X-Message-Number: 30470
References: <>
From: Kennita Watson <>
Subject: Re: Beyond the reach of today's Cryonics Movement
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:14:34 -0800

On Feb 6, 2008, at 2:00 AM, CryoNet wrote:
> On 5 Feb 2008, at 01:28, Chris Manning wrote:
>> From: "CryoNet" <>
>>> From: David Stodolsky <>
>>> Subject: The Damned: Beyond the reach of today's Cryonics Movement
>>>
>>> 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.... [T]oday's method of  
>>> marketing
>>> cryonics to individuals will likely fail with members of this group.
>>> ...
> 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 ....
> 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.
>
> ... [W]hat
> (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."

A lot, but not the overwhelming majority. (18% in Badger's survey?)
> ...
> 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!"

OK, then fast-forward to a time when the relatives
of televangelists have been suspended and revived,
and said televangelists proclaim that cryonics
isn't cheating God -- it prolongs life so the
faithful can go on to do God's work.  Then again,
they may still avoid it because by the time we
can revive people, they will probably be able to
live for hundreds or thousands of years *without*
cryonics.  Artificial intelligence and uploading
will also be causing them fits.  But they'll have
hundreds or thousands of years to wise up -- we
won't need to be in such a hurry.
>
> 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.

That's a problem for another day -- when we have
3% market penetration and billions of dollars
and are looking for 4%, not when we have 0.0003%
and thousands of dollars and are looking for
0.0004%.  Sufficient unto the day....

FTR, I think the main message I need to get out
is that just because we can't revive someone
today doesn't mean we never will.  People can be
incredibly shortsighted.  Any examples you can
point me to of cases where something was "clearly
impossible" shortly (less than fifty years?)
before it was accomplished can help in delivering
this message.

Live long and prosper,
Kennita

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=30470