X-Message-Number: 22522
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2003 08:33:10 -0400
From: Keith Henson <>
Subject: Re: avoiding  mortality, idealism, unacceptable impositions

  Dan Hitt <> wrote:

snip

 > But in any event, my sense is that many
 > posters here believe avoiding mortality is a strong driver
 > in the whole community.

  > But is this true?

 > Personally, i don't believe my desire to avoid death is
 > much stronger or weaker than anybody i'm in contact with.

snip

 > Is this really what motivates most cryonicists?

Motivation and the psychological/brain mechanisms that lie behind 
motivations were shaped by what got your genes from one generation to the 
next a million years ago.  The applicable field is called evolutionary 
psychology.  It is an area that many people consider profoundly 
distasteful, perhaps because it exposes human motivations to be something 
less than pure and rational.  I have no reason to believe that cryonicists 
are less subject to these common motivations than anyone else.

Very high on the list of motivators is social standing.  It is easy to 
understand why social primates work so hard for status if you look at the 
historical (pre birth control/women's rights/demographic transition) 
correlation between status and reproductive success.  Even today, consider 
the number of children Bin Laden has.

Attention is an indicator of social status.  We seem to have brain 
mechanisms that release rewarding chemical (dopamine, endorphins) into the 
brain's reward/reinforcement circuits.  Anyone who has come off the 
platform higher than a kite after public speaking has experienced this 
effect first hand.  The reward circuits also get activate by addictive 
drugs (that's what makes such drugs addictive).  The mechanism is perverted 
sometimes to lethal extremes in cult situations.  There is a 7,000 word 
article I wrote a year ago on this subject at 
human-nature.com/nibbs/02/cults.html

A high fraction of what humans do--good as well as bad--can be understood 
as trying to gain status in tribal or tribal like groups.  This applies to 
the present set of Alcor problems, previous problems, and good steady times.

Raising status can be non-zero sum or zero sum.  A lot of the problems in 
cryonics (and elsewhere) are due to attempts to raise status in zero sum 
mode.  Status is important, people fight over it, and losers lose something 
that may not be much connected to reproductive success today, but the 
psychological sting is still wired into your genes.

I am not going to go into a specific analysis of events current or 
historical for examples, even though I usually use examples.  But I will 
comment if others want to do so.



From: 
Subject: Alcor Daily News/Same Old CI

 > Just when we were afraid that Charles Platt's jumping ship would leave us
 > without *some* source of news about Alcor, the Arizona Republic seems to be
 > filling the void almost daily.  Here's the latest article:

<http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0912alcorgifts12.html>

(Craig Harris is the reporter.)

Dear Mr. Harris:

I got into cryonics through reviewing the nanotechnology work of Dr. Eric 
Drexler in the late 70s to early 80s, signing up (with my wife and 
daughter) in 1985 when Alcor had about 50 members.

Between about 1989 and 1996 I helped freeze 18 of the people Alcor has in 
suspension, eventually training up to be lead surgeon for putting patients 
on cardiac bypass so they could be perfused with cryoprotectives.  I was 
also on the board of directors.

So I know the organization and many of the people well . . . . and 
congratulate you on writing an informative and accurate article.

If in the future you want additional background on cryonics, be happy to 
talk to you.

Keith Henson
519-770-0646
Brantford, Ontario
Canada


PS

You can use the above as a letter to the editor if you want.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=22522