X-Message-Number: 32333 References: <> From: Michael Smith <> Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:52:19 -0800 Subject: Re: CryoNet #32321 - #32323 My apologies for my delayed response here. On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 2:00 AM, CryoNet <> wrote: > > Message #32321 > From: David Stodolsky <> > Subject: Re: Stressing rejuvenation to promote cryonics > Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:23:23 +0100 > References: <> > > On 18 Jan 2010, at 11:00 AM, Michael Smith wrote: > > >> Given that cryonics idea has circulated in the culture for almost > >> 50 years, and that people can now easily read about it online, I'd > >> like to know why such misunderstandings about it persist. > >> > >> Mark Plus > > > > > > At a guess, I would suggest that it's because people are scared of > > looking socially deviant. I think we're all familiar with the > > standard litany of illogical arguments against both cryonics and the > > whole idea of immortality. The fact that the same arguments appear in > > people who don't collaborate and often clearly haven't put much > > thought into the issue suggests that the primary resistance to > > cryonics is cultural. The arguments, I would wager, are completely > > secondary to the primary drive to belong to and be accepted by a > > community. > > Right. This is why I have argued that recruitment of large groups of > people simultaneously is the way to increase growth. They can form > their own subculture and thereby resist pressures to conform from the > mainstream culture. > > > > There are a few memes in particular that I think compound the problem. > > The two that I think are the most difficult to overcome are (1) the > > idea that aging is an integral and therefore inevitable part of life > > and (2) the idea that everyone has a proper time to die. Since being > > part of a culture is to a large extent a matter of adopting the memes > > of that culture, we immortalists can often appear as though we're not > > part of the same "tribe," so to speak, as those whom we would like to > > persuade. I suspect it has absolutely nothing to do with the logic of > > life and death and has everything to do with the sense of belonging. > > This view is supported by my reanalysis of the Badger data. > Badger data? I've never heard of this before. A quick Google search brings up this: http://www.jetpress.org/volume3/badger.htm If you're referring to something more, I'd much appreciate being pointed toward it. Thanks! > > > > I and a few others who attended the Teens & > > Twenties conference in Florida this last weekend are planning on > > performing a study to explore this and other hypotheses (e.g. that > > people with an inclination towards cryonics have a fundamentally > > different psychological constitution than the general populous). > > I don't see how this follows from the argument that the cultural > framework is the primary determinant of acceptance of cryonics. It doesn't, and I didn't mean to make it sound like it did. Sorry if my statement was misleading. I meant to offer just one other example of a hypothesis often used to explain the tendency for most people to reject cryonics. The two distinct (though not mutually exclusive) hypotheses as the driving explanations are: (1) Most people are more driven by a basic desire to be accepted than by a logical examination of what is needed for long-term survival. In short, people are afraid of looking too weird as a result of signing up for cryonics. (2) There's something different about cryonics-inclined people that starts very early in life, perhaps from birth as the result of some critical difference in their genome that's relatively rare. (We certainly couldn't test the genotype, but a reasonably well-done study could detail the phenotype quite well if it exists.) I'm sure there are other reasonable hypotheses as well. These are just the two big ones that come to mind off the top of my head. They certainly don't follow from each other, I agree. > > What this would tell us is WHY people appear unreasonable by pointing > > us to their actual motivations for rejecting cryonics and other > > immortalist endeavors. Once we know that, we can change our tactics > > in presenting cryonics so that our presentations come across as more > > compelling, meaning that we can really make progress in saving lives. > > Unfortunately, this is unlikely to work, since it has already been > concluded that it isn't the logic that is crucial for making these > types of choices. Again, I agree with your perspective. I think I've somehow erred in how I conveyed what I intended. If we know something about how people are actually motivated with respect to cryonics, we can present cryonics in a way that's compelling to that means of motivation. That method of talking compellingly about cryonics probably isn't any version of a logical argument; I quite agree with you about that. Something else is needed. We just don't really know what that is just yet. We as a community certainly have some very good guesses, but as far as I know they remain educated guesses rather than something that has been checked via cultural or psychological studies. A quick example that comes to mind is smoking. Most people know the logical arguments that smoking is horrid for their health and the health of their loved ones, and most smokers assumedly get reprimanded to some greater or lesser extent by their doctors for smoking. Yet this does very little to convince them to quit, and in fact there are new smokers every generation. Suppose it turns out that the primary motivation for choosing to smoke and continuing to smoke is social in nature: they believe that their friends will accept them and look up to them more if they smoke. Then emphasizing the social unacceptability of smoking would be a more compelling argument to quit than any amount of logical discussion. If we were an institution dedicated to saving lives by eliminating the practice of smoking, this would be precious information to validate. Thus some study investigating this matter would be helpful since it could reveal this (or possibly some other) core motivation in smokers' behavior. Just to be clear, I don't think this is really the right picture to take with smoking per se. The physically addictive nature of nicotine complicates things. I just mean this as an analogous argument. The analogy shouldn't carry over the addiction because, as far as I know, there's no physical addiction to the idea of cremation or burial. Does that make more sense to you? Again, sorry for not being clear the first time. ~Michael Smith Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32333