X-Message-Number: 22522 Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2003 08:33:10 -0400 From: Keith Henson <> Subject: Re: avoiding mortality, idealism, unacceptable impositions Dan Hitt <> wrote: snip > But in any event, my sense is that many > posters here believe avoiding mortality is a strong driver > in the whole community. > But is this true? > Personally, i don't believe my desire to avoid death is > much stronger or weaker than anybody i'm in contact with. snip > Is this really what motivates most cryonicists? Motivation and the psychological/brain mechanisms that lie behind motivations were shaped by what got your genes from one generation to the next a million years ago. The applicable field is called evolutionary psychology. It is an area that many people consider profoundly distasteful, perhaps because it exposes human motivations to be something less than pure and rational. I have no reason to believe that cryonicists are less subject to these common motivations than anyone else. Very high on the list of motivators is social standing. It is easy to understand why social primates work so hard for status if you look at the historical (pre birth control/women's rights/demographic transition) correlation between status and reproductive success. Even today, consider the number of children Bin Laden has. Attention is an indicator of social status. We seem to have brain mechanisms that release rewarding chemical (dopamine, endorphins) into the brain's reward/reinforcement circuits. Anyone who has come off the platform higher than a kite after public speaking has experienced this effect first hand. The reward circuits also get activate by addictive drugs (that's what makes such drugs addictive). The mechanism is perverted sometimes to lethal extremes in cult situations. There is a 7,000 word article I wrote a year ago on this subject at human-nature.com/nibbs/02/cults.html A high fraction of what humans do--good as well as bad--can be understood as trying to gain status in tribal or tribal like groups. This applies to the present set of Alcor problems, previous problems, and good steady times. Raising status can be non-zero sum or zero sum. A lot of the problems in cryonics (and elsewhere) are due to attempts to raise status in zero sum mode. Status is important, people fight over it, and losers lose something that may not be much connected to reproductive success today, but the psychological sting is still wired into your genes. I am not going to go into a specific analysis of events current or historical for examples, even though I usually use examples. But I will comment if others want to do so. From: Subject: Alcor Daily News/Same Old CI > Just when we were afraid that Charles Platt's jumping ship would leave us > without *some* source of news about Alcor, the Arizona Republic seems to be > filling the void almost daily. Here's the latest article: <http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0912alcorgifts12.html> (Craig Harris is the reporter.) Dear Mr. Harris: I got into cryonics through reviewing the nanotechnology work of Dr. Eric Drexler in the late 70s to early 80s, signing up (with my wife and daughter) in 1985 when Alcor had about 50 members. Between about 1989 and 1996 I helped freeze 18 of the people Alcor has in suspension, eventually training up to be lead surgeon for putting patients on cardiac bypass so they could be perfused with cryoprotectives. I was also on the board of directors. So I know the organization and many of the people well . . . . and congratulate you on writing an informative and accurate article. If in the future you want additional background on cryonics, be happy to talk to you. Keith Henson 519-770-0646 Brantford, Ontario Canada PS You can use the above as a letter to the editor if you want. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=22522