X-Message-Number: 19009
Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 10:55:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: optimism

George Smith wrote:

> The indulgence in the assumption of being able to assume there are
> KNOWABLE "odds for success or failure" is not only logical nonsense but
> can lead to the deadly results of depression by assuming "low" odds.

I seldom agree with George, and this quote shows why. If I assume that an
important endeavor has low odds, why should this cause "deadly
depression"?

On the contrary: If the chances of success are poor, this means there is
an urgent need to work hard and make the odds better.

Conversely, if (like George) I felt that cryonics was likely to save my
life, I would never have bothered to become active in cryonics.

I once asked Don Laughlin (who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars
and founded the town of Laughlin, Nevada) why he signed up. "I like the
odds," he said. I asked him if he really thought that cryonics was likely
to work. "It's pretty much a done deal, isn't it?" he responded. (These
quotes were given in a formal interview; I am not violating Mr. Laughlin's
privacy by presenting them here.)

If Mr. Laughlin felt less secure about cryonics, he might have invested
more than a token sum in cryopreservation research.

I believe that false reassurance, complacency, and the totally unjustified
belief that someone in the future will fix things if we screw them up
today, have been the bane of cryonics, retarding progress for decades.

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