X-Message-Number: 2744 Subject: CRYONICS: Disagreements, Misunderstandings, etc. From: (Ben Best) Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 01:17:00 -0400 DISAGREEMENTS, MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND BAD FEELINGS After having completed an exchange with Mike Darwin over my Nanotechnology CRYOMSG, I was upset to see Paul Wakfer's angry reply. It can be extremely frustrating to be misunderstood, especially when one has made particular attempts to be clear. Paul and I are now evidently both feeling this way. I find this particularly upsetting because I think of Paul as a personal friend. Moreover, he is a person of exceptional idealism, commitment and ability. I don't think people in the cryonics community have a very good appreciation of the positive contributions this man has made -- and will make. In the communication of any message, misunderstanding can result from one or two causes: garbling by the sender or garbling by the receiver. When confronted with evidence of a garbled message, many senders reflexly blame the receiver. In my opinion, it is a cardinal principle of human relationships to take responsibility for correcting the miscommunication. Moreover, it is of greater value to concentrate on correcting the miscommunication, rather than to concentrate on who is to blame for the miscommunication. The latter is not likely to result improved communication -- and is very likely to lead to bad feelings. I believe the actual disagreements I have with Paul are relatively minor compared with the amount of misunderstanding and bad feelings that have been stirred-up. Re-examining what I said, I will try to guess where the problems arise. Paul said that I set up a "straw man" and knocked it over. That may be true, but I did not mean to imply that the "straw man" was to be identified with Paul Wakfer or anyone else -- quite the contrary. My point was that no practicing cryonicist can consistently take the extreme anti-repair viewpoint. And, moreover, that the issues are not altered one iota by substituting an alternate repair technology for nanotechnology. Faith in "Biotechnology" could as easily lead to lack of interest in improved preservation techniques as faith in "Nanotechnology". To practice cryonics today, it is necessary to believe that SOME repair technology is possible -- and this NECESSARILY entails the danger of such smug faith in that repair capability that little concern is given to improved preservation. Paul acknowledges the value of the idea of cell repair technologies for "those nascent cryonicists who were having trouble imagining any extrapolation of current technologies which could result in the possibility of repair for the freezing damage which we knew were occurring during current methods of cryopreservation". But this "trouble imagining" not only affects "nascent cryonicists", it affects at least 95% of the scientific establishment who dismiss cryonics as being pseudo-science. These people cannot get it through their thick heads that ANY repair is possible. When I expressed the opinion that the anti-nanotechnology arguments of cryonicists "are more the product of psychological reaction than of a balanced view of reality", this is what I was referring-to. I believe that a balanced view of reality acknowledges that the major obstacle preventing established scientists from giving any credibility to the cryonics idea is their refusal to consider repair scenarios. What I meant by "psychological reaction" is the attitude of professional cryonicists, whose main attention is focused on influencing other cryonicists -- rather than on influencing noncryonicists. Suggesting that current cryonics methods might not be preserving the biological basis of consciousness might be a way of convincing cryonicists to support research, but it will only convince noncryonicists that cryonics is bunk. I am very disturbed that Paul took my remark to be "the ultimate insult". I did mean to express the opinion that Paul is mistaken about something. If I think he is mistaken about one point, that does not mean he is not correct about a lot of other things -- including things about which I have recognized my own mistakes. I too have worked long and hard to "ferret out and erradicate all bias and unanalyzed values", but I still have biases and unanalyzed values. The goldfish swimming in a bowl of blue water thinks that the world is blue. We cannot escape our skin without losing our life. -- Ben Best (ben.best%) Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2744