X-Message-Number: 23329 Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 07:13:56 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #23302 - #23304 Hi everyone! I haven't been on Cryonet recently because 1. I've been putting together a double issue of PERIASTRON and 2. I'm now editing an article which I hope to publish in ANALOG for $. It's not about cryonics. If Stan Schmidt accepts this version, then I'll say more about it. In any case, re theories of why so few people respond to cryonics: if you're surrounded by many who think the idea is foolish, then you're unlikely to go against the crowd. There's a lot more than just the scientific issues involved in choosing cryonics: what will this mean for society and for me? What about population? How will I make my living? Will everything I did in this life be completely forgotten, so that I must start all over again (a question bearing particularly on those who have obtained some kind of fame)? However I do feel skeptical that the survival drive has failed here. There may not, in fact, be any such drive; we have embedded in us the desire to escape particular fates, and now that we've become so advanced technologically, those fates have become less important. I'll note that someone's behavior when actually presented with a strong chance of death often doesn't match their behavior when the chance is only abstract and faraway. (It would be interesting to know whether cryonicists differ from most in their experience of death, both dangers to themselves and death of those close to them). The point here is that we may have behaviors which generally prevent us from dying, but no GENERAL behavior doing that. Clearly some people can deal with more abstract dangers better than others: there ARE some cryonicists. But that may be unusual. Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23329