X-Message-Number: 10008 From: Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 22:01:57 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Credible evidence for cryonics isn't the problem I have read Saul Kent's many writings regarding the issue of "credibility" as a necessary step to "save" cryonics. With all due respect to this cryonics pioneer, I totally disagree. Is there any historical evidence to support the hypothesis that because something is scientifically demonstrated to be "true" or "workable" that it is then embraced? I would submit that acceptance is an issue of popular whim based upon emotion, *not* science nor even reasonable evidence. It is usually only after many years that scientists are willing to reconsider their beliefs (oops. I meant theories). Many have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the courtroom of proofs before they will grudgingly admit to what is, as opposed to their hubris-filled opinions of what "ought" to be. One of the biggest breakthroughs in medicine was simply washing your hands. The doctor who pressed for this (Semmelweiss) was ridiculed and died without seeing this simple practice accepted - despite all the evidence of its effectiveness in preventing death and infection. Why? Well among the reasons given by doctors of the day was that it was "ridiculous" to waste one's time washing your hands. I still await someone to authoritatively address the arguments made by Duesberg in _Reinventing the AIDS Virus_. Duesberg, a top retrovirologist, has been campaigning for years to get the scientific community to explain why they support the HIV-AIDS hypothesis in the face of a mountain of evidence which makes such a hypothesis untenable. Meanwhile people die of AIDS ... due to something. Here the evidence is being bluntly *ignored*. Egyptologists assure us that the Sphinx of Giza is about 4,000 years old. Geologists point to visible water erosion on the Sphinx which had to have happened at least 12,000 years ago when it last rained in Egypt. Egyptologists haughtily ignore the evidence of their senses and flatly deny the geologists' evidence - a multi-ton carving of rock with water rivulets everywhere on its ancient surface! Scientific evidence isn't enough. It must not contradict your own group's theories (dogma). _The Big Bang Didn't Happen_ declared plasma physicist Eric Lerner in his 1992 book by the same title. Now, six years further down the road, the nonsense of this 20th century "flat earth" theory is being attacked publically. Why haven't the modern cosmologists and astronomers dumped the patchwork dinosaur known as the big bang? Because it isn't *popular* in scientific "circles" to do so. After all, smart people for years have endorsed the big bang, so it *must* be true. (Let's just sweep all those inconvenient facts which make it impossible under the rug). On a more popular level, the so-called "face on Mars" might have been the first solid evidence for extraterrestrial life, but NASA scientists didn't even want to look because they somehow "knew" (oh, to be omniscient like them!) that it couldn't be artificial. The issue of at least looking at what *might* have been the most exciting cosmological discovery in history seems a "no-brainer". And the only reason these "bow tie" scientists were overruled was because of a massive emotional appeal by ignorant members of the public (too ignorant to "understand" without looking, that the "face on Mars "couldn't" be artifical). So much for the persuasive value of scientific evidence. The scientists are bound by peer pressure. Don't rock the boat. Don't invite possible ridicule. And for God's sake DON'T endanger your GRANTS! This is why almost every major technological breakthrough requires another generation for it to be accepted and acted upon. We always have to wait for the current generation of authority figures to die off and for the rebellious newcomers to use the latest "heresy" to leverage their own way into becoming a new intractable, fossilized "establishment", possessed of *their* new dogma. Scientists practice a *religion* (with rare exceptions who are quickly branded heretics and then excommunicated). "Science", for most, remains an unknown ideal for the majority of professional scientists. The religion of the scientists follows a priesthood protocal, with rites of passage (college degrees, internships, tenure, etc.) and sacred literature (approved journals). My point is that you are dealing with human beings. Scientists make their decisions about what to believe *not* upon "scientific evidence" but upon *emotions*. The history of science is a testament to this all too human need to *feel* right ... and damn the facts! For this reason, I would contend that believing that you can convince the current crop of high priests (the current scientific community) that cryonics is viable based upon scientific evidence is to not understand the nature of the human beast. It is the very iconoclastic nature of cryonics, the fact that it is *not* acceptable to the current priesthood which is its best chance for becoming acceptable for the next crop of young priests who must find some opposing viewpoint to demonstrate their distinctness from the "old guard". (The young apes must antagonize and challenge the authority of the established older apes to usurp the positions of authority and wrest power and domination for themselves). Which means only that *after* scientific credibility can be estabished for cryonics, then we get to wait still *another* generation for the above mentioned social forces to propel cryonics to a level of scientific acceptance. I don't think I am willing to wait *that* long! There is, however, another way. It was demonstrated in how the ignorant masses caused the NASA priesthood to look at the "face on Mars" anyway. Emotion rules all! As we are dealing with death and its redefinition, let's look at how the salesmen of death, life insurance salesmen, do their job. (The next time you look at one of those skyscrapers in any major city, notice that reddish-colored mortar which holds the bricks together. It is dried human blood). Selling life insurance is not based on anything rational. It is emotional. Once the "prospect" is shown that he can "protect" his loved ones, and continue to provide for their future, he achieves a small form of immortality, but he also avoids being considered an inconsiderate, selfish monster by his spouse. "You won't leave me a widow who can no longer pay the bills!" she thinks. The saleman knows that *these emotional issues of relationship* are why someone will bet money in the form of insurance premiums that they will die sooner rather than later. Selling insurance to mortals has complete "credibility". So far, everybody dies, right? But this is seldom if ever why anyone agrees to buy life insurance. Ask any successful life insurance salesman about the truth of his work. Choosing to take action requires emotions, not statistics. It isn't an issue of "credibility". How many people actually check the financial statement of the life insurance company they sign up with? How many even have heard that insurance companies, like any business, can fail? No. Not credibility. It is emotion. James Halperin has done more with his book _The First Immortal_ to cause cryonics to grow than anything other than setting up a way and means to freeze people in the first place. He has presented emotional situations with people. People who read will relate *emotionally*. The back of his book then tells them where to go for further information. I had known about cryonics for years before. I agreed with the rational arguments for it. I figured that someday I would "get around to it." I signed up for cryonics for myself and my family some years ago because I imagined how I would feel if I were sitting at the funeral of my wife or daughter or son, and knew that I *might* have saved them but now I was responsible for them *staying dead*. It was fear of future guilt and remorse which moved me. What caused me to think these morbid thoughts? A life insurance salesman. (By the way, he was not even aware of cryonics. But his sales presentation suggested these very issues). So what do I think can work to cause cryonics to grow? I agree with Robert Ettinger. Keep on going. But I have one additional suggestion. Talk to more successful life insruance salespeople. They know what works. We don't have to do anything new. We do need to remember that human beings do what they do for reasons. Those reasons are almost always emotional. Wait for scientists? Forget it. Just keep developing emotional arguments based on what people truly value. For example, I have a bachelor friend who is engaged to be married. He considered cryonics shortly before a surgical operation one year ago, but has set it aside when he survived it. The immediate threat to his own life was gone. After he is married, I will remind him of the same scenerio I was moved by to urge him to consider again. Because he loves his wife, he will eventually sign up. He would not like the thought of attending his wife's funeral knowing that he might have saved her. He is a caring person. (He also carries life insurance). Once enough "ignorant" laymen (like me) attach personal emotional importance to cryonics, you will see a groundswell. The face on Mars may have been natural. But it was the emotions of many people which forced the scientists to look. We need only continue to offer the option of considering cryonics to our friends. When they naturally reject it, we then need only realize that they have not felt the right emotion strongly enough yet to understand that they *do* want to sign up. Oh, and if it seems too "crass" or "undignified" to use bluntly emotional arguments to persuade those you know to take a chance on life, ask yourself this. How will *you* feel if you go to *their* funeral knowing you might have saved their life instead of... -George C. Smith Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10008