X-Message-Number: 16951
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:46:04 -0500
From: david pizer <>
Subject: The real reason people don't sign up

What are the real reasons people don't sign up.

Scott Badger commented on my Argument that life has inherent value, and
gave an interesting list of reasons why non-cryonicists claim they don't
want to sign up.

>David, 

>A few armchair philosophers like myself may try to
>split semantic hairs, but I don't think we're going to
>have to convince too many people that life has
>inherent value. I think you're working too hard on
>this idea and not just because I disagree with you. 
>;-) 


Actually, this summer I am taking several biological psychology courses to
brush up on how the mind works (neurons, lobes, nets, all that good stuff)
in preparation for philosophy of mind next fall. These classes no longer
argue much about if the mind is separate from the brain in the way that
traditional dualists thought the mind was the soul and immortal, etc.  But
now they argue that because our perception is just based on electrical
signals processed in the brain, that what we mistake for the richness of
nature is just binary signals in certain areas of the brain, and that we
can *never* really know the world as it actually is.

But in-between, I keep chipping away on a moral argument for cryonics.  I
feel that if we have a strong moral argument in place, if and when an
opportunity comes up, (as in a big, public legal case of some related
topic) in the public eye that we can tie into, we can begin the long
process to show people that cryonics is what people ***ought*** to do when
they die and not bury, cremate etc.

These opportunities come along every so often and when the next one does,
lets be ready.

And, if and when someone or some organization, or the government, tries to
make cryonics illegal, we need to have some moral argument in place to
protect the rights of frozen beings.  This argument will likely have more
force if it comes from a person or an organization that does not profit
from the freezing "dead" people.

On your list of public perceptions, the ones you mentioned that I got the
most feedback from doing talk-shows and class-room presentations years ago
are numbered with a 10 as they were VERY worried about and 1 as not worried
about. These are my best guesses:

>(1) Cryonics is unaffordable. --------- 8 to 9

>(2) Frozen people are dead, period.  ------ 9 to 9 1/2

>(3) Waking up in a strange future without loved ones
>is frightening.-----------------------------------------  4

>(4) I'll be obsolete and unskilled when awakened. ------------- 4

>(5) Overpopulation will result. --------------------------  8

>(6) It's selfish to use the insurance money for
>cryopreservation instead of giving it to your family.  ---------- 7

>(7) Death is natural. --------------------- 7

But these responses were from people who would NOT have opted for cryonics
even if you could show solutions to all these problems.  Most of the people
with these responses did not want to live forever in this universe because
they sincerely believed they are going to have a better life in some other
heavenly place when their time on this earth is over.

So those people did not want to consider any good reasons for cryonics
working since they thought that if it did work and they had to spend more
time in this universe, and therefore delay the start of their time in a
"better" place, then it was stupid, bad, dumb, etc to do heroic things to
keep yourself in this darn'd place.

The big moral problem for us, as I see it, is that to get most of the
people to start to believe that cryonics is good and biological immortality
is good, you would first have to get them to change their beliefs about God
and Heaven.  Since I do not know if God and Heaven do or do not exist for
them, I think it would be just as immoral for me to try to change their
beliefs as it would be for them to try to talk me out of cryonics.  I can't
guarantee they are not going to Heaven, and they can't guarantee that I
won't be reanimated in a century and get to live forever in this universe.

I can remember talking to several large groups where many members in the
group thought that reanimation was *already* possible. They would ask
questions like "how many people have been brought back?"  Even amoung
people that thought it already worked, the religious ones still did not
want it - even if it was free.  There were some people who thought it
worked and that we would freeze them for free (like when they donate their
bodies to cancer research) and reanimate them when a cure for their disease
was found (say, they had cancer).  And even though (they thought at the
time) it worked and was free, they *still* did not want any part of it.

The good news, (for those who want to convince others to sign up and
increase our numbers), is that there are millions of atheists that have not
embraced cryonics yet.  And I think that if they were surveyed their
biggest objections would be your number one and two and their measurement
of objection to these would be in the range of 5 to 7.

The reason for this long-winded ramble is that my deepest impressions of
the responses that non-cryonics persons give is that they do not tell you
their real number one reason that overrides all else, they don't want to
continue on here, they want to get to Heaven, pronto.  For some reason,
they must feel embarased or silly to state their real reasons, so they
profess all the other ones.  I can't prove it, but that is my best hunch on
the subject.

Dave

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