Julian Simon and cryonics

Max More (maxmore@primenet.com)
Fri, 13 Feb 1998 13:53:32 -0800

Julian Simon enters the ranks of those terrible losses among whom I would
include recently Carl Sagan. I had discussed life extension and cryonics
with Julian a couple of times. In one of his letters he signed off with the
name "Senior Junior", having some fun in the spirit of adopting Extropian
names. When I talked to him by phone and asked about this, he confirmed my
interpretation that it implied he was old by traditional standards but
young by Extropian standards.

Despite this indication that he might be becoming sympathetic to life
extension, he always resisted the desirability of living longer. I wonder
whether it was due to being tired of a long struggle with depression. If
you read his book "Good Mood" you will learn that he has fought depression
for a long time. The impression I got was that he didn't take medication
for it, instead entirely relying on psychological approaches to controlling
it. This is only speculation, but I suspect that his struggle may have
blunted an interest in life extension that might otherwise have blossomed.
Certainly he was sympathetic to extropian thinking and expected the future
to be better than the past.

What can we do to try to prevent death from claiming many more of our
intellectual pioneers?

Julian Simon will always exist in my thoughts, but I wish that wasn't all.

Max

Max More, Ph.D.
more@extropy.org
http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore
President, Extropy Institute: exi-info@extropy.org, http://www.extropy.org