X-Message-Number: 16691 Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 19:49:45 -0400 (EDT) From: Ruthanna R Gordon <> Subject: desirable traits (on-topic, really) I'm going to spend a paragraph being bluntly honest, just to get it off of my chest, and then I'm going to try and have a dialogue that is polite, productive, and on-topic. The prejudice floating around this group for the last couple of weeks has been literally making me sick to my stomach (the fact that I was catching up on it over two days time probably didn't help). In this category I include those who think homosexuality is "deplorable," those who think that "deathists" are by circular definition insane and incapable of giving consent, and the one guy who seems to think homosexuals are the X-Men. There are all too many people who find it convenient to blame a group that's been in charge for a few millenia for all the problems of the world, but would obviously have created the same problems if their group had been in charge. Reverse prejudice is not a solution because prejudice is the problem in the first place (it has certainly caused more suffering and death than any of the other traits being discussed here). The strength of any species is in its diversity, both behavioral and genetic. Would anyone like to explain to me the advantages confered by homogeneity and inbreeding? Most traits, outside of those that confer survivability directly on the organism itself, work better with variety. It would be a bad thing for the species if everyone was a driven artist, or a dedicated farmer... In the same way, its useful to have a small portion of the species be non-breeders willing to adopt, and another portion who prefer to focus their lives on something other than child-rearing (incidentally, desire to breed is in my experience an entirely separate trait from sexual orientation). Hm...that was longer than I intended it to be. Let me try and get this back to a more definitively cryonics-related topic. Several people have expressed the view that certain traits are undesirable or insane. When we are revived, a great deal of rebuilding will be required. This will probably involve a certain amount of judgment on the part of those reviving us. They will not simply be recreating us as we were at the moment of death, because then we will still be a moment away from death. So they will be recreating us without whatever defect or illness killed us in the first place. Then it makes sense to solve any problems that might have killed us if that one hadn't gotten us first (i.e., the cancer is gone, but let's get rid of the heart murmur too). Then there are the nasty effects of aging--none of us want to go through the next thousand years with arthritis or mild dementia. All good, so far. But how do we set guidelines for where to stop? Do we each make a list of what they can fix before checking with us (and possibly leave out the fatal defect we didn't know we had)? Do we make a list of what they can't fix without our consent (and inadvertently leave out a personality trait it never occurred to us anyone would object to)? It gets more complicated, because someone might think one of the traits we value makes us unable to give informed consent. For example, homosexuality has in the past been considered a form of insanity. If "sexual inversion" makes it's way back into the DSM-X, I could wake up and discover that I no longer love the partner I planned to spend the next few thousand years with. The thought gives me the creeping willies. Another example: the idea has been expressed here that *any* willingness to die is insane, and that those who do should be forced, "kicking and screaming," to live. This idea strikes me as much more likely to inform our revivals than homophobia. Now, I have things, and people, that I am willing to die for. There are causes for the advancement of which I would go into a situation that I knew I would not survive. If this part of my personality were to be altered, something vital would have been lost. To me this is not insane "deathism," but life-affirming, because the things I'm willing to die for are among the most important things that I live for. I'm sure other people have traits, not universally accepted among the cryonics community, whose preservation they might be nervous about -entrusting to others. I am willing to reassure Louis Epstein that I won't reprogram him to believe homosexuality is not a defect. In fact, the prevention of such non-consensual reprogramming is one of the things I'm willing to risk my life over. Not everyone shares the priority I give to freedom of choice and belief. How can we ensure that when we are revived, each of us has preserved those things which we *personally* consider vital to our selfhood? Each of us has a level of personality change beyond which we would consider the product to be someone else. Some of us would be satisfied with uploading or duplication; others don't consider these real survival. We have spent endless bandwidth in debating these differences. We will never come to agreement and we don't need to--what's important is that each cryonicist is revived in a manner that meets *his or her* requirements, not somebody else's. I don't know that everyone will agree with me on this, but I would point out that it is in all of your best interests to. It relieves you of the need to convince several hundred highly opinionated people of your definition of selfhood in order to survive (by your definition rather than theirs). I'm not telling people to stop the uploading debate (I retired from cat-herding a while back), but suggesting that we also talk about how we can ensure that our individual desires for survival are actually met. Freedom and Long Life, Ruthanna Gordon *If God hadn't meant people to have wings, S/He wouldn't have made them* *want to fly.* Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16691