny, we can act rationally and uninhibitedly to bring it about.
True, FM’s philosophical outlook did leave grounds for controversy even with most immortalists. In Up-Wingers he outlines a proposal for doing away with the family and raising children in communal ‘Child Center Homes.’ No longer would people have offspring through sex but donated sperm and egg cells would be artificially combined by experts who would judge the suitability of producing a child with the expected characteristics. Children, born of surrogate mothers, would be raised unaware of their biological parents and vice versa. A child instead, through visitations of interested parties, would ‘be conditioned from its very first day out of the womb to develop a sense of security from non-exclusive relationships with many mothers and fathers.’
Everybody, then, is everybody’s child and/ or parent, and the world becomes united in love, harmony, and mutual respect. A noble ideal, certainly, one that was interestingly foreshadowed, somewhat, in Plato’s Republic some twenty-three centuries earlier. Attempts to implement such ideas have so far proved unsuccessful. We are, it seems, much too much the product of conditioning by natural selection, which favors our selfish genes and the sort of exclusive bonding that occurs in families with natural parents. Perhaps, with the conquest of death, we can do much better than this when making offspring will no longer be very important anyway. (As if to confirm this and practice his cosmopolitan, citizen-of- the-world philosophy, FM never married, not wishing to develop an exclusive attachment to one person.) Children will then become a rarity, or in a sense we’ll all be eternal children.
Some lines near the end of Up-Wingers are worth quoting:
‘We Up-Wingers are building a New World which is resigned to nothingóno pain suffering or death.
‘We want to overcome death. Do not ask us to accept death. We are prepared only to accept life.
‘The day will come when the death of one single human any human will be so rare and tragic that the news flashed across the planet will stun humanity.
‘Let us hasten that day when death will be something of our past ahead of us only Life.’
This, of course, is what we immortalists have been trying to say to the world for decades now, though so far few are listening. FM did listen, and tried to get others to do so. He will be missed though not, we hope, forever. Meanwhile, his vision of the future can inspire us, even if not every detail is implemented as he set forth, or as any of us today can quite imagine. We can work toward a world without death in which every person has lasting value.
CRYOPRESERVATION PROGRESS, APPEAL FOR FUNDS
The following was posted by Paul Wakfer as message #14049 on CryoNet (message dated July 8). It is reprinted, with approval, as a public service; the Venturist organization assumues no responsibility for its promotional content.
PERFECTED BRAIN SLICE CRYOPRESERVATION NOW IN SIGHT
At the recent Fourth Alcor Conference on Life Extension Technologies Dr. Greg Fahy presented current experimental results from the Hippocampal Slice Cryopreservation Project (HSCP) of which he is chief scientist and co-principal investigator. Now in its second year of operation, the HSCP is being conducted at a research institution associated with a major Southern California university by Yuri Pichugin as experimentalist, and is funded by the Institute for Neural Cryobiology (INC). Since that presentation, confirmation of those results and additional progress have been made.
The following research milestones have now been reached:
1. Stable and reproducible experimental procedures have been perfected for dissecting, handling & maintaining rat hippocampal slices with minimal harm, for vitrification solution (VS) addition & removal, for cooling, vitrification & rewarming, and for assaying cellular viability.
2. Using a potassium/sodium ratio assay for cellular viability (cells need to actively maintain this ratio in order to stay alive), addition & removal of the VS currently used in the HSCP yields viabilities in the range of about 50% of the viability of fresh, untreated control slices. Slices vitrified in this VS have shown no injury attributable to vitrification & warming per se in two separate experiments, and the reproducible cellular viability of such vitrified hippocampal slices is now at 53% of untreated controls. The primary challenge, then, is to reduce injury associated with the VS itself.
3. Work is about to begin with a new VS which has allowed 21st Century Medicine researchers to achieve 95% cellular viability after testing the VS on rabbit kidney slices. In addition, work is continuing on methods of adding and removing VS that may be less damaging. Finally, it is possible that longer recovery times may further improve the ultimate viability of the slices. All in all, prospects for further improvement appear excellent. The ultimate goal of the HSCP is perfected cryopreservation of brain hippocampal slices. This requires not only high cellular viability, but clear demonstration of functioning cellular interconnections. More details about this advanced global viability assay may be found at the INC website listed below. Once high cellular viability is achieved (which now looks to be very realistic before the end of the year 2000), work will begin on that final clear demonstration. The many generous donors of over $100,000.00 spent so far to support this project are to be commended for their judgment and foresight. However, more money is now needed if the HSCP is to continue its success and complete its original project goals, which now more than ever before appear to be fully attainable.
Please consider donating money to support the continuation of this important work which in all likelihood will hasten the achievement of perfected, fully-reversible, longterm human cryopreservation.
INC is a registered California Public Benefit Corporation (501(c)(3)- charitable) and all donors receive an official receipt which may be used to reduce US and California taxable income.
Checks or other financial instruments should be made payable to Institute for Neural Cryobiology and mailed to the address below. Any amount is welcome. The Institute for Neural Cryobiology 238 Davenport Rd #240 Toronto, ON M5R 1J6 Canada http://www.neurocryo.org email: wakfer@gte.net Phone:416-968-6291, Fax:559-663-5511.
In as few words as possible: Do our desires for a quick suspension take precedence over the ‘needs of the state’? Thank you I await your response.
Paul Wakfer
MORE ON THE ASILOMAR CONFERENCE
I was fortunate in being able to attend the Alcor life extension conference which was held at Asilomar, California, June 16-18. The proceedings are being well summarized in Alcor’s newsletter Cryonics. (The third Quarter 2000 has part 1 of 2, with the sequel to appear in the following issue.) I understand also that tapes will be available of all the lectures. Some additional remarks on the presentations will be found later in ‘News Notes.’ What follows here are a few highlights and impressions as I remember them, including an informal meeting of the Venturists and supporters, with discussion of our plans for a cryonics community.
First, the gory details, in skeletal form. Here is the schedule of main events as they actually happened, with approximate times:
Friday, Jun. 16. 7-9 p.m.: registration and reception.
Saturday, Jun. 17.
8-9 a.m.: registration.
8:45-9 a.m.: welcome and opening remarks by Ralph Merkle.
9-9:45 a.m.: ‘How to reach the 22nd century alive and healthy,’ by K. Eric Drexler.
10-10:30 a.m.: ‘Our evolving definitions of death: looking ahead’ by James J. Hughes.
10:30-11 a.m.: ‘Who’s afraid of freezer burn?’ by Gregory Stock.
11:15 a.m.-12 noon.: ‘Fear of death vs. the rational process’ by Robert Newport.
