X-Message-Number: 31412
From: David Stodolsky <>
Subject: Re: A Robert Ettinger quote for our times.
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:38:39 +0100
References: <>

On 26 Feb 2009, at 11:00, Mark Plus wrote:

> Imagine, Ettinger postulates, trying to interest people who had  
> devoted their lives to side issues like George Wallace or Herbert  
> Marcuse in cryonics.

As usual, Ettinger's social insights leave something to be desired. We  
know that a key variable in the acceptance of cryonics is religiosity.  
This would place George Wallace and Herbert Marcuse on opposite ends  
of the dimension. Wallace was a Born-again Christian after 1964  
according to Wikipedia. Marcuse seemed only interested in the concept  
of "God" as it was used for political and social control.


>
>  I suppose you could point to someone like Noam Chomsky as a modern  
> equivalent to Marcuse on the left.)

They don't have much in common, except being claimed by the  
'left' (students). Marcuse was a philosopher and depended upon  
Freudian and Marxist theory for his analysis. Chomsky is atheoretical,  
except for using the scientific method as an analytical framework.

On Marcuse:

http://filer.case.edu/ngb2/Authors/Marcuse.html

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5311625903124176509



"The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and  
justification of inequality...." (Psychological Bulletin
2003, Vol. 129, No. 3, 339). Resistance to change is harmful to the  
growth of cryonics. Inequality reduces potential signups by placing  
cryonics economically beyond the reach of more people. We also know  
that conservatives tend to be religious. These factors suggest that  
political conservatism tends to inhibit the growth of cryonics.  
Therefore, Ettinger's characterization of extremists on both ends of  
the political dimension as equally likely to be uninterested in  
cryonics is probably false. (Among those discussed above, only Wallace  
is obviously an extremist.)


Disclaimer: I have never read anything by Marcuse and only one book by  
Chomsky.


dss

David Stodolsky
                     Skype: davidstodolsky

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