X-Message-Number: 12765
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 12:04:15 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: Lack of Closure

> From: "Marty Kardon" <>
> 
>     It seems to me that there is not the same chance for "closure"
...
> the survivors are left in a nether
> world with respect to their departed family.

You have identified a problem which has been mentioned here before, but
very rarely, for obvious reasons: it is no fun contemplate the angst of
losing a child, a parent, or a spouse--who becomes dead-but-not-dead.
Atheists "know" that their loved ones are gone; devout Christians "know"
they will be reunited with their loved ones in the hereafter; but
cryonicists can only wait in conceptual limbo and wonder what may happen 
50 or 100 years in the future.

The problem is especially acute where a relatively young person loses a
spouse or significant other. To what extent does the survivor retain a
primary loyalty to the person who has been cryopreserved? I have seen at
least one person deeply affected by this uncertainty. Should the survivor
become involved with someone else? Presumably, yes; but if the "someone
else" signs up for cryonics, we have the prospect of all three people
eventually being cryopreserved, and emerging together at some point in the
future. When I proposed this dilemma to Keith Henson years ago, he said
the answer was simple: After resuscitation, if we have, say, one husband
and two wives, simply grow or build an extra copy of the husband.  I tend
to feel however that even if this is possible, it will complicate, rather
than resolve, the issue, since both copies are likely to feel the same
conflicted loyalty, and both may be oriented more toward one wife than the
other, thus creating a SECOND romantic triangle. 

Of course these issues only are troubling if you take the concept of 
cryonics very seriously. If you believe, as I do, that current techniques 
allow only a very small chance for resuscitation, there is much less 
potential angst, especially since the slim chance of one person being 
resuscitated must be multiplied by itself, and then by itself once again, 
to get the net probability of all three members of a romantic triangle 
being resuscitated together.

The "lack of closure" problem, as I see it, is relevant primarily to 
anyone who is in the business of helping to run a cryonics organization. 
Such a person (e.g. me) has an obligation to warn prospective members of 
this kind of risk, and to advise them to think about it seriously. Also, 
we may find ourselves in a position of having to comfort surviving family 
members (as I have), at which point we have an obligation to be properly 
prepared for their concerns.

Thanks for your thoughtful message.

--Charles Platt

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