X-Message-Number: 22596
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 20:13:05 +0200
Subject: Re: avoiding  mortality, idealism, unacceptable impositions
From: David Stodolsky <>

On Sunday, September 14, 2003, at 02:33  PM, Keith Henson wrote:

>   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.

This ignores cognitively generated, that is, emergent or derived 
motives. The most fundamental of these flows from Generative Death 
Anxiety.

Cultural evolution has taken a dominate place in guiding human 
behavior. Any analysis that ignores it, can't be accepted as valid. 
While evolutionary psychology can give us an idea of what limits 
society must operate within, it fails to explain why certain choices 
are actually made.


dss



David S. Stodolsky    SpamTo: 

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