2-2:45 p.m.: ‘Identifying aging genes by using DNA monoarrays’ by Glenna Burmer.
2:45-3:30 p.m.: ‘Human therapeutic cloning’ by Michael West.
4-4:45 p.m.: ‘Molecular control of ice formation’ by Brian Wowk.
4:45-5:30 p.m.: ‘Cryobiological research at 21st. Century Medicine’ by Gregory Fahy.
7:30-10 p.m. ‘A talent for living: cracking the myths of mortality’ by Natasha Vita-More,
followed by panel discussion by Gregory Fahy, Ralph Merkle, and Max More.
Sunday, Jun. 18.
9-9:15 a.m.: announcements by Ralph Merkle. 9:15-9:45 a.m. ‘A discussion on wealth preservation strategies’ by Ralph Merkle and Linda Chamberlain.
9:45-10:15 a.m.: ‘Nanomedicine and cryostasis’ by Ralph Merkle.
10:15- 11:45 a.m.: book signing: Nanosystems (vol. 1) by Robert Freitas.
1:30-2 p.m.: ‘Setting your internal clock’ by Richard Morales.
2- 2:30 p.m.: ‘Gene expression profile of the aging process’ by Thomas A. Prolla.
3-4 p.m.: ‘A cryobiological research and reanimation laboratory’ by Stephen Valentine.
4- 5 p.m.: ‘Introduction to Alcor and cryostasis’ by Linda Chamberlain.
7:30-10 p.m.: Alcor signup seminar.
In addition to these regularly scheduled events there was the informal Venturist meeting, which started at 7 p.m., Sunday evening. In all, I thought, an embarrassment of riches and probably a better cryonics conference than any other yet held.
Perhaps the most significant work covered was that having to do with aging research, the principal speakers being Glenna Burmer, Michael West, and Thomas Prolla. It is clear that aging research has entered the molecular domain where it ought to be headquartered, and much is now being learned.
It can only be a matter of time before this complicated and still mysterious process will be brought under control, slowed, reversed, and eliminated.
Next in importance I would rank the cryobiological work at 21st Century Medicine, well summarized by Brian Wowk and Greg Fahy. Much has been accomplished here, and in particular the toxicity problem that plagued earlier work seems nearly overcome. The big breakthroughs, in which organs will be restored to functioning state after indefinite shelf life at low temperature, are still to come, but the feeling was expressed that maybe only a few months more would suffice. With this sort of advance the brain too could be stored indefinitely, to be reanimated when a suitable body could be created for it. It is well to keep in mind, of course, that the promise of a breakthrough is not the same as a breakthrough. Still, the progress reported was impressive.
The other talks were interesting too, and I was particularly struck by Steven Valentine’s presentation, which outlined plans for a multimillion dollar facility for cryonics-related research and other activities.
Where’s the money going to come from? Initially, Saul Kent and Bill Faloon, who appear to be in line to contribute in the tens of millions of dollars. But it will probably take more than that; fundraising at a level unheard-of in our small movement will be necessary. It remains to be seen how far this project will go, but there is no doubt about Valentine’s ability to arouse enthusiasm where others simply would not be taken seriously.
Of lesser moment but still significant, the Venturist meeting was important because the idea of a cryonics community is important. Cryonicists want a place to gather just the same as other groups.
And the needs of cryonicists become more acute as they get older and, all too often, more lonely and isolated. There are many cases of such people who either didn’t get frozen when their time came, or got substandard suspensions. At the gathering plans were discussed for construction of rental facilities on some recently acquired property north of Phoenix, Arizona (see last issue). The 40 acre site is substantially more than any acquired before for this purpose, and it appears that considerably more funding will be available this time around. (An earlier, unsuccessful attempt at a rental community for cryonicists was stymied by budgetary limitations, as so many projects are.) Once again, progress and promises, with the hoped-for outcome yet to be seen, but hopeful at least.
FOREVER FOR ALL IS FINALLY PUBLISHED
My immortalist philosophical treatise, Forever For All, is now in print. It can be previewed at
I’ll close with a couple of comments. First, in the book itself I’ve acknowledged the assistance of various persons, but I want to extend special, additional thanks here to Lisa Lock who did a fine job copyediting my manuscript. In the last issue I noted, a bit sourly, that the editing was ‘somewhat expensive,’ and didn’t give further detail. Yes, it was, to the tune of $747, which is a bit of a bite for the likes of your editor who has not yet attained the status of independent means (a condition I think of as ‘manumission’ how rightly so!). But in fact Lisa, a cryonicist herself, did this task under a price discount in just one month and, I think, very definitely improved the more than 500 pages of prose. Again, my thanks.
My second comment concerns FM- 2030. I’m still learning about this remarkable person and his philosophy, notwithstanding that for years I’ve had a couple of his books, autographed by himself, that I didn’t get around to reading. In chapter 2 of my book I attempt to give a brief history of the immortalist movement and its antecedents. There is a lot of ground to cover, and inevitably many details are omitted. One, it happens, is mention of FM and his books; other significant writings steal the show, such as the works of Ettinger. I’ll have a chance to redress this in a second edition of my book, which could appear in a few years. Meanwhile we can take note of FM and wish him well on his icy journey to the future.
RALPH’S JOURNEY:
CRITIQUE RAISES CRY OF FALSE ADVERTISING,
INSPIRES REBUTTAL
Eric Daly, writing under the pen name Fangdogger, reviewed Dave Pizer’s novel Ralph’s Journey at the Amazon web site where the book is sold. Charging false advertizing, his critique reads in part: ‘The description of this book as presented here ... and on the back of the book all take[s] place in the last 20 pages! Up to then it’s the story of a car salesman. I thought the extensive character build-up was to give depth to the people after they are revived, but all they do is say Hi! With a fas[c]inating subject like this why on earth would you devote almost the entire book to the story of a car salesman[‘]s life? I felt ripped off.’
A review I posted a few days later, reworked from a review I previously posted at the site, reads in part: ‘It should be understood that this is a book about getting to the future more than having gotten there, a straight fictional piece with a science fictional twist at the end. Most of the action concerns Ralph’s life in the 20th century and his efforts to reach the future (his ‘journey’), not what transpires when he does finally succeed. This is an emphasis I appreciate since it relates to the concerns of here and now.’
And so it goes. Certainly neither Dave nor I nor Amazon intended to falsely advertise the book. But it goes to show how touchy and slippery some of these issues can be. People will see things in certain ways that are not always easy to anticipate. Mr. Daly also posted the essence of his short and critical review on CryoNet, and others responded. There seemed to be a general agreement that, inasmuch as it is noted that Ralph awakens in the 22nd century, the expectation was for a predominantly science- fictional story, unlike what is actually there, and indeed, some explanation is called for. Dave was drawing a lot on personal experience when he constructed this tale, which carried over to editing help he received from myself and Steve Harris. The science-fictional element, when Ralph finally awakens after his long, temporal journey, is an endcap.
