X-Message-Number: 33210
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 07:12:47 -0800 (PST)
From: un person <>
Subject: Re: Darwin's Manifesto

Mike Darwin wrote:

"The malice, venom and obvious contempt with which cryonics is attacked on 
[various websites] is not only unacceptable, it is intolerable. "




Well, they certainly have attacked cryonics on those sites.  But IMO those sites
do not amount to a hill of beans. It will have no effect on cryonics. Just let 
it roll off your back.


Mike Darwin wrote:


"Of course, the problem arises of how to separate the truth from the lies. This 
is not easy to do for people who have little or no knowledge of cryonics, 
medicine, or its related or supporting disciplines. The only solution for issues
of that kind, for technical issues, is education; and that burden vis-A -vis 
cryonics, lies squarely and justly on our shoulders as cryonicists. And I will 
add that it is not merely a burden, but a responsibility - and one that we have 
not discharged well over the past decade or so. That deficiency can and will be 
remedied. 

    A more difficult task is the frank and open discussion of the social, 
    ethical and moral implications of cryonics and its supporting technologies. 
    "




Who cares? This sort of discussion, even on national TV, is not going to change 
many minds. This is a rational discussion. 99.9 percent of Americans are not 
going to decide anything about cryonics on a rational, conscious level. That is 
not how homo sapiens is constructed.


Mike Darwin wrote:

"Much worse still is the poor behavior of people like Mark Plus and Luke Parrish
(both of whom I greatly respect), who start blogs, end them, start new blogs 
and end them again, ad infinitum. This is not a sane strategy for cryonics 
advocacy, and in fact, it damages cryonics by fragmenting information and 
discouraging others from doing a high quality and consistent job of educating 
the global public."





No, it don't. Cryonics, the very idea of it, just bounces off of the heads of 
99.9 percent of humanity, whether or not Mark Plus is on his 144th blog or not. 
And get this--the words that come out of the mouths of people when you talk to 
them about cryonics are usually meaningless. What they say has nothing to do 
with how they feel about cryonics. And it is not done consciously.



Mike Darwin wrote:

"Manufacturing Mavericks But to be fair, other credible and energetic young 
spokesmen for cryonics don't exist because they have yet to be made - and they 
are made, not born. As Alcor became increasingly empowered, and as cryonics 
grew, bright young men began to show up on our doorstep - often unannounced. ...
Thus, if cryonics is to be free of some of the misery it is currently 
experiencing, and if it is to have a future, then a conscious decision must be 
made to exercise judgment about which people, young and old who exist out there 
in this world of 6+ billion people, are worth effort - and then to give them 
everything we've got. "





Nice sentiment. But you are molding them in YOUR image, with YOUR ideas, with 
YOUR strategies. The same strategies that have yielded a grand total of 1000 
members in 40 years.
You want to recreate YOUR failure in THEM!



Mike Darwin wrote:
The Problem of the World Wide Web

"Why are these salacious allegations about cryonicists of such profound interest
to a group of non-cryonicists who clearly spend considerable amounts of their 
time and energy attacking cryonics, often stupidly and baselessly?" 





I imagine it has something to do with L'Affaire Ted Williams. And then throw in 
terror management theory. We threaten the "death room" that these people have 
constructed. We threaten their psychological defenses against death. My theory 
on it, anyways....


Mike Darwin wrote:

"We should not hire people who are almost complete strangers to us, let alone 
promote people who are not cryonicists to positions with authority, or access to
sensitive information. This seems such a commonsense point that one has to be 
either an idiot or a fool not to recognize it.....A recitation of the full list 
of sociopaths and gross incompetents who have been rapidly empowered in 
cryonics, at great cost in lives and money, would be equal to or greater in 
length than this already lengthily essay."





Agreed. And why are cryonicists so bad at hiring people? Because we are not 
people persons. We do not read other people well. Cryos spent most of their 
childhood with their noses in a book. That was how we developed this unusual 
sense of objectivity, all the better to apply logic to the idea of cryonics, my 
dear. But in doing so, we gave up a lot, e.g., the ability to read people. Know 
your weaknesses.



Mike Darwin wrote:


"I have spent a considerable amount of time, especially in recent years, going 
to and fro over the earth; I have seen the great garbage patch in the Pacific - 
a sterile void of petrochemical end products the size of the state of Texas, and
spent days in the Central American jungles whilst ash falls down like rain, day
and night, without stopping. I have walked up and down in the earth through the
abandoned thermonuclear infrastructure of the previous century and the emerging
subterranean earthworks being built to rid the planet of vertebrate life in the
event of "total war' in this century."




But have you watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate?


Mike Darwin wrote:
"Alternative Mechanisms

 An institutional model that would have arguably been a better fit for cryonics 
 is that of the egalitarian, but nevertheless quite powerful "secret' fraternal 
 organizations, of which the Free Masons is the prototype. "




Or a church?



Mike Darwin wrote:

"The attacks that have recently begun on cryonics (and the underlying reasons 
for them) must be dealt with, and dealt with starting now. 

....Indeed, nourishing them with our own blood and treasure. If you post to 
...[these websites] or any of the other hateful and destructive anti-cryonics 
sites, you should understand that you are directly feeding their bloodlust....

The message here is as simple as it is succinct. STOP POSTING TO THESE SITES and
STOP ALL INTERACTION WITH THOSE WHO POST TO THEM, OR IN ANY WAY AID OR ABET 
THEM. "





Again, tempest in a teapot. Hill of beans, etc. It really doesn't matter much 
what they say. Here is a far bigger problem: Our ideas have been almost wholly 
rejected by 99.9 percent of society. And then throw in the fact that we cryos 
even refuse to acknowledge this and seek other strategies. We are in big 
trouble, but the these websites you cite have nothing to do with it.

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