X-Message-Number: 19039
Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 09:59:28 -0400
From: Keith Henson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #19036 - #19037

At 09:00 AM 11/05/02 +0000,  <Mike Donahue> wrote:
>CryoNet - Sat 11 May 2002


>Just a quick thought, I have to post here, as most won't understand my
>upset...
>
>I'm active in science fiction fandom... two days ago I lost a good friend
>named Bruce Pelz, who had been active in SF fandom for 5 decades- and easily
>had the means to be cryopreserved, but chose not to be.  Tomorrow I'm going
>to visit Forrest J. Ackerman(the #1 SF fan in the world), at Kaiser Hospital
>in Los Angeles... he's in intensive care, not expected to recover... and as
>far as I know, has chosen not to be cryopreserved.  And he's unable to
>communicate, I think he's had a stroke.  What is it that these visionary
>people chose to NOT to take that leap into possibility?

Marvin Minsky, one of the visionaries of our times, explained it in 
_Society of Mind_.

Human brains build agents to divert thinking about the unpleasant--and 
nothing is more unpleasant than thoughts about your own mortality.  We 
build elaborate mechanisms to rationalize not doing anything about our 
mortality.  But until the most recent decades this made good evolutionary 
sense.  While the genes want you to stay alive until you have reproduced 
and started your kids off in the world, there has been no evolutionary 
pressure in the direction it takes to become signed up.

>That's what I think
>it is, just a possibility... These people know SF and Fantasy and hard
>science, and are conversant with progress in science and I think truly
>believed that these miracles of science would come to pass...  I just don't
>understand it, that at the end, they should choose to NOT expand their
>horizon of possibility, after living lives full of wonder.

I know how you feel.  Eric Drexler and I both spent a lot of time talking 
to Robert Heinlein about cryonics.  I think he might have gone for it if 
his wife had not been utterly opposed--to the point all cryonics literature 
was purged from their house.

Keith Henson

PS, Marvin Minsky *is* signed up.

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