X-Message-Number: 16981 From: "John de Rivaz" <> Subject: Educating public perceptions Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:37:03 +0100 From: >Query: What public perceptions should we focus on >changing in a pro-cryonics public relations campaign? > > I vote for this one: > > It's selfish to use the insurance money for > cryopreservation instead of giving it to your family. > This may be the idea of some folks, mostly created by Alcor's prices. If you can finance a suspension using insurance, it don't holds. So the argument seems simple to debug. I do not understand this statement. In the post most days people get mailings from some charitable organisation requesting "only" UKP10 a week/month or whatever in aid of their projects. In addition, they often ask for bequests in your Will. People who run these charities, if they are deathists, would say that any premiums you are paying to life insurance to fund your cryopreservation would be better spent on giving it to them. They would suggest that the chances of their being able to help lots of people with your money are far greater than the chances of you being able to help yourself using cryopreservation. Of course the real competition is between people who collect salaries or just self-esteem from running charities, and people who collect salaries or self esteem from running cryonics organisation. This includes suppliers to either organisation - it seems to be little known that charities are also employers and usually if you offer them a professional service they will pay you for it. We would say that those who are running cryonics organisations do so not so much for self esteem or getting salaries, but saving lives - their own, and those of their friends and loved ones. But the deathists who say we are selfish do not see it that way. -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://www.deRivaz.com my homepage links to Longevity Report, Fractal Report, music, Inventors' report, an autobio and various other projects: http://www.geocities.com/longevityrpt http://www.autopsychoice.com - http://www.cryonics-europe.org - http://www.porthtowan.com Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16981