X-Message-Number: 10077
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 09:43:01 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #10073 - #10075

To Olaf Henny:
We want to be suspended because it gives us a chance at living much
longer. If that is not emotion I do not know what is. 

While it's nice to congratulate ourselves on how rational we are, 
I'm not so sure it helps at all as an explanation of why so many people
refuse cryonics. My own ideas in this line suggest that many people have
been trained up from birth to follow the most popular opinions without
seriously thinking about them or their implications. For people whose
fate depends on the opinions of others, such behavior may even be
rational. Not life-preserving, not independent, but rational. What else
are public schools for?

When pressed, though, I have no explanation that I would stand up and
defend against all comers. Someday, perhaps only after we've got a 
more advanced form of suspension (which I think must take priority) we
will be able to fund psychological and social studies which will give
us a good answer, studies done by CRYONICISTS. 

Naturally we should continue present recruiting activities. I'd hardly
advocate stopping them. But so far I've not yet heard a really good
experimentally founded explanation for why so many people don't join.
(As you can guess, I'm dubious of those so far presented. For every
such explanation, I know people who still don't want cryonic suspension,
though their opinions don't fit the explanation proposed). Me, I don't
want to die. And sure, I don't want my relatives to die, either, though
they still continue to do so. I'm even a bit lucky: my wife is also
a cryonicist, though not as active as I have been. So at least one person
I care for should be frozen; but still there are others for whom I've
totally lost hope.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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