X-Message-Number: 14558
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: Survival obsession = irrational risk assessments
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 09:45:19 PDT

The L.A. Times Website has an article about the current popular interest in 
"surviving" low-probability dangers, like getting lost in the wilderness, 
being attacked by killer bees or washing up on a desert island after a 
shipwreck.  Ironically, the same people who worry about these far-fetched 
scenarios seem oblivious to the much greater risks they face in their daily 
lives from things like auto accidents, gunshot wounds and the health 
consequences of bad habits.

The article speculates that the obsession may just be a consequence of our 
current affluence and safety.  I have to wonder, however, if there is a way 
to exploit this in favor of cryonics, anti-aging research and radical life 
extension, since a lot more people in our society die from aging and 
degenerative diseases than from the kinds of misadventures that loom large 
in the public "survivalist" imagination.

Link to,

http://www.latimes.com/living/lat_survive000927.htm

Trans-millennially yours,

Mark Plus, Expansionary
"Letting go of the 20th Century."

"Human Felicity is produc'd not so much by great Pieces of good Fortune that 
seldom happen, as by little Advantages that occur every Day."  Benjamin 
Franklin, _Autobiography_.

WWXD?
("What would Xena do?")

Affiliations:
Alcor Life Extension Foundation
http://www.alcor.org
American Atheists
http://www.atheists.org
Society for Venturism
http://www.venturist.org

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