X-Message-Number: 4928
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 22:08:31 -0700
From:  (Tim Freeman)
Subject: Cryonics signups and self-worth

I've misrouted my mail and am now catching up on old stuff.  This is a
response to message #4819, dated August 27 1995.

From: mike <>
>In effect the reason 
>people's sense of self-worth is "too frail" is that it is derived 
>from their perceptions of how others see them. They thus lack an 
>*intrinsic* sense of self-worth. 

This is very interesting to me, because I don't think that I fit
into the "intrinsic self-worth" category, nor do I think I base my
self-worth on my perceptions of how others see me.  I did sign up for
cryonics, though.

One problem with the "intrinsic self-worth" approach is that I do not
believe it is survivable in the long run.  If you believe that "you"
are good regardless of the circumstances (in other words, "you" are
intrinsically good), then you will refuse to modify whatever features
compose this "you", since as we have said you judge these features to
be good regardless of circumstances.  In other words, certain kinds
of self-evolution will be unavailable to you.  In my opinion it
follows that the world will then eventually leave you behind.  Some
will disagree with this last step.

The intsinsic self-worth approach also seems twisted because it
evaluates one part of the universe, namely "you" (whatever you may
mean by that), using different rules from the rules used to evaluate
the rest.  I can't prove that this is a bad thing, but it does feel
wrong to me.

The last problem with it is that subjectively, I do not see a natural
portion of my ongoing mental, physical, or biological activity that
clearly deserves the label "me".  In other words, IMO the Buddha was
essentially right.  This is why I've been using the scare quotes
around the "you"'s above; I really don't know what you mean by it, and
I suspect different people use different definitions for that word.

As has been described earlier, following the herd by accepting their
evaluation of "you" as accurate doesn't work either.

So what's the alternative I use?  I don't have a clear statement of
it.  It's something like valuing myself as a rational neighbor would
evaluate me, or as some hypothetical efficient market would.  For
instance, if I contrived my life so I could live forever doing
entertaining but otherwise pointless activity, in my mind that would
be a failure because both the rational neighbor and a market would
rightly judge me worthless.  Some people with different values would
consider that a success.

With this viewpoint, you do cryonics because it's a shame to throw
away potentially useful information, specifically the information in
your brain at the time you would be suspended.

Or maybe I'm just postponing suicide until I've done all the important
activities that I have planned.  I have an apparently infinite
quantity of important activity planned.  With this viewpoint, you do
cryonics because it's a more effective way to take action in the world
than rotting.  

Tim


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