X-Message-Number: 13169
From: "Joseph One" <>
Subject: RE: CryoNet #13163 - #13166
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 11:11:53 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: CryoNet [mailto:]
> Sent: Monday, January 31, 2000 5:00 AM
> Message #13164
> From: Thomas Donaldson <>
> Subject: Re: success of promotional activities
> Date: Mon, 31 Jan 100 11:30:40 +1100 (EST)
>
> Hi everyone!
> One major reason Alcor members havent engaged in lots of promotion is very
> simple. Many organizations exist solely to promote a set of ideas;
> political organizations, including Objectivists, and doing just that.
> The purpose of cryonics organizations is to get their members suspended
> when that becomes necessary. And doing THAT requires lots of energy which
> in other organizations goes to get people to join.

It sounds like you're saying that no effort should be made to promote the
idea of cryonics because any resources used for promotion are needed for the
actual cryopreservation process. However, I find it hard to believe that the
few extra thousand dollars that a low-level publicity campaign would cost
would so seriously damage the entire cryonics industry.

I would argue that there is a certain economy of scale involved. By
investing some of the cryonics industry's resources into promotion, it would
actually see that investment paid off many times over. (I confess I don't
know the specific economics of most cryonics companies, so I can't make a
cost-benefit analysis, but if they're spending every penny on operations
there's something wrong.)

Don't think of it as diverting resources from the primary purpose of the
industry; think of it as investing those resources to make the industry
grow. When that happens, the assembled resources will be able to be
leveraged to increase efficiency. A 1,000-person facility can be run
relatively more efficiently than a 50-person facility.

> As Ive said before, there is another problem, too: most attempts at
> promoting cryonics (either in general or for a specific organization)
> simply HAVE NOT WORKED. Perhaps some new method could work, perhaps
> not, but after continuing for 35 years now, the existence of some
> other method than personal contact does not look to seasoned cryonics
> as a likely possibility.

I don't think that "it hasn't worked before" is a valid reason not to keep
trying. After all, powered flight kept failing and failing too. I think this
is more a question of what strategy to pursue, rather than evidence that
strategies to encourage popularization of cryonics must and will always
fail.

Joseph

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