X-Message-Number: 19737
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 17:08:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jeff Davis <>
Subject: re: Michael Shermer and cryonics

Cryofolk,

I spent many a pleasant hour composing my rebuttal to
Mssr. Shermer's Sept 2001 SciAm piece on cryonics.



http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=000E274C-2DD2-1C6F-84A9809EC588EF21


First off, I couldn't help but note a delicious irony.
Five years earlier SciAm published another
infotainment hit-piece by Gary Stix which
oh-so-knowingly declared that nanotech was bunk. 
Drexler and Merkle got dissed as a couple of cranks. 
(D&M didn't sit still for this, and used the internet
to smack the SciAm editors around more thoroughly than
would ever have been allowed in their "Letters to the
Editor" section.  Judging by SciAm's threat to take
legal action for copyright infringement--D&M reprinted
large chunks of the column in the course of their
point-by-point rebuttal--the SciAm folks came away
from the encounter feeling something less than warm
and fuzzy.)  Five years later, crow tucked barely
noticably in the back of their cheeks, they're singing
a different tune, devoting a special issue to the
once-bunk-now-Whoops!-never-mind-rising-star of
nanotech.  Their coefficient of public embarrassment
is low however; few will remember how boldly they got
it wrong back then, or how they have (mostly)
flip-flopped since.  

But the SciAm editorial staff remembers, (learns
little but remembers)--and apparently they hold a
grudge--so they're back again, for another go at D&M. 
It's not "Nanotech" that's bunk--how could that be in
a issue devoted to same!?  No, of course not. 
"Nanotech"--'real' nanotech--is wonderful, hottest
thing since sliced bread--but the D&M version, the
itty-bitty machines version...now that's bunk. This
time, for scientific clout, they call in Smalley and
Whitesides.  (See the Foresight Institute website for
their response to S&W.)  Schermer, the lightweight
with the big mouth, talks up the rear. (He pop's off
at D&M by name.  From out the corner of my mind's eye,
I catch the SciAm editors nodding their approval.)

To increase profits by broadening appeal and expanding
circulation, Scientific American becomes "Jerry
Springer-ized".

But back to Schermer.

I have a quote from my sig file:

        "We don't see things as they are, 
                 we see them as we are." 
                        Anais Nin

So what is Schermer about?  What is the central
feature of his world view, his life experience, from
which all else springs, and which explains how and why
he sees things as he does?  It's right there in the
SciAm piece.  Forth paragraph:

   "I gave up on religion in college, but I often slip
back into my former evangelical fervor, now directed
toward the wonders of science and nature. ... It
[cryonics] is too much like religion: it promises
everything, delivers nothing (but hope) and is based
almost entirely on faith in the future. ..."

He's a 'reformed' true believer. 'Cured' of his
"former evangelical fervor", now sensitized, and
ever-vigilant to detect and expose irrational, ie
faith-based, belief.  Unfortunately, from where I sit,
it appears that the cure didn't take.  As he says,
"...I often slip back into my former evangelical
fervor, now directed toward the wonders of science and
nature."  With 'his' new 'true' religion of science,
he roots out the heretical practitioners of his
defective thinking of old, ie religious irrationalism,
behind every bush.

So look at the SciAm piece again.  In a nutshell it
attempts to make the case: Cryonics is a religion, is
irrational belief, and is bunk.  Michael Shermer has
been there, and knows whereof he speaks.

But he's wrong.  Any similarity between cryonics and
religion is coincidental. ***Confidence*** in the
certainty of future scientific accomplishments is
entirely rational, an extrapolation based on the
undeniable, tangible, material certainty of past and
present scientific achievement.  In stark contrast,
***Religious belief/faith*** is the ooga booga
nonsense of stubborn ignorance, utterly devoid of
evidence (but--to be fair--buoyed up by the great
question.)  Confidence in facts vs faith in spite of
no-facts.

Don't be too hard on Mssr. Shermer.  There is nothing
to be gained by beating up on him because religious
abuse in his youth left him over-sensitive/challenged.
 He has done very well for himself.  Quite a bright
and personable fellow, actually.  I like him.  We all
have our blind spots.

Best, Jeff Davis

       "Science works, religion doesn't."
                         Berni Chong


























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