X-Message-Number: 29583 From: Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 10:25:06 EDT Subject: Kennita's math etc. Kennita Watson wrote in part that, in the West, "an nonbeliever is 25 times more likely to sign up than a believer. That would mean that if we want to save lives we are much more likely to do so by marketing to nonbelievers than by walking on eggshells around believers." Bad arithmetic, lack of verified database, and false assumptions. For one thing, the non religious Communists and Humanists have not rallied to our banner, either in the East or the West. Analyzing the reasons isn't easy, but it is interesting that Christians and Muslims want personal benefit from their devotion, while Communists and Humanists are "nobler" because they seem to be more interested in posterity than in themselves. For another thing, "marketing to nonbelievers" in Kennita's context would seem to mean stressing the irreligiosity of cryonics, but I know of no evidence that this would work. Kennita also writes that better educated people are more likely to be unbelievers, with unbelief almost universal at the highest scientific levels. So? Seems to me this suggests, according to her reasoning, that we should focus on these people, and attacking religion would not help in the least. In fact, it would make them uncomfortable, and they are already uncomfortable with our being too avant-garde. In any event, our actual experience has been that there is no benefit in targeting any niche or group directly. Our success, small but growing, has been in offering a reasonable chance, at reasonable cost, to anyone who wants it. R.E. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29583