As I indicate above, I think there is definitely a place for this in fictional literature, because getting to the future is, in fact, very important. Thus, an entertaining fantasy that takes place after one has gotten there may be a fine thing, but we must not overlook the fact that we are talking about something (cryonics) that, if it works, is to enable our personal survival. The book thus has a philosophical message that transcends its function as entertainment.
Antiaging Progress
As seems usual with matters relating to aging research, there are exciting new findings, but treatment to extend maximum lifespan, other than calorie restriction, still seems some distance away. Perhaps the most exciting recent development, announced only a week ago (September 22), involves this very effect. Mice and rats live up to 40 percent longer if their diets are restricted to 70 percent or less of the normal calorie intake, where ‘normal’ means the creatures get all they want, that is, are fed ‘ad libitum.’ The restricted diets must still contain all necessary vitamins and nutrients. The life-extending property has long been known from laboratory studies, but why it works has remained a mystery. A possible insight now comes, not from studies of rodents or mammals, but yeast. (The metabolism of yeast resembles that of animals in many significant ways.) As reported in Science by Dr. Leonard Guarente at MIT, calorie restriction in yeast reduces demands on a gene protection system, which is then able to better guard against the wrong genes being activated as the cell ages.
The protection system itself involves a gene known as SIR2 (‘silent information regulator number two’). If the gene is disrupted the yeast cells’ longevity is compromised. SIR2 in turn uses a substance known as NAD which, in a complicated chemical cascade, results in denying cells access to genes whose expression would otherwise have life-shortening effects. NAD, however, is also used in glucose metabolism. A well-fed cell will deplete its supply of NAD as it metabolizes, thereby shortchanging the SIR2 gene and shortening its own life. At least this seems a probable explanation of the effects that have been observed. Identification of the critical role of NAD opens the possibility that replenishing it in an animal or human would confer the same life extending benefits as a draconian, low-calorie diet, something that few people today are eager or willing to undertake.
‘If the find can be translated to animals, it will be very important,’ said Dr. Thomas Prolla, a geneticist and antiaging researcher at the University of Wisconsin. It would provide ‘a starting point in the design of drugs which would have a broad effect on human health, including cancer.’ Dr. Prolla sees possibilities for life extension beyond that observed in laboratory animals under calorie restriction. ‘I don’t think a 30-40 percent range should be considered some kind of maximum.’
As it happens, Prolla was one of the speakers at the Alcor conference, and here it seems appropriate to summarize what was said there by him and the other principal speakers on aging-related research . Prolla’s own talk, ‘gene expression profiles of the aging process,’ noted that currently calorie restriction is the only method known for retarding aging. A newly developed technique uses DNA chips to precisely identify age-related changes in genetic expression and offers promise for determining exactly what is going on. The talk was given on June 18, less than two months before the above-mentioned paper by Guarente appeared in Science. Prolla said that the mechanism of aging in yeast has been determined and referred to the work involving NAD. He cautioned, however, that this alone is not the whole story of aging in mammals, and added, ‘I don’t think one should try to understand aging in terms of single cures. In a sense that’s what Lenny [Guarente] is trying to do. I disagree with him on that.’ Among the independent, causative elements in aging Prolla mentioned telomere loss, genetic instability, apoptosis (programmed cell death), and glycation (damaging cross-linking of molecules as a side effect of glucose metabolism). Each of these might require its own elaborate protocol to defeat.
Glenna Burmer, founder and chief scientific officer of LifeSpan BioSciences, spoke at length the day before (June 17) on identifying the genes active in aging through DNA chips or, as they are also called, microarrays, and here, monoarrays. Basically, a fantastic amount of data is pouring in, and it is now possible to determine which genes are turned on (expressed) or off in a disease or in the aging process. But there remains the big problem of how the genes actually accomplish their effects, whether good or bad. And after this, designing interventive therapies to combat the bad effects.
Needless to say, there is a lot to be done. There are many thousands of possibilities with the genes that are expressed, for instance. But DNA chips provide at least a doorway into this complicated biochemical ballgame. Computers, for example, will now have substantial data on which to crunch. A second speaker on aging on the 17th was Michael West, a founder of Geron Corporation (Menlo Park, California) and later, Advanced Cell Technologies or ACT ( Boston Area). West’s talk on therapeutic cloning explored the idea of growing replacement organs from single cells taken from the host body. With such an approach one of your own cells would be induced to divide repeatedly and develop into tissue and structure of a desired type. Whole new organs could be created that would be genetic twins of the natural parts in your body. So you could get a new liver or heart to replace an aging, disease-riddled old one. The new organ would be free of disease, but it would also be desirable to reset its biological clock to an earlier age than your own. Here West was hopeful. Using his method cows have now been cloned with telomeres longer than normal newborn. The same approach should apply in creating rejuvenated human organs, so your replacement parts would indeed start off young again.
Another development, not connected with either the conference speakers or Dr. Guarente’s work, offers another possibility of extending the maximum life span. One caveat is that, as in the case of the yeast cells, the method has so far only been tested in a tiny, non-mammalian creature, in this case Caenorhabditis elegans, a roundworm whose simple structure and easy availability make it a popular subject of scientific study. Normally C. Elegans lives up to about one month. This maximum was extended almost 50 percent or an extra two weeks through two synthetic, catalytic chemical agents that reverse a type of injury known as free-radical damage. Work with mice is now being planned; its outcome will be an important indicator of the possible usefulness of this approach in humans. The work to date has been conducted by a 10- member research team, starting in the laboratory of Douglas Wallace of Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. Sources: 1. Nicholas Wade, ‘A Pill to Extend Life? Don't Dismiss the Notion Too Quickly,’
A FEW MORE QUICK NOTES ON THE CONFERENCE
Eric Drexler, who was the keynote speaker, argued forcefully that the outlook for cryonics is actually quite hopeful even with present, damage-inducing freezing. Information, the crucially important item, is not that easy to destroy and should survive in frozen brain tissue. The three ‘myths of mortality’ that were rebutted in the panel discussion were (1) immortality would be boring (Max More); (2) cryonics is radical (Ralph Merkle); (3) the free-radical theory of aging has validity (Greg Fahy). Fahy’s position, challenging the long-standing and well-known free radical theory, is controversial among immortalists. He himself conceded that some deleterious effects do occur by this mechanism, but continued to insist that it was not the principal cause of aging that some have seen in it.
