X-Message-Number: 8014 From: (Robin Hanson) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 12:03:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Scientists Want Immortality Less than in 1916 The 5Apr97 LA Times, p. B4, had an article reporting on a recent Nature article comparing a survy of scientists in 1916 to 1996, using the same questions. The results: 1916 1996 BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD Personal belief 42% 39% Personal disbelief 41 45 Doubt or agnosticism 17 15 BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY Personal belief 50 38 personal disbelief 20 47 Doubt or agnosticism 30 15 DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY Intense 34 10 Moderate 39 26 Not at all 27 64 The lack of interest by most scientists in cryonics may thus perhaps be explained by their placing a low value on the potential benefit of revival, rather than on their placing an especially low probability on this possibility (say <5%). This low value on revival is a new thing. The lack of interest by scientists may lead non-scientists to infer that scientists belief the probability of revival is low, when in fact it is a matter of values. I suspect that if the percentage of scientists who both intensely desire immortality *and* don't believe in God is much lower than 10%. Robin D. Hanson http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/ Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8014