X-Message-Number: 6835
Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 12:41:17 -0700
From: Tim Freeman <>
Subject: Interminable Pointless Leary Argument

One possibility is that Leary was competent to make decisions and he
simply changed his mind about cryonics, possibly because of influences
not associated with cryonics; in that case he's responsible for his
decision to be cremated.

Another possibility is that Darwin or Harris or somebody associated
with cryonics accidentally portrayed their organization in a bad light
somehow.  In that case Leary could have changed over to Alcor.  He did
not, and that's his decision, so he's still responsible for having
been cremated.

Another possibility is that Leary was incompetent to decide by the
time the decision had to be made.  In that case he should have
assigned a competent person who shares his values to make his
decisions.  He did not do this (or maybe he *did* do this and he did
not value cryonics), so he's still responsbile for having been
cremated.

So what are we arguing about?  None of the proposed histories of the
event create a link between the outcome and the relative merits of the
cryonics organizations; they are just different ways that Leary got
himself burned.  Leary is not fundamentally different from any of the
many other people who decide to die apparently without thinking it out
carefully.  The fact that he spoke at length about it only
demonstrates that verbal reasoning is irrelevant to how people make
decisions about important things.  At this point Stodolsky should jump
in and say something about terror management, but I *still* haven't
read his references, so I cannot judge his claim that the phenomenon
is well understood by some people.  Mea culpa, but that isn't the
point of this post.

The real tragedy would have been if Leary had acted consistently with
wanting to be frozen, but the opportunity was not available to him.
That didn't happen, so there was no tragedy, and no blame to
distribute.  I have a large number of projects more worthwhile than
trying to get people frozen who don't want it, and I'm sure the rest
of you do too.  So get on with it.

Tim Freeman


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