The Venturists and Venturism
This is based on the article About Us which can be found at the Venturist website,
The Society for Venturism is a 501- (c)(3), tax-exempt, nonprofit organization which was incorporated in Arizona in 1986. Originally known as the Church of Venturism, its present name was adopted in 1990. The Venturist Bylaws list, among the primary objectives and purposes of the Society, ‘To advocate and promote the worldwide conquest of death and the continuation and enhancement of life through technological means, including cryonic suspension.’ † The name ‘Venturism’ comes from ‘venture,’ an adventure with an element of risk. The greatest such venture is life itself, and we Venturists take human life and its potential very seriously. We believe in realizing the fullest of which we are capable as human beings as a start. We feel that humanity must assume responsibility for its own betterment. We advocate the application of reason, science, and technology for the benefit of humankind, and feel that benefit will follow if our actions are rightly directed, under moral principles that are tested and validated by their consequences. We recognize that there are limits to our ability to solve the problems of life but also that our ability will improve with our knowledge, our wisdom, and our technology. We believe that death is an imposition on life, and something that can and should be eliminated through technological means. Thus we are really aiming at realizing the human potential by, in the end, becoming much more than human.
Eventually, we expect that aging and now-terminal illnesses will be curable. The body is a vastly complicated mechanism, and we certainly do not fully understand it yet, but we believe that its workings can be completely elucidated through scientific study. Understanding will lead to control: there is reason to think that we will eventually be able to build tiny machines out of individual atoms, that will greatly extend our control of events on the molecular level.
Thus it should be possible to send microscopic devices into cells to repair whatever is ailing them, such as diseases and aging, all of which have physical causes. But this, of course, is only part of the problem, since this technology will probably not be developed for some time, and there remains the issue of whether there is any way that those living today can benefit. We think there is, through cryonic suspension, or freezing the person at clinical death. In this way it should be possible to bring people back to life at a time when their diseases and aging can be cured, whether that is fifty or one hundred or more years from now. Again, we would invoke molecular devices, adapted to perform many specialized functions. Frozen, damaged tissue, for example, might be taken apart and repaired and reassembled, molecule by molecule, or atom by atom, at a low temperature, and put into a more viable form from which it could be rewarmed and revived.
This is only one possibility, and it may happen that something other than our biological tissue will be the best substrate for us to resume life when we are reanimated. We are open-minded about the prospects for the future and recognize that many good things could follow by means we can scarcely imagine today.
Not all of our focus is on the fantastic future, however. We also aim to establish, here and now, a supportive community of like-minded individuals who are interested cryonics. Such people in particular would benefit from sympathetic support and assistance as their time for suspension draws near.
The Venturist organization does not do any actual freezing, though our full members are required to be signed up for cryonic suspension. This is because we feel that cryonics offers by far the best prospect for defeating death if you should die today or any time soon. Thus it becomes a test of sincerity: if you really believe in the human conquest of death and reject mystical approaches and are logical about it, you will sign up. We are open to possible other preservation options too, such as chemical fixation, but would want to see more evidence both of how well they might work and of a stable organization to watch over the preserved patient. You must put your trust in something and, while we do not claim to know with certainty that cryonics will work, we do believe that making cryonic arrangements is the right and best thing to do, and that destructive alternatives such as conventional burial and cremation are mistaken.
Is it reasonable to call Venturism a religion? That question is challenging, in part because different people have different views on what it means to be a ‘religion.’ Many believe that a religion must require belief in a supernatural agency or God, but this would overlook such movements as modern Unitarianism and Theravada Buddhism that are usually classed as religious but do not invoke belief in the supernatural. The courts generally take a broader view. For example, in 1965 the U. S. Supreme court ruled, U. S. v. Seeger, that ‘a sincere and meaningful belief that occupies a place in the lives of its possessors parallel to that filled by orthodox beliefs in God is, in effect, a religious belief.’ Some objective grounds for considering Venturism a religion are: (1) it is concerned with what is of ultimate significance; (2) it is concerned with what ought to be, both from the standpoint of definition and of implementation; and (3) it is concerned with the attainment of human immortality. Venturism, in short, addresses the deep problems of life with the assertion that it is up to human beings to solve these problems scientifically, and that there is significant hope, at least, that these problems, even the most difficult, can be solved in this way. We are dedicated to the realization of that hope.
The Venturist organization has in fact been recognized by the IRS as a ‘scientific, religious, and educational organization.’ This means in particular that we are authorized to perform wedding ceremonies and services for the deceased; where the latter, in our case, we hope are cryonically suspended. Whether Venturism is to be regarded as a religion on grounds of ‘sincere and meaningful belief’ and objective criteria is, of course, a matter for the individual to decide. Certainly it can be so regarded, though some will have reservations, even those whose allegiance is sincere and mean-
For those able to accept the broader interpretation, the classification of Venturism as a religion has advantages, and in particular, emphasizes the seriousness of our commitment to what is of greatest importance. Today we find, among thoughtful people, a weakening or collapse of mystical beliefs as the scientific evidence makes those beliefs increasingly untenable, coupled with recognition that, nevertheless, there are basic needs religion fulfills. Religion, after all, is the only thing that seriously attempts to address all the deep problems of life, and we need to address these problems now as much as in any previous age, if not more so. Our ethic is based on enlightened selfinterest, extrapolated over infinite time. We hope to be immortal. To safely interact with our neighbors and to realize maximum benefit over this vast span of time will require an extraordinary code of conduct, one we expect to evolve even as we ourselves evolve. We cannot imagine what all the complexities of this future evolutionary process might be, but we think its success will require extraordinary benevolence. Hatred and hostility are dangerous enough habits, even in the brief span of our present natural life, and seem all the more inappropriate as we contemplate an open-ended existence. Indifference, while an improvement, still does not seem the safest nor the most beneficial course to follow, but instead a condition of unity and harmony is far better. Accordingly, we advocate the highest moral standards in our dealings with others. We insist on respect and love for others, practicing the Golden Rule, and being willing to defend others against danger. We must be ready to put our lives on the line if necessary (as in the case, for example, of a physical threat to a cryonics patient). This does not mean that people are absolved of responsibility for wrongdoing, but that toleration, mercy and forgiveness must have their important place, too.
We also recognize the beauty and value of the natural world, and in fact see ourselves as an important part of nature, broadly interpreted. This interpretation must take account of human nature as well as that portion of nature that is manifest in our surroundings. Humans, alone among earthly life forms, know they are alive, and know they are mortal. The wish for immortality is deeply rooted in human nature, despite the efforts of some to deny it. We are trying to realize that wish, and thus to uphold and nurture that very important part of our human nature. In so doing we are not advocating violence to ‘nature’ as a whole. This is our world, and we wish to protect and appreciate its beauty for what we hope will be endless tomorrows.
