Clarke probably got Cryonics magazine at one time.
March 18 2008, 10:34 PM
For years every issue of Cryonics magazine had a box showing how many subscribers and Alcor members lived in each nation. Someone in Sri Lanka, where Clarke lived, subscribed for a long time; but the last time I looked at this box, I noticed that the Sri Lankan subscriber no longer appeared.
Clarke seems a bit over-rated as a "futurist" any way, along with other 21st Century anticipators like Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, F.M. Esfandiary and the reportedly ailing Jerry Pournelle. Clarke predicted that manned space exploration would become the defining activity of our civilization by now, when in fact nobody has travelled beyond low Earth orbit since 1973, before many of today's cryonicists were even born!
For example, look at this table of predictions from a 1970's edition of Clarke's Profiles of the Future:
Almost all science-fiction writers have opted not to make personal arrangements for cryonics.
This suggests to me that a generally open mind toward the future may be necessary but not sufficient. A certain personality type may be necessary too. I can't define it, but I do notice a difference between most of my friends in the science-fiction community, and people in cryonics.
Joe Haldeman and Frederik Pohl apparently made up their minds longer ago that they prefer to die permanently. I have had serious and lengthy discussions with both of them on the topic. There are ironies in both cases. Haldeman was indirectly responsible for me learning about Alcor, after he made an impromptu visit to Alcor during an academic conference in Riverside. Pohl of course wrote a whole novel using cryonics as a concept, and he helped Robert Ettinger to find a publisher for The Prospect of Immortality. (Prior to that, as I understand it, Ettinger had circulated only a small privately published edition.) Without Pohl, cryonics might have been delayed and might have been promoted by someone else in a very different way.
I went through all the usual arguments in favor of cryonics with both of these writers. Fred Pohl conceded each point logically, but at the end of the conversation he said something like, "I don't know why, but for some reason I just don't like the idea." Joe Haldeman had some really creative objections, one of which being that revival might cause extreme pain, and having been wounded in Vietnam, he knew a lot about pain. I suggested to him that if revival was going to happen at all, it would occur long after medicine acquired the capability to achieve good pain management. He had to agree that this made sense, but then backtracked to the issue of money. And so it went on. I think really he felt the same way as Pohl: For some reason he just didn't like the idea.
I disagree with Rudi Hoffman's post on CryoNet blaming cryonics advocates for failing to sell their wares effectively. I do not believe that anyone can, will, or could have sold cryonics to Clarke, Heinlein, Asimov, Pohl, Haldeman, or most other science-fiction writers.
Not very many people and certainly very few cryonicists have studied much in the area of sociology, anthropology, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology and other, closely related areas of social science. I have tried to understand these fields of study, and I have found it very helpful in explaining why so few humans have chosen cryonics. I believe, based on my reading of his posts on cryonet, that the poster named Stodolsky has some background in these aforementioned areas of social science. I say that because of how he has responded to my ideas about using religion to promote cryonics. It is strange that so few cryonicists are educated in or interested in these areas of study, because in general, cryonicists are some of the most widely educated people I have ever encountered.
At any rate, these areas of social science show us that humans are for the most part defined by their culture. That statement has many profound consequences.
Almost all aspects of society are tied to culture. Further, humans are not entirely rational outside of certain areas that are defined by their cultures.
We seem to have the idea in our various cultures and in particular in the West, that we are rational, autonomous beings that make our choices in life rationally and freely and independent of any constraints. But this is not true at all. We operate within a rather narrowly defined cultural box. For most of us, our cultural rules define us, and so therefore we cannot go beyond them.
Also, we are not aware of this confinement. There is also a cultural constraint on our being able to acknowledge that our choices are defined by our culture. And that culture does not include cryonics. In fact, cryonics as it currently exists and as it is currently perceived violates fundamental tenets of all cultures.
Going back to your situation with the science fiction writers, your problem with their lack of acceptance and their inability to come to terms with the idea of cryonics and its basic logic really goes right to the heart of our failure to use the ideas found in sociology, anthropology, evo psych, sociobiology, etc., in trying to promote cryonics. Further, although the relevant ideas from those fields of social science may indeed be familiar to you and other cryonicists and other educated people, real-world application of these abstract concepts is another matter entirely. That application is rarely to be found, other than in some few books and academic papers.
I suppose that the bottom line here is that progress with cryonics will likely come from our study of those areas of social sciences and the application of the ideas from those areas of study.
Thinking along those lines, I believe Terror Management Theory is a good partial explanation for the cryonics promotion dilemma...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory
Unlike other biological species, humans are aware of the inevitability of their own death. Culture diminishes this psychological terror by providing meaning, organization and continuity to people's lives. Compliance with cultural values enhances one's feeling of security and self-esteem, provided that the individual is capable of living in accordance with whatever particular cultural standards apply to him or her. The belief in the rightness of the cultural values and standards creates the conviction necessary to live a reasonable and meaningful life. This cultural worldview provides a base of making sense of the world as stable and orderly, a place where the one gain rests their hopes on symbolic immortality (e.g., fame, having children, legacies of wealth or fortune) or literal immortality (e.g., the promise of a life in an afterworld).
