X-Message-Number: 19948 Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 22:33:56 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Evolutionary Psychology and the Scarcity of Signups >From: Keith Henson <> >Subject: A cryonicist gets published. >For those interested in the interface between memetics and evolutionary >psychology, my long worked on article is here: >http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/cults.pdf I found this to be a good, thought-provoking article, and it suggested another possible cause of the scarcity of people signing up for cryonics: they are afraid of losing status by choosing this "weird" thing. This we may have known already, yet not fully appreciated. Status, as noted in the article, is very important to reproductive success. Thus we may expect that nature has lavished special attention over it, so that its significance in people's thinking runs deep indeed. In fact I'll conjecture that there are psychological mechanisms involved that, in very many cases, are not understood (or not fully understood) at the rational level--thus I would call them suprarational. Suprarational mechanisms could account for much of the strangeness people often express--vacillation, inadequacies, or just "don't know"--when trying to explain their lack of interest in cryonics, which is steadfast nonetheless. So we may have some insight that could lead to better promotional techniques--at least it seems worth looking into. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19948