Treating Venturism as a religion (again, for those able to accept this legally recognized status) means that we are very serious about what we are doing and why we are doing it. Life has value, we maintain, as it ought to have. These thoughts have philosophical implications that some of us have considered, with firm and definite opinions emerging that, as to be expected, are not always in agreement. We do, of course, encourage people to think for themselves and we welcome diversity of opinion there is no insistence on dogma, and differing views can certainly liven up a gathering! Immortalist philosophies in fact show several interesting variations, some though not all of which have their representatives among the Venturists. By ‘immortalist philosophy’ I refer to a stance of relying on science and reason to deal with the problem of death; mystical or paranormal approaches are excluded. Even with this constraint there are major clashes of views.
First, we can distinguish two basic variants of immortalist philosophy, which I will call biostatic and nonbiostatic. A biostatic philosophy advocates putting human remains into some form of arrested activity or biostasis following clinical death, with a view to eventual reanimation when technology to do this becomes available. Cryonicsbased philosophies (and there are several, as we will see) are certainly biostatic in this sense. Some other philosophies are clearly immortalist but do not emphasize any preservative approach and are nonbiostatic.
Advocates of nonbiostatic immortalist philosophies include the precryonics immortalist Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov (1829-1903) and more recent thinkers such as author Alan Harrington, robotics expert Hans Moravec, and physicist Frank Tipler. As a cryonicist, my bias is naturally toward the biostatic group, which is particularly oriented toward doing something now, but the others, who are not represented among the Venturist Members, deserve inclusion for completeness. In addition to these two subdivisions there is another bifurcation into ‘one-chance’ versus ‘resurrectionist’ philosophies. Basically, a onechance philosophy holds that once a person is dead in the sense that the physical basis of identity, the brain, is destroyed that person cannot and will not ever be resurrected or reanimated. The resurrectionist viewpoint is more optimistic and holds that physical mechanisms exist that permit the eventual recovery or recreation of the person even under such adversity as physical destruction. Probably most cryonicists and most Venturists are one-chance in this sense, whereas Fedorov was a resurrectionist, as are Moravec, Tipler, and some cryonicists, including cryonics founder Robert Ettinger, and myself.
Within the one-chance camp, I would make a further distinction. There are pessimists who feel that true immortality is not attainable, though life might be greatly extended, or who lean toward this view, and optimists who lean toward the opposite view, that true immortality might be attainable scientifically. I do not sense such a division among resurrectionists, who seem pretty uniformly optimistic, but there are some other interesting varieties within this group.
Fedorov, for example, a nineteenth-century resurrectionist, advocated what might be called accessible determinism. Under this view, the universe is deterministic, and, moreover, the ‘hidden past’ lost historical information can be recovered in full detail, enough to restore to life every person who ever lived. A modern accessible determinist is Robert Ettinger, who, however, also strongly advocates cryonics being the movement’s principal founder. Tipler in his book, The Physics of Immortality, also presents a possible scenario for accessible determinism based on his idea of a collapsing universe. This is not the only resurrectionist philosophy, however.
An alternative is based around the pattern theory of identity, including the variant I develop in Forever for All, that I call Interchangeability. In this case the hidden past is not necessarily recoverable though determinism could still hold. (In fact many worlds physics provides an inaccessible determinism, as is noted in the book and elsewhere.) Recovery of personal identity depends not on specific structure or even informational continuity with the past but on recreating an identical pattern. In this way, then, through the chance creation of duplicates, persons could be resurrected without our initially knowing anything about them. Among the advocates of this view are Moravec and Tipler and some other cryonicists along with myself. Cryonicists who accept Interchangeability, as I do, differ from noncryonicists in that they also feel that preserving the remains to facilitate recovery of the person is desirable, even if not essential in an absolute sense.
In any case Venturism offers a lively forum for ideas about the future, life, death, personal identity, immortality, and where we are and ought to be heading. We welcome anyone who is interested in these things don’t be afraid to contact us!
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ASPIRATION part 3
by Mike Perry
Background: My book, Forever for All, from which this serialized article is adapted, takes seriously the idea that persons could be resurrected from death by other means than use of preserved remains or information derived from physical remains, though such preservation is still considered the preferred course to follow. Here we take a look at the goals and values we ought to aspire to, in approaching a hopefully open ended future, in which life no longer ends predictably after a few decades of progressive physical deterioration. In the present excerpt a future resurrection project is being considered in which individuals of the past would be reconstructed, generally in replica form or as ‘continuers’ in more advanced versions.
Such a project would be vast, putting it mildly, and probably done in many stages. The starting point would be the ‘easy’ cases in which the person was perfectly preserved, information-wise, and only needed ‘awakening’ in one technological form or another. We in cryonics hope to be in that category if we aren’t lucky enough to survive directly to the elimination of aging. Next, perhaps, would come the ‘nearmisses’ such as cryonics patients who were not as well preserved. Then others might reasonably be considered, such as the long dead who have some of their information captured in DNA, written records and the like. Later still, the project might encompass those who left no recorded traces at all, and more generally, all possible sentient beings whatever.
Something should be said here about the physical form that resurrections may take. Most cryonicists today, in my experience, imagine being reanimated much as they were before death, only healthier, i.e. in biological bodies. Such an approach may be applied for the easier, earlier cases of reanimation or even then it may be decided that a purely computational bringing to life is better. In other words, people may be returned to consciousness as computer emulations, programs running on advanced data processing systems of the future. In fact I think this will turn out to be the preferred course, based on the power and tractability I expect such systems to have. At any rate, some sort of information-processing medium or ‘model of computation’ will be needed to support the activities that make up a functioning being. Future science will have to decide what is best. Let’s consider some consequences we can reasonably hope for.
In the first place the possible sentient beings, as being-stages, all have a finite description. (We could imagine going down to the level of individual atoms if necessary; the human body contains about 1028 of these, a finite number.) They thus form a denumerable set, in one-to-one correspondence with the positive integers 1, 2, 3, ... This includes all person-stages or, speaking generally, each sentient being at each point in its life. Over infinite time, our universal labor of love could reasonably include the recreation, in continuer form, of all these being-stages, and their subsequent nurture to immortal self-sufficiency!
Description-wise, we could enumerate every one of these entities and then, through advanced technology, recreate them in functioning form as suitable continuers. In this way, then, we can rescue countless beings from oblivion and be enriched by the contributions they can be expected to make in our lives.
