CryoNet #33298 - #33301

CryoNet - Wed 2 Feb 2011

    #33298: Tyler Cowen on "The Great Stagnation" [MARK PLUS]
    #33299: progress [John de Rivaz]
    #33300: who wants jumpsuits? [Perry E. Metzger]
    #33301: New Cryonics Magazine site and review of Cryoburn [Stephen Bridge]

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Message #33298
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 08:03:04 -0700
Subject: Tyler Cowen on "The Great Stagnation"
From: MARK PLUS <[email protected]>

I'd like to thank Aschwin de Wolf for the reference.

Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, has recently
published a pamphlet-sized ebook, available through both Amazon and
Barnes & Noble, titled "The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The
Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually)
Feel Better." Given Cowen's rising status as a public intellectual, it
has already generated considerable discussion in the blogosphere:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Cowen

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Stagnation-Low-Hanging-Eventually-ebook/dp/B004H0M8QS/

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Great-Stagnation/Tyler-Cowen/e/9781101502259/?itm=1&USRI=great+stagnation

Parts of Cowen's tract sound like things I could have written about
that other 21st Century we thought we'd have by now. For example:

"Today, in contrast, apart from the seemingly magical internet, life
in broad material terms isn't so different from what it was in 1953.
We still drive cars, use refrigerators, and turn on the light switch,
even if dimmers are more common these days. The wonders portrayed in
The Jetsons, the space-age television cartoon from the 1960's, have
not come to pass. You don't have a jet pack. You won't live forever or
visit a Mars colony. Life is better and we have more stuff, but the
pace of change has slowed down compared to what people saw two or
three generations ago."

I've had the sense for about 20 years now that economic and
technological progress in the U.S. has broken down somehow. I even
tried to draw the attention of the cryonics community to this trend
circa 1993, but the idea at the time met with resistance and denial.
Perhaps after another couple of decades of the Great Stagnation, we
can start to have a rational discussion of what this trend means for
cryonics. Cowen argues that we've merely gotten stuck on a plateau,
and that the U.S. will bounce off of it "eventually" (when? in how
many more generations?), and resume the high rates of economic growth
and technological innovation seen in the 20th Century.

Of course, that cryonics-helpful outcome doesn't necessarily have to
happen. "Past performance doesn't guarantee future results," and,
"People don't eat 'in the long run', they eat every day."

Cowen charges $4.00 for his tract. If you have a Kindle or a Nook, you
can purchase it and read it for yourself in a couple of hours.

--
Mark Plus
Life is short: Freeze hard!

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Message #33299
From: "John de Rivaz" <[email protected]>
Subject: progress
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 17:38:05 -0000

Mark Plus had the sense for about 20 years now that economic and technological progress in the U.S. has broken down somehow. 

I wonder whether that is really true for everyone. Maybe it is the middle classes where progress has slowed. The cost of better working conditions and the availability of things for poor people has to be met somehow and the price is slower progress for the middle and upper classes. 

I recall how in the 1960s there was a prevailing opinion that things had got worse "since the war". What at really meant that things were not so easy for the middle classes who could no longer afford to keep servants or to buy services at a reasonable price in relation to what they earned. 

Economic progress is hard to define. So many people earn money for doing nothing of value, but it very much a matter of opinion as to what value is. Value could be regarded as "making things" but if the things don't last and have to be replaced every six months, can they really be regarded as wealth. Regulation compliance surely isn't adding any value, but it could be regarded as making information structure even if no one really wants it.

A huge amount of effort has gone into creating a mass of rules and regulations, which require a sort of occupying army of lawyers to enforce. Is this progress? Is this work being done at the expense of development of Jetsons type technology?

Of course some machines have proved to be harder to implement than writers who originally conceive of them supposed, but then this has always been so.

In the case of cryonics it does not matter too much as long as the patients can remain preserved.

--
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

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Message #33300
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 14:07:06 -0500
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email protected]>
Subject: who wants jumpsuits?
References: <[email protected]>

MARK PLUS <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> I sympathize with Peter Thiel's desire* to hit a metaphorical "reset
> button" which takes us back to the science-fictional visions of the
> 1950's and 1960's, so that we can try to make more of them real this
> time.
> 
> What happened to that other 21st Century I read about as a
> youngster? You know, the one where by the year 2011 we'd normally
> wear unitards or jumpsuits

How ugly. I'm glad we've had more fashion taste than that. On the
other hand, in 1950, I'll point out that almost no one would have
expected some of the wealthiest men on earth to go to work wearing
jeans and T-shirts.

> the one with the moon and L-5 colonies;

We still lack the advanced materials to do that, and won't have them
for another 30 years or so. On the other hand, in 1950, no one would
have expected the sexual revolution, the Internet, or fully automated
5-axis CNC machines that could turn a block of aluminum into an
arbitrary shape in minutes.

> the one with the cities covered by geodesic domes;

And why, pray tell, aren't you disappointed that when we went to the
moon we didn't use a giant cannon embedded in the ground in Florida?
After all, that's what Jules Verne said we should use. Instead we used
these "rocket" things -- how sad.

I read SF from 1950 and people had building-sized vacuum tube driven
computers. Instead I have a far more powerful computer running my
microwave oven. I don't have giant global networks of pneumatic tubes,
I have email. Generally I'd say that the things we actually got turn
out to be pretty alright.

It appears that you are disappointed that the future some arbitrary
set of SF writers anticipated didn't come out exactly as they
wanted. Instead of jet packs (never feasible without MNT if you
calculate the energetics), we have people sending spit samples in to
23 and Me to get their genes sequenced. Well, fine, why should we
care?

Anyone who actually thinks that the last 60 years haven't been a total
revolution in human existence is blind. That said, there are plenty of
blind people out there. I'm looking forward with great anticipation to
the next decades. I won't, however, be disappointed if some arbitrary
SF writer doesn't tell me exactly what it will look like.

Perry
--
Perry E. Metzger		[email protected]

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Message #33301
Subject: New Cryonics Magazine site and review of Cryoburn
From: Stephen Bridge <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 23:24:45 -0500 (EST)

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Cryonics Magazine has a new on-line presence at :  http://www.alcor.org/magazine/

The 4th quarter 2010 issue is now available there.  I like the choices available.  You can read the new issue on-line, download it as a .pdf, or link to individual articles.  This format also allows Alcor to publish articles which are too long to fit into the normal magazine and to publish some articles as "web exclusives" -- i.e. not published in the paper or .pdf versions. 

Features in the new issue include an interview with Alcor Finance Director Bonnie Magee, Ralph Merkle's discussion of how to get your relatives signed up, an Aschwin de Wolf article on why cryonicists need to prepare case reports on each cryopreservation, and book reviews and technical updates from Michael Perry.

As the first Web Exclusive (drum roll, please), we present my review of the excellent new cryonics-themed SF novel, *Cryoburn*, by Lois McMaster Bujold, and briefer reviews of two other cryonics-related novels.  There is a link to my review directly under the picture of the magazine cover on the link above.

Steve Bridge



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