X-Message-Number: 8806
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #8792 - #8800
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 23:59:33 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

It looks to me that we now have Reason #5:

The unconscious belief that death will only happen to others, combined with
the fact that arranging for cryonic suspension forces you to realize that it
will happen to You.

Presumably the arguments and facts we might use to deal with people primarily
motivated by one argument will differ from those we use with those motivated
by another. That's why a list may be useful.

One point which I think cryonicists cannot ever emphasize enough: what's really
going on when someone is suspended is a disagreement over whether or not
they are "dead". If "death" consists of a permanent, axiomatically impossible
inability to revive someone, then this statement should be clear. We may even
obscure the matter by calling it "deanimation" or whatever. We suspend people
(including suspension with our present methods) because we specifically 

disagree that doing so will "kill" them. Sure, it damages them a lot, but that's
not the same as killing.


My impression is that an (unknown) number of noncryonicists, particularly people
interested in life extension, are put off most of all by their belief that
they must be "dead" (whatever that means) to be suspended. Just like all the
other comfortable distinctions we've learned to live with in the 20th
Century, "death" too has its fuzzy and obscure side, and its lack of precision.

We want suspended animation not to prevent "death" (as defined not by us but
by most people, still --- and most doctors) but to minimize the damage
done to cryonics patients.... an entirely worthwhile goal.

			Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8806