The discussion on the creation of beings has largely focused on reviving people from well-preserved remains, or making preexisting beings in replica form. Another possibility that must not be overlooked is entirely new sentient beings, something that is familiar to us today through the reproductive process. In the future new creations will continue to have significance, if not in the same manner and to the same extent as now. But we can expect, in our great endeavor to immortalize all beings, that life will be enriched by an interspersion of those who do not have a pre-immortal past to remember.
Many fascinating problems must arise in such an undertaking, and our work on these should provide life-enhancing meaning. A few of the difficulties can be anticipated even now, and make an interesting proving ground of ideas.
One difficulty concerns the very idea of ‘rescue’ and more generally, of ‘helping’ someone by benefiting a replica, as is implicit in our idea of resurrection. An objector might say that, if someone is sick, we cannot benefit that person by making and curing a replica. Indeed, curing a replica now does not benefit a person-stage that may also exist now who continues to be sick. On the other hand, curing a sick person, however done, amounts to a form of replacement. We are replacing a certain person-stage which is ill by a later stage, a continuer, which is healthy. In effect, then, we have ‘benefited’ that earlier, sick stage. If, meanwhile, another continuer of the earlier stage is made or retained, who is still sick, of course we don’t benefit that ill individual, but we can say, nonetheless, that someone was benefited. The notion of pattern-survival [as developed in the book] allows multiple continuers of one original, which pursue separate paths and have different histories, though sharing a past up to some point. Some continuers may benefit more or sooner than others. But all should benefit eventually. Once again, the enlightened self-interest of advanced sentient beings should see to it that good is done to other, less-fortunate beings, starting with resurrections.
Let us now consider another, very different problem, relating to the characteristics of the beings we propose to resurrect. Some will be good, some bad, and some just stupid, at least in their original form. Some also will have died in great agony, or in other circumstances it would be cruel to replicate. In our resurrections we don’t want to recreate all the evils that may have attended those we are trying to help. And we don’t have to because in creating continuers we don’t have to reproduce exact replicas, just person- stages that remember appropriately. In this way the sick could be healed, for example, before seeing the light of day.
In the same way, an evil person might be enlightened and made repentant and benevolent at the outset, though there could be complications. In the case of a physical ailment, the basic approach would be simple: eliminate the ailment first, then awaken the continuer. But with wrong-headedness, which is basically misprogramming, eliminating the defect could kill the patient! Instead we must consider retaining the misprogramming, but with additional overrides and modifiers. In this way we should be able to create a suitable continuer of our misguided original, who still identifies with the earlier stage in the sense of ‘I was there but am now here,’ but now is morally incapable of the sort of behavior that once was so dominant.
This could possibly be quite an ordeal for the subject in question. We find today that the behavior of complicated software, particularly that designed to behave ‘intelligently, ‘cannot be predicted in advance, but we must run the program to see what it will do. So in effect the subject we wish to reform might have to be a conscious participant in numerous experiments both lengthy and unpleasant. Or perhaps our offender must simply endure incarceration, his every thought monitored, until the appropriate, self-willed changes could be verified, showing that a voluntary choice of the right path had been made. Such a purgatorial experience, however protracted, would hopefully produce a desirable outcome.
I am not claiming, however, that some form of ‘Purgatory’ would necessarily be the best treatment to cure a resurrected offender. We would, I strongly feel, have to reject any crude motive of revenge, and focus on what was really best from an enlightened perspective. Still it is interesting that certain options could be enforced by those in control of the resurrection process. As one example, there are suicidal terrorists who feel that, by sacrificing themselves in the course of killing others, they will awaken immediately in paradise. Sooner or later, a comprehensive resurrection project must consider such cases, and would rightly withhold the expected rewards, at least until a considerable change of attitude (and worldview) occurred. But with a sufficient change in heart we would have good reason to act leniently and benevolently.
I think there would be something valuable to gain from a former great offender who experienced a true conversion. Such a person arguably would have rare insights on good, evil, and right conduct. With the motive, keenly felt, of atoning for past wrongdoing, much good could follow. In any case, I submit, there is good reason today to take a Universalist stand. Our orientation must be toward objects of enduring love our fellow beings and not of enduring hate. We do not wish to condone wrongdoing. Corrective measures, where called for, could even be quite severe. But I think there are limits to what can be ‘deserved,’ particularly in view of determinism [as considered in the book]. People behave as they do for comprehensible reasons, amounting to the way they are programmed or misprogrammed and we must shape our attitudes accordingly.
Fedorov held that all evil is caused by blindness. This, along with the ‘computational’ argument we have just considered, is another reason to advocate the salvation rather than damnation of even the worst sorts of misguided individuals that history could have produced. And, as Fedorov also maintained, when our bodies become the products, not of blind nature but our own labor, we will be able to eliminate our vices.10 So the immortalization and benefiting of all beings whatever should be an ultimately feasible project, and one that ought to be pursued.
Along with the bad, there are other types of beings that would offer their own special problems, though maybe not so challenging to present sensibilities. Retarded persons, for example, might be made smarter at the outset, or allowed to develop more gradually, but in any case would no longer be bound by their handicap. People who simply didn’t care much about living could be given new vitality. Pets and other nonhuman life forms would offer another challenge. Certainly dogs and cats have personalities. Would we recreate them in original form, or try to make more advanced continuers? In fact several cryonicists have had their pets frozen, intending that they be brought back to life as they were (with the owners) only healthier, of course. But this is unlikely to be their ultimate fate to stay at the same level would amount to an Eternal Return or stifling stagnation. Eventually, then, every dog and cat must advance into something more than what it was, more than a dog, cat, or human, to join the community of immortals at the highest level.
Moreover, I see no fundamental obstacles to advanced continuers built from even the most primitive, nonhuman starting-points. I thus reject the argument of Tipler that only humans ought to be resurrected (along with their pets, but no others) inasmuch as humans alone are ‘self-programming universal Turing machines,’ and thus, he argues, formed in the ‘image of God.’11 Intelligent constructs equipped with appropriate memories, I conjecture, would find it natural to identify with much simpler ‘starting’ beings, including nonhumans. The possibility of thus or otherwise elevating even simple sentient life to immortal, transcendent status is, to me, an exciting one!
Various less-than-human creatures then would be recreated in continuer form, and allowed or assisted to advance in appropriate settings. In some cases the continuers might be similar to the originals, in other cases, more advanced at the start. Again, every sentient creature that ever existed could ultimately be rescued and immortalized. We could undo all the shortcomings of prehistory as well as our own history, and thereby take part in a supreme act of redemption and healing. Across the universes of the multiverse, of course, others like ourselves would also be doing the same sorts of things, even as new life spawned from primitive conditions in still other universes, issuing its own cries for help and struggling with its problems. Overall then, we can glimpse an ordering principle that will glorify all in the end. But to the individual, the steps along the way are important too. Exactly what we do could greatly affect our happiness for a long time, even if we are all assured, ultimately, of a secure footing in paradise.
