X-Message-Number: 8806 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: Re: CryoNet #8792 - #8800 Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 23:59:33 -0800 (PST) Hi again! It looks to me that we now have Reason #5: The unconscious belief that death will only happen to others, combined with the fact that arranging for cryonic suspension forces you to realize that it will happen to You. Presumably the arguments and facts we might use to deal with people primarily motivated by one argument will differ from those we use with those motivated by another. That's why a list may be useful. One point which I think cryonicists cannot ever emphasize enough: what's really going on when someone is suspended is a disagreement over whether or not they are "dead". If "death" consists of a permanent, axiomatically impossible inability to revive someone, then this statement should be clear. We may even obscure the matter by calling it "deanimation" or whatever. We suspend people (including suspension with our present methods) because we specifically disagree that doing so will "kill" them. Sure, it damages them a lot, but that's not the same as killing. My impression is that an (unknown) number of noncryonicists, particularly people interested in life extension, are put off most of all by their belief that they must be "dead" (whatever that means) to be suspended. Just like all the other comfortable distinctions we've learned to live with in the 20th Century, "death" too has its fuzzy and obscure side, and its lack of precision. We want suspended animation not to prevent "death" (as defined not by us but by most people, still --- and most doctors) but to minimize the damage done to cryonics patients.... an entirely worthwhile goal. Long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8806