Our cultural world view is a "symbolic protector" between the reality of life and inevitability of death. Because of this men and women strive to have their cultural worldview confirmed by others, thereby receiving the community’s esteem. However, when one’s worldview is threatened by the world view of another, it often results in one’s self-respect being endangered as well. In such a situation people not only endeavour to deny or devalue the importance of others' world views, but try to controvert the ideas and opinions of others which may, as a consequence, escalate into a conflict (ie. religious holy wars). As a result, mortality salience increases stereotypic thinking and intergroup bias between groups.
Two hypotheses have emerged from TMT research; the mortality salience hypothesis and the anxiety-buffer hypothesis. The mortality salience hypothesis says that if cultural worldviews and self-esteem provide protection from the fear of death, then reminding people of the root of that fear will increase the needs of individuals to value their own cultural worldview and self-esteem. The anxiety-buffer hypothesis provides the rationale that self-esteem is a buffer which serves to insulate humans from death. By doing so our self-esteem allows us to deny the susceptibility to a short-term life. Experiments supporting the two hypotheses above have been conducted in the US, Canada, Israel, Japan and the Netherlands. (Williams, Schimel and Gillespie, 2006).
--
So, basically any lengthy discussion of death is going to create anxiety and a subsequent need to reinforce one's adherence to cultural norms. This can also heighten antagonism toward ideas that challenge one's worldview. A double whammy against selling cryonics. How can we avoid this trap?
Funny, politicians seem to gather support by invoking mortality salience all the time. Conservative politicians say, "If you don't vote for us, the terrorists will kill you." Progressive, or at least less conservative, politicians say, "If you don't vote for us, you won't get affordable healthcare and you'll die."
Why doesn't that translate into something like, "If you don't get cryonically suspended, you'll stay dead forever"?
Humans are wired to respond to immediate death threats very effectively. When you're overtaking a truck on the freeway and it starts to pull out into your lane, you do whatever it takes to save yourself without thinking about it.
On the other hand we do not perceive longterm risk very effectively. This is why millions of people still smoke cigarettes. It took a long time even to persuade people that seat belts were a good idea.
That said, I am not sure that selling cryonics on the basis of alleviating fear of death is really a good strategy anyway. I think many people could be acutely afraid of death and still show little interest in cryonics. Most terminal patients, for instance.
There are at least two major differences between the promotion of cryonics and the sort of fear-mongering rhetoric used by politicians.
1) Politicians use wording that is often ominous or non-specific. In fact, it's rare for politicians to even say the words death or die, they often even stay away from saying things like, 'our lives are at risk.' Instead, they refer to amorphous threats like bad guys or terrorists. They don't dwell on the topic of death, they focus on positive values like defending freedom. So, yes, they tweak that primal fear to get our emotional investment, but they have to know their limits. Overdoing it can cause unintended consequences, people get turned off, candidates are avoided or just ignored. Some politicians, like Giuliani, become a joke.
Unfortunately, cryonics, by it's very nature, requires a great deal of death talk. It's important for people to understand all the details of such an arrangement. Many people I know are uncomfortable with the topic of death, they'd rather not think about it at all. This is probably also why people often procrastinate on making a will or buying life insurance.
2) The threats they discuss are couched in a familiar context. Conservatives, for instance, reaffirm a religious and sometimes xenophobic worldview. Liberals often emphasize fairness and populism. These are outlooks many of their constituents find in common. So when their 'death anxiety' is triggered, it strengthens these core values they already hold.
Cryonics, on the other hand, is completely foreign and bizarre to most people. When we provoke thoughts of death in the uninitiated, it shouldn't surprise us when they turn to their core values, clinging ever more fiercely to religious ideas of immortality.
8. PEOPLE FREEZING
Arthur C Clarke's pre-occupation with interplanetary space travel led him to consider how humans could survive for the long periods needed to cross vast tracts of space.
One of the answers he came up with, outlined in the story The Songs of Distant Earth, was cryogenic suspension.
The plot sees the human race having to leave Earth in a convoy of spaceships as the Sun is about to explode.
Currently, cryogenic preservation of living people is impossible, and in many countries it is illegal to attempt it.
More than 150 people, mainly in the US, have been frozen in liquid nitrogen after their death.
But even the companies running these projects admit that freezing cannot be reversed and there is no proof that it would preserves peoples' identities, even though there is evidence that brain structure can survive the process.
In medicine, very cold conditions are used to store organs before transplantation and to store eggs and sperm, and as a way of removing warts.
I've seen a photocopy of the original letter. It appears to be genuine and I believe it may have been solicited during Alcor's fight to save its patients after the Dora Kent case.
