X-Message-Number: 8023
Date: 08 Apr 97 21:56:42 EDT
From: "Stephen W. Bridge" <>
Subject: Scientists & immortality

To CryoNet
From Steve Bridge
April 8, 1997
 
In response to:   Message #8014
                  From:  (Robin Hanson)
                  Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 12:03:17 -0700 (PDT)
                  Subject: Scientists Want Immortality Less than in 1916
 
 
>The lack of interest by most scientists in cryonics may thus perhaps
>be explained by their placing a low value on the potential benefit of
>revival, rather than on their placing an especially low probability on
>this possibility (say <5%).  This low value on revival is a new thing.
>
>The lack of interest by scientists may lead non-scientists to infer
>that scientists belief the probability of revival is low, when in fact
>it is a matter of values.   I suspect that if the percentage of
>scientists who both intensely desire immortality *and* don't believe
>in God is much lower than 10%.
 
     I suspect the answer may be somewhat different, although much depends
on how the survey questions were actually asked.  More likely, IMO, most
scientists haven't even *thought* about immortality.
 
     If the non-religious scientists were led by the questioners or the
context to assume that the question was about "religious immortality" or
"survival of the soul," they may not have even *considered* the
possibility of physical immortality through technology.  And if they did
not believe in the possibility of some kind of permanent personal
survival, they probably hadn't spent much energy working up a *desire* for
it.  People who have a focused and overwhelming desire for something which
is thought by most to be impossible (immortality, cryonics revival,
uploading?) are generally labeled as mad.
 
     As we all may be, I suppose.
 
     Let me discuss the state of my own feelings before I met cryonicists
(in 1976).  I had determined for myself that there was no immortal soul
and that religions were simply wrong -- brainwashing for our fear of death
(more complicated than that; but this will do for the current discussion).
I did not want to be *dead*; but I never thought about *immortality.*  At
that time, I had no exposure to any ideas about biological immortality --
not even much back then about life extension.  Escaping death was simply a
vague fantasy, probably accomplishable only through "magic"; less concrete
than fantasies about sex, money, or even a good meal.  So I had no desire
for immortality; I didn't even *think* about it until I heard Mike Darwin
utter the "i" word somewhere in our first couple of conversations.
 
     Just because all of us here on CryoNet have physical and/or
informational survival on our minds nearly constantly does NOT mean that
the average scientist does.
 
     I wonder what the response would have been if questions were asked
like: "Do you look forward to death?"  "Do you want to be dead someday?"
 
     We have two things to do here:
 
1.  Educate more scientists that the concepts of physical survival and
life extension (and maybe even "immortality" eventually) are worth
discussing and worth an investment of emotional energy.
 
2.  Do the research so that there is some evidence to persuade more of
them.
 
    Incidentally, although I haven't had time to write anything about it
yet, I DO think it is possible that even most religious people will be
interested in cryonics and life extension in the next couple of decades.
Most religious people are willing to take antibiotics and get organ
transplants.  They're not THAT positive that the "life beyond" is a sure
thing.  Catholics, Jews, Methodists, and Seventh Day Adventists all own
hospitals, some of them among the leaders in experimental, life-extending
procedures.
 
     The problem, again, is that we will have to show evidence that
cryonics will WORK before many people will spend any time looking into it.
Just as few people would be willing to get an artificial heart or a
transplant if the result is likely to be pain, agony, bankruptcy for their
families, and only a few more days of life -- at best, so few people are
willing to spend a lot of money on what may turn out to be a frothy (if
frozen) fantasy.
 
     Support research.

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