X-Message-Number: 2911 Subject: CRYONICS Pool Party Report From: (Ben Best) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 1994 23:26:00 -0400 About 20 people attended the Cryonics Pool Party in Toronto, Canada on July 16th. Five of these are signed-up cryonicists (2 CryoCare, 2 ACS, and 1 Alcor). Two others expressed an interest in signing-up within a year. Conversation was mostly one-to-one or in groups of 3 until the end when people gathered in a circle, in part to listen to Paul Wakfer share some of the knowledge of cryonics he has acquired while working with Mike Darwin in California for the past 2 years. At one point Paul seemed to be challenging one of the signed-up cryonicists to become more active by saying that if cryonics doesn't grow to include 1% of the North American population, none of us will be reanimated. Paul later said that his wording had been too strong. Nonetheless, his evident intent reminded me of the Nanotechnology debate. A noncryonicist might take the statement to mean that there is no point in wasting effort being a signed-up cryonicist until 1% of the population has signed-up. A cryonicist, however, would presumably be goaded to increased activism. Paul could have made a similar argument concerning the need for local response capability -- saying that the cryonicist should contribute to local response or he has no chance for survival. Could this approach backfire and convince a cryonicist to terminate his/her arrangements or cause those over-hearing to not begin the sign-up process? I'm not going to presume that there is a universally correct answer, but I want to raise the problem. We sold books for the first time, and I was reasonably satisfied with the result (spreading memes, as much as making money). Paul is returning to California for 6 weeks, stopping on the way to visit Robert Ettinger in Detroit and Libertarian-Cryonicists in Fort Collins, Colorado. -- Ben Best (ben.best%) Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2911