Mishaps along the way are a possibility, of course. A resurrectee may decide that the future with all its glamour wasn’t worth it after all, and opt for suicide. This would not preclude that individual’s eventual, later rescue and healing. Our commitment to benefiting all sentient life should extend to such cases. We would need to ask what could be done to make things go better the next time around, when the being in question was resurrected again.
Another possibility along these lines though slight, I think is a being who exists in a long-lasting state of self-imposed misery, due to a self-blindness, when a happier course is possible. We could imagine someone in a self-reinforcing state of pain, afraid to try to alleviate the problem or make any inquiries lest it somehow lead to a worse state of affairs. While there are no doubt mental cases like this today who could be helped but refuse any treatment, such a morbid condition should be unlikely in our more advanced future. But I mention it because an analogous scenario has been proposed in theological arguments to justify the possibility of Hell. God, so the argument goes, is so great a respecter of free will that he would never interfere with a person’s choice in the matter, even if it led to unnecessary, everlasting suffering. The divine decision not to interfere would not be made lightly, but if the person were sufficiently set in his determination toward a wrong alternative, eternal damnation might follow.
But our perspective is different. There is no ultimate free will [based on arguments advanced in the book], and no moral requirement for us to withhold healing enlightenment, even in a case where someone was very determined in an unfortunate choice. Moreover, and even more important, in view of the infinite future, the finite life lived to that point could never be adequate to inform such a misguided choice, no matter how convinced the chooser might be. So we ourselves should simply choose the lesser evil, which could involve some friendly ‘forcing’ or overriding the misguided will. In this way the self-imposed misery could be defeated, after which the victim, and (importantly) others too, would be better off.
At this point it will be useful to consider some further details of how a resurrection project might be carried out. There could be easier cases at the beginning, such as cryonics patients, as we have noted. But for the most part we would be dealing with individuals humans and other life forms whose remains were poorly preserved or nonexistent, and I will refer to this more difficult part of the operation as the resurrection project. In fact these resurrections will be in some degree hyperontic [involving information consistent with, but not contained in, the historical record], highly so in the more difficult cases.
By today’s standards the technical requirements would certainly be forbidding and quite out of reach. I think, however, that we could start such project relatively soon, within a few centuries at any rate, though whether we would go this route or wait much longer is another matter. But in any case, before launching it we should have a mature nanotechnology whose capabilities approach the limits allowed by physics, so that stable structures could be made and disassembled at will, with atomic precision. We should also have advanced computational devices capable of emulating large colonies of sentient creatures, who may be advanced to the present, human level, or even well beyond. We should also have extracted all obtainable information about our history and prehistory from the earth and its surroundings. Much useful information might be deduced, for instance, by studying DNA in existing organisms and organic remains, with other useful clues coming from older fossils and archeological sites.
Assuming this is all in place, what beings should we make first? One reasonable approach, I think, would be to build on the scenario we considered above. After those are restored who can be reanimated directly from biostasis we start on the project proper. It isn’t necessary to have such recoverable people to begin with, of course. But the next line of patients, whose remains are partly preserved but not well enough for straightforward reanimation, will be with us in some form. If not as cryonics patients, they will be found in other settings. A body in a grave, for instance, should retain recoverable DNA. Records of this person will normally exist too, at least for more recent cases, to furnish additional information for reconstruction. Such remnants would allow us to compile a partial description of the person in question. This could then be filled out by educated guesswork to a complete specification of a person who fit the surviving historical record. Repeating this process we would obtain completed descriptions of many people, all of whom fit our surviving history. In addition to making their information fit our history, we would want to make all the information mutually consistent, for reasons we’ll consider momentarily. Working our way back over time, we could incorporate prehistoric earthly beings, and include nonhuman creatures along the way. This, then, would be a hyperontic resurrection project. Ultimately we would obtain a created history far more detailed than what we will have been able to infer from earthly and astronomical artifacts, yet always consistent with that recovered history, and also self-consistent.
We would then have, in latent form, a large colony of beings, every sentient entity that ever lived, in at least one of our possible pasts. These beings we would first have obtained as descriptions. Each description would specify the being in question at some age or stage of development in life, generally near or at the end, but with health restored. (In a more distant future, we would want to consider other stages in life too, a topic we’ll examine.) From there we could proceed over time to reanimate them as continuers, and otherwise further their immortalization. To carry this out might involve a cosmologically significant amount of time even if we could start ‘early,’ in a few centuries. No doubt the computational requirements would be staggering, by today’s standards. But our future capabilities, and ultimately the expanding universe, would assist as needed so that the project would place no onerous burden on the society that existed at the time. In any case, if the universe can support immortality as we hope, it should be possible; the requirement of resources, however large, must be finite.
I’ve emphasized that the resurrection would be hyperontic (not xenontic or involving information contrary to the historical record), and this I think would be a good policy for our first effort of this sort. It is also worth remarking that making the recreated information of past individuals mutually consistent should, overall, produce a good effect for those very beings in this important phase of their immortalization. In this way the resurrection would not simply be of individuals in isolation, but again, of a whole history and prehistory back to the dawn of sentient life forms. How we would treat the more primitive creatures, what form their continuers should take, etc. would be a matter to be decided. But many humans, we might imagine, could be emulated in virtual reality settings that gave them back, as a starting point, approximately their original form and familiar surroundings.
Resurrectees would then have the joy of realizing, not merely that they were alive again somehow, but that friends and family were also alive and part of the project. This would extend in due course to those they remembered who died before they did, such as parents or grandparents. These in turn would find others they valued alive again, or scheduled to be, and so on. (Here I’m imagining the resurrection would be ‘last in first out,’ i.e. most recently deceased first, though there is no logical necessity for this, and possibly some other order would be preferred.) Life in virtual reality might at first differ but little from the earlier life they remembered, except that major sources of pain or degradation would be absent. But other changes would start as they progressed in immortalization, so that in time they would graduate from the ‘nursery’ to more advanced settings, and ultimately take their place at the ‘adult’ level in the community of immortals.
This, then, could be a reasonable course to follow for a first resurrection project, which would recreate persons from one of our many, authentic pasts [based on the theory of the multiverse that is elaborated in the book]. It wouldn’t, of course, be the last such project, for surely others must ultimately fall within the reasonable compass of our enlightened self-interest and love of fellow beings. Many, maybe the vast majority of these later resurrections too would be of the hyperontic, mutually consistent variety, that is, recreations of persons based on whole natural histories that fit our records. But not all would fit this category, as I envision it more later.
