Hi,
For people who have a cryonics contract, or intend to get one in the future, fate may literally be hanging off a thin probability. The probability of a revival, maintaining sufficient memory continuity and of a subsequent life worth living are small. The reason that people go in for cryonics (even when the technology was not very advanced) was because small though the probability is, it is not zero. So, I would be very wary of using a epsilon = zero argument.
And about evolution, isn’t it just a matter of time before we will be able to genetically work backward from any of today’s species to the original ancestors? We know the genome, we can work out the theoritical mutations, we can test and see which of these possible mutations had a high probability. I personally don’t worry about creationists for too long because we will have genetically engineered evidence of evolution re-created and irrefutable.
regards, Prakash
Anne,
Examples where some lives might have to be sacrificed is placebo groups for potentially life saving drugs. If you don’t have the placebo group, the efficacy of the medicine cannot be known for certain, putting lives of many people potentially at risk. But those in the placebo group are goners, for sure. Correct me if I am wrong.