Re: Giving cryo talk to Jewish high school

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Feb 28 2001 - 14:49:39 MST


Randy Smith wrote:
>
> It seems to me that people of the Jewish culture are less antagonistic
> to cryo-Extro-life-extension ideas. Arlene Sheskin's book _Cryonics_
> included a survey of cryonicists from about 25 years ago. Some very
> large percentage of cryos in her survey were Jewish. Admittedly, many of
> them apparently came from the New York area, but it was a very large
> percentage--perhaps 25-50%.

Jewish society, with rare exceptions, is not at all technophobic.
However, there were increasing signs of infection at the time that I left
physically (mentally, I'd left a long time ago), so get them while you
can.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that it has something to do with (a) the fact
that rabbis derive religious authority from their technical expertise on
the amazingly complicated laws, and (b) the amazingly complicated laws
soak up all the religious fervor, leaving none for traditional Luddite
fundamentalism. Though, when I left, there were signs of growing
infection; predator memes moving into the ecological void.

-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence



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