X-Message-Number: 8942
From: Ettinger <>
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 17:51:07 EST
Subject: Klug macht nicht recht

"Smart" and "right" are two different things. Also, questions of fact or logic
or science are decided neither by majority vote nor edict of authority.

Ben Best has an excellent piece--one of several--in the current Canadian
Cryonics News, concerning attitudes and motivations of immortalists and non-
or anti-immortalists. A few additional remarks and one disagreement:

Cryonicists/immortalists are sometimes accused of pretensions of being
smarter-than-thou or holier-than-thou or more-life-affirming-than-thou. Well,
it is simply true that the heel-draggers (Ben mentions Arthur C. Clarke) are
guilty of failure of imagination or nerve, among other things. The notion that
loneliness and nostalgia are incurable conditions is incredibly stupid in
someone with Clarke's background.

While accusations of snobbery may be correct, they are irrelevant--in theory.
In practice, it may not pay to denigrate your adversary, if you hope to change
his mind or that of an onlooker. 

On the other hand, maybe it helps internal morale to cast scorn on the
unenlightened. Who knows? Not me. Probably we should trim our remarks to the
audience. Don't lie, but emphasize that part of the truth that serves the
immediate purpose. 

Another guideline is a variation of the Christian admonition to "Hate the sin
but love the sinner." I despise your opinion, but that doesn't mean I despise
you. I just claim to be right, not smart.

Now the disagreement. Ben--along with almost everyone else outside of the
dogmatists--suggests that values are individual and above or beyond criticism.
His example is one's preference in flavors of ice cream.

The example is misleading because it is trivial. But trivial or profound,
values are not arbitrary and not beyond analysis and modification. There are
indeed values one "ought" or ought not to hold. (Of course we need to
distinguish between societal values and individual values; it is the latter
that are basic.)

A major example relates to the tendencies, in all people, toward both self-
preservation and self-sacrifice, which are sometimes in conflict. (Cf.
Lorentz' disorderly "parliament of instincts.")  The logical/biological
analysis of "ought" is the major failure of philosophy to date. One of my
books in progress seeks to begin to correct this.

Robert Ettinger 

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