X-Message-Number: 30422 From: David Stodolsky <> Subject: Re: Beyond the reach of today's Cryonics Movement Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 22:38:17 +0100 References: <> On 5 Feb 2008, at 01:28, Chris Manning wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "CryoNet" <> > To: <> > Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 9:00 PM > Subject: CryoNet #30400 - #30402 > > >> Message #30401 >> From: David Stodolsky <> >> Subject: The Damned: Beyond the reach of today's Cryonics Movement >> Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2008 21:05:53 +0100 >> >> Beyond the reach of today's Cryonics Movement >> >> Abstract >> >> There is a substantial group of people who can't be reached by the >> current methods of promoting cryonics. This reveals a defect in the >> strategies being used. The group in question comprises about a fifth >> of the population and the results may apply to a majority of >> Americans. Furthermore, it seems clear that a different marketing >> approach alone will not be adequate to reach this group. The only >> option is packaging cryonics with other benefits. Since the key to a >> solution is worldview revision, it is likely that only a collective >> solution will be feasible. That is, today's method of marketing >> cryonics to individuals will likely fail with members of this group. >> > > I am familiar with such concepts as curve-fitting, confidence > limits, etc. > but I fail to understand how such an approach can actually increase > the > number of cryonics sign-ups. Curve fitting and related methods are technical aspects of modeling human behavior, in this case. Up until now, the primary approaches to promoting cryonics have been introspection based. That is, people interested in promoting cryonics think about what would influence them to sign up and then suggest new activities on that basis. However, the method of introspection as been dropped within scientific psychology for several reasons. First, the actual basis of decision and the perceived basis for decision may be different. Especially with matters relating to death, there seem to be important subconscious processes (reflexes) that dominate thought. In general, there is known to be an attitude - behavior gap. That is, when people tell you what their attitude is about, for example, fattening food, that is often an extremely poor predictor of their behavior when confronted with such food. Most people professionally involved in psychology have concluded that the method of introspection as worthless, except as a source of preliminary hypotheses that can be rigorously tested by some other approach, typically experiment. Therefore, we attempt with the above analysis to understand what has stopped the promotions of cryonics from succeeding. We employ one of the simplest models: a linear relationship between an 'input(s)' and an 'output'. While we would like to get data from actual signups, there has been little interest by the organizations to make such data available. Therefore, we are using the only data available, the expressed interest of persons to investigate cryonics. That is, what (inputs) makes people say, "I believe that Cryonics is an exciting idea and intend on looking into it further." (the output). Clearly, investigation of cryonics is a step toward signing up - at least under the present arrangements. A preliminary finding from reanalysis of the Badger (1998) data is that there are a lot of people who will never say that, because their minds are already made up. These people have stated, "I would feel more favorably toward the idea of cryonics under no circumstances." They agree more with the statements: "Extending one's life span through Cryonics is unnatural, selfish, and immoral." "Cryonics doesn't interest me because I just don't think it will work." They disagree more with the statements: "I would feel more favorably toward the idea of cryonics if a human were revived." "Being frozen is no guarantee that I will be revived someday, but I know my chances are zero if I am buried or cremated." I conclude from these results that such people are embedded in a system of thought that rejects cryonics as immoral and undesirable. The religious person, as opposed to an atheist or agnostic, is more likely to agree that, "Extending one's life span through Cryonics is unnatural, selfish, and immoral." (p<.01). They are more likely to say, "Cryonics doesn't interest me because I just don't think it will work." (p<.05). Religious persons are more likely to agree with the statement, "I would feel more favorably toward the idea of cryonics under no circumstances." The effect is significant when atheists are compared to all others. (p<.05). The religious person is more likely to see another possibility for avoiding destruction: Atheists and agnostics are more likely to say, "Being frozen is no guarantee that I will be revived someday, but I know my chances are zero if I am buried or cremated." (p.<.1). The implication is that these religious persons believe in an immortal soul. A concept typical of the Abrahamic religions popular in the USA. Also note, that these results relate only to taking enough interest in cryonics to seek additional information. It seems likely that they will actively reject info made available to them. So, let's fast forward to a time when cryonic suspension had been demonstrated to work and the cryonics organizations have become wealthy enough to run TV spots all across the country. One of the above people views a spot in which an attractive young person states. "I lived to be over a hundred years old, and then died from a horrible disease and was placed in suspension. Now I have been restored to life and health, and have been made young again. I feel great. You can do it too. Just call toll-free for more information, no obligation and no salesman will call." Their likely reply, "What nonsense, cryonics can never work. No person could be that selfish and immoral!" Don't think so? It was only a few years ago that members of the Jehovah's Witnesses church were watching their own children die, because they were refused blood transfusions on religious grounds. The above scenario strikes me as modest in comparison. So, if the analysis is correct, how can we get these people into suspension? Only by a change in their worldview. They need to be attracted into an organization by immediate benefits and then educated appropriately. That is, some collective arrangement must be developed, because there is no chance they will sign up otherwise. In fact, there is very little hope they will even expose themselves to the information about cryonics that could be used as a basis for a decision. dss PS: With respect to my comments upon the limitations of the statistical methods: The main conclusions are solid, but the details may be inaccurate. I hope to apply more appropriate methods of analysis to the data later. David Stodolsky Skype: davidstodolsky Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=30422