X-Message-Number: 23329
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 07:13:56 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #23302 - #23304

Hi everyone!
     
I haven't been on Cryonet recently because 1. I've been putting together
a double issue of PERIASTRON and 2. I'm now editing an article which
I hope to publish in ANALOG for $. It's not about cryonics. If Stan 
Schmidt accepts this version, then I'll say more about it.

In any case, re theories of why so few people respond to cryonics:
if you're surrounded by many who think the idea is foolish, then
you're unlikely to go against the crowd. There's a lot more than just
the scientific issues involved in choosing cryonics: what will this
mean for society and for me? What about population? How will I make my
living? Will everything I did in this life be completely forgotten,
so that I must start all over again (a question bearing particularly
on those who have obtained some kind of fame)? 

However I do feel skeptical that the survival drive has failed here.
There may not, in fact, be any such drive; we have embedded in us 
the desire to escape particular fates, and now that we've become
so advanced technologically, those fates have become less important.
I'll note that someone's behavior when actually presented with a
strong chance of death often doesn't match their behavior when the
chance is only abstract and faraway. (It would be interesting to
know whether cryonicists differ from most in their experience of
death, both dangers to themselves and death of those close to them).

The point here is that we may have behaviors which generally 
prevent us from dying, but no GENERAL behavior doing that. Clearly
some people can deal with more abstract dangers better than others:
there ARE some cryonicists. But that may be unusual.

            Best wishes and long long life to all,

                  Thomas Donaldson

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