CryoNet #33002 - #33006

CryoNet - Sat 30 Oct 2010

    #33002: Re: CryoNet #32997 - #33001 [Gerald Monroe]
    #33003: Re: irrationality of the rich [David Stodolsky]
    #33004: Re: irrationality of the rich [David Stodolsky]
    #33005: Collecting data [Mike Perry]
    #33006: older people happier? [Charles in Arizona]

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Message #33002
References: <[email protected]>
From: Gerald Monroe <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2010 04:23:35 -0500
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32997 - #33001

--001485f85a167c1e200493be0433

Charles : I appreciate your insight.  Wealthy people really are irrational
(just like everyone else).

Take the president of Gateway computer.  The mental flaw in his thinking is
this : he instinctively is planning as if he is going to live forever.
 Thus, spending years making even more money makes sense.  And, from an
evolutionary perspective, he is : he if makes more money, he can breed with
more women, and his genes really will live on forever.

Also, if he were really going to live forever, making more money so that he
can live in luxury longer also makes sense.  But in actuality, those years
he keeps struggling as president are years he will not get back, during
which he could have been lounging on the beach or whatever.  His decision
reduces the amount of pleasurable, luxurious things he will get to enjoy
before he dies, rather than increasing them.

>From an individual perspective, our instincts are wrong.  What needs to be
done so that our memories and thought patterns live on is very different
from what our instincts tell us.

--001485f85a167c1e200493be0433

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Message #33003
Subject: Re: irrationality of the rich
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:03:02 +0200
References: <[email protected]>

On 29 Oct 2010, at 11:00 AM, CryoNet wrote:
> 
> Are there examples of seriously rich people deciding that "at their age" 
> they will just lie down and die, in order to make room for new people, 
> despite assurances from the medical authorities that whatever ails them can 
> be "cured". If so what age? 65? 95? 125?
> 
The point is that there is no deciding. Suppression of death related thoughts ensures that. Therefore, it is the cultural frame that determines what is acceptable. 

If you measure the safety features on a car, you can compute that a human life is valued at a couple of hundred thousand USD. However, nobody explicitly says, "A human life is worth 200 K, so adding 4 kilos of steel to the bumpers is a false economy". Unconscious soc-cultural assumptions determine the decision. 

> 
> Finally, many believe in overpopulation, global warming, energy and resource 
> shortages, etc. and feel that it would be immoral not to 'make room' for the 
> new generation.
> 
This type of belief serves the same role as those things designated as 'sins' by the Church. That is, it is immoral to consume what is needed by future generations. Thus, even consideration of life extension is rejected. 

These New Age religions are misanthropic. Just like the traditional Christian view of man as a 'sinner', the (earthly) individual is devalued: 

The World Has Cancer
and the Cancer Is Man. 
(Gregg, 1955)1
----
1 A. Gregg as quoted in Mankind at the Turning Point: The Second Report to the Club of Rome (Mesarovic & Pestel, 1974) page 1.

MacDougal (1996) comments:

"If you picture Earth and its inhabitants as a single self-sustaining organism, along the lines of the popular Gaia concept, then we humans might ourselves be seen as pathogenic," Jerold M. Lowenstein, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has written. "We are infecting the planet, growing recklessly as cancer cells do, destroying Gaia's other specialized cells (that is, extinguishing other species), and poisoning our air supply.. From a Gaian perspective... the main disease to be eliminated is us" (Lowenstein 1992).

Dr. Lowenstein isn't the first physician to examine the planet as a patient and find it afflicted with humanoid cancer. As a long-time official of the Rockefeller Foundation, responsible for recommending financial grants to improve public health and medical education, Dr. Gregg traveled widely in the years following World War II and observed the worldwide population boom. By 1954 he had seen enough. In a brief paper delivered at a symposium and subsequently published in Science, Gregg (1955) compared the world to a living organism and the explosion in human numbers to a proliferation of cancer cells.




dss

David Stodolsky
[email protected]  Skype: davidstodolsky

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Message #33004
Subject: Re: irrationality of the rich
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:30:01 +0200
References: <[email protected]>

