X-Message-Number: 1549
From:	Ben Best <>
Date:	Mon, 4 Jan 1993 19:00:00 -0500
Subject: worth life?


   Today I finally got a copy of the January 1993 issue of OMNI. Charles
Platt's introduction was very good. But I had a bad feeling about the
contest. As people often do, I will elaborate on my negative, rather
than on my positive, reactions.

   In the January CRYONICS, Charles Platt suggested that the contest
question would be "What would I like to see and do in the twenty-
second century?" But the questions in OMNI are "Why should you be
placed in cryonic suspension after death? What would you bring to
the future? Why should you be selected as the winner of the OMNI/
Alcor Immortality Contest?"

   In other words, "What good are you?" Or, "Of the thousands of
entrants, why should you live and the others die?" When Tom
Donaldson was on the Donahue Show, a woman asked him what was so
special about him that he should be frozen. Tom rightly answered
that anyone's desire to live should be reason enough, and that
special credentials need not be necessary.

   I have played a simulation game in which the players pretended to be
in a sinking ship and were required to justify to the others why each
should be one of the few allowed to take one of the limited number of
seats on the lifeboat. I was not one of the ones who made it to the
lifeboat, and in a democracy I know that the worst player on the
football team would be voted into the lifeboat before me. These games
are very unfun.

    I don't mean to rain on anybody's parade, and I say again that I
appreciate the excellent, honest and concise presentation Charles
Platt made of the essential cryonics issues. But I hope that future
contests will ask participants why they would want to see the future --
not why they should live when others must die. My fear is that many
who could have had fun by thinking about the future and the implications
of cryonics will not engage in a contest that forces them to justify
their worth in the eyes of others.

                    -- Ben Best (ben.best%)
--
Canada Remote Systems  - Toronto, Ontario
World's Largest PCBOARD System - 416-629-7000/629-7044

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