X-Message-Number: 13016 Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 00:57:01 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Once Again, DAF When I said, in response to Keith Rene Dugue's response to my previous posting on the Death Avoidance Fallacy (DAF): " Would you rather be trapped in a lake of lava forever, or totally oblivious? Or closer to home, suppose an evil terrorist has kidnapped you, who is very good at excruciating, utterly unbearable, horrifying torture. And he is going to kill you, but you have a choice. (1) You can elect to take a painless, lethal injection that will end your life after 6 hours of total unconsciousness. (2) You can be wide awake but tortured for 6 hours first, then killed. These are your only two choices. Which would you choose? If it is (1), how do you justify this? Being totally unconscious, it would seem you cannot appreciate the benefit. So would you then choose torture, or not care one way or the other?" He replied, "These questions are outside the scope of the DAF." And I'm sure he sees it that way, but I don't think most persons facing severe trials/traumas etc. will. However, I have my own version of the DAF, which is that you can't be sure of nonexistence, or of what the future will have in store. If you opt for suicide you could be reconstructed many years later, by some process or other, and all that period of nonexistence would not be perceived as any time at all (since you don't perceive time in such a state), therefore you will have accomplished nothing by way of avoidance of misery *during the time of nonexistence*. After this, well, what can you say? If you weren't happy before, you won't necessarily find happiness in such a future. You should consider sticking around here. However, the deathist mentality of most people amazes me, even though I've spent decades (really) trying to understand it. I can't believe that it's just a simple matter of people thinking life's not worth living, and that they can "escape" this bad state only through death. True, I've heard people say this sort of thing before, but one way it seems to ring hollow is that a person who feels that way ought to want to opt out of the loop immediately. Yet most deathists do not want that either. The logic of both not wanting the chance of a future life through cryonics, and not wanting to die right this minute, and not having some overriding religious reason for this attitude, escapes me. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=13016