On 29 Oct 2010, at 11:00 AM, CryoNet wrote:
> 
>> Any rational billionaire would be on this in a heartbeat.  Nothing else
>>> makes any sense from a rational view.  What irrational reasons are
>>> preventing this from happening?
>> 
>> First, the idea that this is a predominantly rational process should be
>> dismissed. Except for atheists, the balancing of costs vs. benefits will
>> never occur. The person will have an emotional response to any thought
>> related to their own death and that will suppress any further consideration.
>> My reanalysis of the Badger data posted here earlier explains this in
>> detail. The conclusion was that current marketing targets atheist
>> millionaires.
>> 
>> We also know that existential concerns are resolved in middle age. Since
>> wealth tends to increase with age, it is likely that many billionaires have
>> already made up their minds on the issue.
>> 
>> Second, the individual-oriented marketing strategy fails to take into
>> account what guides most people's decisionmaking process in this area. The
>> approach fails to deal with the relational objections - loss of friends and
>> family, etc.- and doesn't consider the role of sub(culture) in influencing
>> decisions of this type.
>> 
>> Finally, many believe in overpopulation, global warming, energy and
>> resource shortages, etc. and feel that it would be immoral not to 'make
>> room' for the new generation.
>> 
>> 
>> So, there are several factors that can account for the seeming
>> irrationality of the rich.
>> 
>> 
>> dss
>> 
>> 
> It just seems like a form of Pascal's dilemma that is supported by direct
> scientific evidence.  While we have no decent evidence showing an afterlife
> does exist, we can readily see that death is permanent and not a desirable
> state of affairs.  10 minutes in the presence of a human 'cadavar' will
> convince almost anyone of that.  

These days a person can avoid this type of confrontation almost completely.


>  That's why a rational billionaire would at
> least buy a minimum policy, because the cost to a billionaire is vanishingly
> small and the potential rewards are huge.

The role of rationality is vanishingly small.

> 
> It's quite plausible that the successful
> cryonics patients might awaken into a world where wonderful things exist,
> but they cannot afford any of them and they lack the mental capacity as a
> mere unmodified human to earn the resources needed to pay for them.

This would be a reversal of the trends we have seen historically. 

> 
> Overpopulation and energy shortages are all based upon the capacity of old,
> cheap methods for extracting energy and making living space. 

There have never been shortages of this type.


> So essentially you're saying that older humans stop fearing death due to
> genetically programmed neurological mechanism, and they use (irrational)
> mechanisms to prevent serious thought on the subject as well.

We know that older people are on the whole happier. Whether this is genetically programmed or not isn't clear. However, they don't stop fearing death, they just stop thinking about it. 

This avoidance of death related thoughts is not a mechanism limited to older people. It functions throughout life, however, when someone looks in the mirror one day and sees a lot of grey hair, they have to revise their belief in personal immortality. Once this is done, it is back to the avoidance of death related thoughts.


> 
> The rare person that does consider cryonics has difficulty signing up any of
> their friends and relatives, putting a stop to their personal consideration
> of the subject.  Thus, mainly loners end up actually staying signed up?

This doesn't seem to be the pattern, but we really don't have solid data. However, there have been many cryonics activist who disappear from the scene and are never suspended. This suggests that a supportive cultural frame is necessary to maintain commitment over the longterm. This is why I have advocated a new marketing strategy that would target local groups, as opposed to single individuals, for signup. 



dss


David Stodolsky
[email protected]  Skype: davidstodolsky

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Message #33005
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:37:53 -0700
From: Mike Perry <[email protected]>
Subject: Collecting data
References: <[email protected]>

David Stodolsky writes:
>In fact, thus far none of the suspension organizations are even 
>systematically collecting the data that already is available to 
>them. Data on web activity, telephone and mail inquiries, and 
>cancelled memberships, etc. could throw some light on what it takes 
>to achieve a successful signup. Given that collecting this type of 
>data would be virtually cost free, the failure to do so amounts to 
>marketing negligence by the current organizations.

Actually, much of this data *is* being collected, at least for one or 
more of the major organizations, but analyzing it is a chore that 
hasn't been carried through properly. I am trying to work on some 
parts of this issue myself. (Sorry for the vagueness at this point, 
more details when I am better prepared.)

MP

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Message #33006
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2010 17:52:35 -0700
Subject: older people happier?
From: Charles in Arizona <[email protected]>

David Stodolsky writes: "We know that older people are on the whole
happier. Whether this is genetically programmed or not isn't clear.
However, they don't stop fearing death, they just stop thinking about
it."

Wow. Huge generalizations without any supporting source. And totally
opposite to my personal experience and the experience of people I know
who are over 60 (cryonicists and noncryonicists alike). They (we)
think about death a LOT more, because every little thing that you can
no longer do so easily is a reminder of it. It's like being in a
slowly shrinking box. Even my father, from a totally different
generation, felt this way.

I don't know whether I'm more or less happy than I used to be, because
I see no way to measure such a thing reliably. I do know that I am a
lot more worried than I used to be.

Some elderly people may become resigned to their fate, but I have
never met any. Of course some people may _say_ they have resigned
themselves, but I don't believe them. No matter how old you are, you
always want to live for one more day, unless of course you have a
condition which severely impairs quality of life.

--Charles Platt

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