But we must also not lose sight of happenings at the ‘top level,’ which is not simply virtual reality but involves the external world. For the latter, at least, we must acknowledge that the historical record is important. [Reasons why are considered at length in the book, some of them involving one’s remembered experiences and their role in personal survival.] Something is worth adding now.
If we are to survive and create the immortal community, we must be concerned about preserving our individual histories, as we have noted, along with more general historical information. Thus I expect an unending interest in historical records: Despite the multiverse, we will continue to distinguish between actual and possible history, and to value the actual more than the merely possible. People, of course, capture a part of the historical record in their identity-critical information, which is another reason for preserving them after death, aside from the issue of their own reanimation.
Those who are resurrected, then, while they must be in full possession of their identity-critical information by definition, will nevertheless have an ontic deficit unless they can be recovered entirely from surviving historical information such as that contained in preserved remains. The deficit, I conjecture, will have the expected effect of marring their Interface [ties with reality] life will not seem as meaningful or ‘real’ to such a person. Indeed, from that person’s point of view, there arguably must be a reciprocal effect some of the outside world, extending down to the Interface, must be ‘unreal.’ For it too, we could say, is a consequence of the very guesswork, the extra information that had to be created for their own resurrection.
Over time we could expect the ontic deficit to diminish in importance, as someone from the point of resurrection onward takes part in life as a historical process and cultural drama, accumulating, storing, and retrieving information the same as everyone else. That person’s survival, then, if unlimited, would be almost enontic [‘almost fully historical’], and with time should approach the condition of being just as good as if fully enontic [‘historical’ i.e. not hyper- or xenontic]. But the starting point from guesswork must rank as a deficit. Perhaps this will seem a too-subtle point to many. An ‘ontic deficit’ is not something we normally worry about. But I think it will be seen differently in the future: When longterm survival is the rule, needs and attitudes will develop accordingly for they too will be necessary to this very survival.
The ontic deficit will reasonably be less in proportion to the extent to which the resurrection was based on actual historical information. On this ground we can argue that one’s future prospects depend on how one’s remains are treated after death. The best preservation is preferred, of course, but lesser preservation is better than none. Cryonic suspension, then, is better than conventional burial, which in turn is better than cremation. Cryonic suspension is to be preferred over burial, even if the preservation is not perfect, so long as we can be assured that significantly less guessing will be necessary in an eventual reanimation. If this is the case, we can also discern another advantage. A person, we noted, will capture part of the historical record in his/her identity-critical information. Some of this information is undoubtedly unique: the experiences of an eyewitness are not likely to be duplicated exactly in another person, nor can they now be exactly described or otherwise recorded for posterity, given the limitations of language, etc. In particular a person may remember certain details about others now deceased who were not preserved, such as how they talked and behaved, which will be lost to history if that person is not preserved at death. The biostasis option thus could lead to a better (more enontic) resurrection of others as well as a better preservation of more general historical information, all in addition to benefiting the original subject. At present we can’t be sure how much important information is preserved in the freezing process, though there is reason to think it is far more than in burial or cremation [a topic also explored at length in the book]. Some loose ends should now be tied. The ‘more later’ issues noted earlier need to be addressed, and a few other points made to round out the discussion.
In the future, immortal world, we hope to interact amicably with a large ‘family’ of other beings. I imagine an ever-present interplay and tension between unity and diversity both the similarities and the differences among different beings will contribute, overall, to a most interesting and exciting world scene. Given time, our ‘world’ must surely extend far beyond the confines of Earth; however, it will also extend in another way perhaps more significant, with the superior devices we use to sustain our cognitive processes.
But, in particular, I would imagine that each of us will gradually come to understand more and more about each other, even as we pursue our own individual courses of advancement. This could create its own perplexing issues. People could acquire enough information, and could so modify their dispositions, as to become continuers of more than one individual. [This is considered at further length in the book.] Another possibility, as part of a resurrection project, is that continuers could be created from scratch who combined several individuals. These in turn may have existed at one time or even at historically different periods or in other, very different settings. Presumably if such a project were carried out, or if already extant individuals decided to ‘join forces’ on their own, the resulting being would feel integrated, whole, and happy to be alive or otherwise might exercise the option of splitting once again.
That some fusion of individuals might occur is, in fact, suggested by comparison with ourselves today. The brain is a complex entity, and its different components function, to a degree, as separate agents which nevertheless are bound together in one ‘organization.’ (This idea is explored in Marvin Minsky’s book, Society of Mind.) On the other hand, we have noted that ‘people usually come in pairs.’ The bonding between male and female is well ingrained as part of today’s reproductive process. I would certainly not rule out the possibility of couples in a transhuman future deciding to form a closer, more intimate association than is possible now in short to fuse into one, with shared memories and experiences. Nonetheless people could be very close, closer than is possible now, with much information in common, but in a reasonable sense remain separate selves. I am not sure how far the tendency toward coalescence would go. For myself, I don’t find the idea appealing. I see more value in the diversity and separateness of individuals who are well disposed and in fact, do form a harmonious whole, but one that recognizes personal boundaries. (Indeed, I can see a trend toward less focused bonding between two individuals and a more general valuing of others, as I think will further our interests better when death is eliminated.) A collective entity, it would seem, would also be less efficient in pursuing the several lines of interest we would normally associate with separate individuals. So overall I would not expect any widespread trend toward the fusion of sentient beings, and more generally, toward the appearance of collective beings, though it must happen, at least to a minor extent, in view of Unboundedness. [Unboundedness, a principle that is argued in the book, asserts that all possible, finite histories actually happen somewhere in the multiverse.] But we can conjecture that future, would-be resurrectors, recognizing the difficulties, would not often create such composites. Instead a resurrectee would likely start life again as a separate individual. The opposite of fusion, fissioning, might not be uncommon, however. Indeed, it could be argued that much fissioning must take place, so that continuers of all possible beings can occur over time, and enrich all of life as much as possible.
The problem of fissioning, which is no deep problem at all with our notion of pattern- survival, seems to be a stumbling block to many in accepting the possibility of resurrection. Of course in everyday life we don’t observe persons fissioning, though something rather like it occurs in the clinical case of ‘split-brain’ patients (see below). Still it is natural to think that personal identity cannot be transferred simultaneously to separate, coexisting individuals.
This point of view is carried into our major religions, which, for example, postulate that a person has a soul, a typical opinion being that the soul of one person cannot be transferred to someone else or be divided into two or more souls that could be implanted in different people. (Locke’s viewpoint of one soul in more than one person at different times was somewhat exceptional, though he did not seem to envision the splitting of one soul into two or more.13) But under pattern survival we could get more than one, incompatible continuer, thus more than one resurrectee of the same original.
To be continued.