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 _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14558