X-Message-Number: 32327
References: <>
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:06:24 -0800 (PST)
From: Shannon <>
Subject: Signing Up Children For Cryonics
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Sweet Jesus Mark, thank you for posting that--this is what I've written for
Eliezer:
Eliezer--don't know how many people reading this had the same response I did,
but you tore my heart out.
As Nick Bostrom Ph.D. Director of the Oxford Future of Humanity institute,
Co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association said about my book "21st
Century Kids" "Childhood should be fun and so should the future. Read this to
your children, and next you know they'll demand a cryonics contract for
Christmas."
You know, I do what I can to educate others to the fact that cryonics is
possible, and thus there is the common sense obligation to try. For me it is a
noble endeavor that humans are attempting, I'm proud to help that effort. If
you do a search on "teaching kids cryonics" you'll get:
http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/2008/07/04/teaching-children-about-cryonics/
from a few years ago. I still do classes when I can, I've been talking to my
children's friends and parents here in the UK after moving from Austin this
past summer. The reception I get over here from parents and kids is generally
the same as what I heard in the States--people express interest, but never
really go through the effort of signing up.
I will be writing more, in the mean time I love hearing from fans of
http://www.amazon.com/21st-Century-Kids-Shannon-Vyff/dp/1886057001 It was a
thrill to get pictures and feedback from kids who got the book this Christmas
and loved it!
Thank you for writing about the Teens & Twenties conference Eliezer, I sincerely
look forward to further analysis from you. I'll be attending with my teens in
the future, my 13 year old daughter actually had wanted to go this year but we
were not able to work it in. She'll be more mature, and my son will be a teen
by the time the next event occurs. It is great to have the heroes who have
devoted their lives to cryoncis, meet the "normal folk" who sign up--and for the
kids to make friends with other cryonicists.
I'm sorry about your brother Eliezier, your writing tore my heart out. I agree
that parents should sign their kids up, my own were raised with it and plan on
"talking their spouse" into doing it (that will be interesting ;-) ). I've seen
other older cryonicists who have raised their kids with cryonics, and the kids
kept up the arrangements. I've also seen it go the other way. We need more books
written for kids :-)
Thanks for all you do.
And thank you Mark for all the information you post.
Shannon Vyff
Message #32326
From: Mark Plus <>
Subject: "Normal Cryonics," by Eliezer Yudkowsky
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:03:34 -0800
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1mc/normal_cryonics/
Normal Cryonics
Eliezer_Yudkowsky
19 January 2010 07:08PM
I recently attended a small gathering whose purpose was to let young people
signed up for cryonics meet older people signed up for cryonics - a matter of
some concern to the old guard, for obvious reasons.
The young cryonicists' travel was subsidized. I suspect this led to a greatly
different selection filter than usually prevails at conferences of what Robin
Hanson would call "contrarians". At an ordinary conference of transhumanists -
or libertarians, or atheists - you get activists who want to meet their own
kind, strongly enough to pay conference fees and travel expenses. This
conference was just young people who took the action of signing up for cryonics,
and who were willing to spend a couple of paid days in Florida meeting older
cryonicists.
The gathering was 34% female, around half of whom were single, and a few kids.
This may sound normal enough, unless you've been to a lot of contrarian-cluster
conferences, in which case you just spit coffee all over your computer screen
and shouted "WHAT?" I did sometimes hear "my husband persuaded me to sign up",
but no more frequently than "I pursuaded my husband to sign up". Around 25% of
the people present were from the computer world, 25% from science, and 15% were
doing something in music or entertainment - with possible overlap, since I'm
working from a show of hands.
I was expecting there to be some nutcases in that room, people who'd signed up
for cryonics for just the same reason they subscribed to homeopathy or
astrology, i.e., that it sounded cool. None of the younger cryonicists showed
any sign of it. There were a couple of older cryonicists who'd gone strange,
but none of the young ones that I saw. Only three hands went up that did not
identify as atheist/agnostic, and I think those also might have all been old
cryonicists. (This is surprising enough to be worth explaining, considering the
base rate of insanity versus sanity. Maybe if you're into woo, there is so
much more woo that is better optimized for being woo, that no one into woo would
give cryonics a second glance.)
The part about actually signing up may also be key - that's probably a
ten-to-one or worse filter among people who "get" cryonics. (I put to Bill
Faloon of the old guard that probably twice as many people had died while
planning to sign up for cryonics eventually, than had actually been suspended;
and he said "Way more than that.") Actually signing up is an intense filter for
Conscientiousness, since it's mildly tedious (requires multiple copies of
papers signed and notarized with witnesses) and there's no peer pressure.
For whatever reason, those young cryonicists seemed really normal - except for
one thing, which I'll get to tomorrow. Except for that, then, they seemed like
very ordinary people: the couples and the singles, the husbands and the wives
and the kids, scientists and programmers and sound studio technicians.
It tears my heart out.
At some future point I ought to post on the notion of belief hysteresis, where
you get locked into whatever belief hits you first. So it had previously
occurred to me (though I didn't write the post) to argue for cryonics via a
conformity reversal test:
If you found yourself in a world where everyone was signed up for cryonics as a
matter of routine - including everyone who works at your office - you wouldn't
be the first lonely dissenter to earn the incredulous stares of your coworkers
by unchecking the box that kept you signed up for cryonics, in exchange for an
extra $300 per year.
(Actually it would probably be a lot cheaper, more like $30/year or a free
government program, with that economy of scale; but we should ignore that for
purposes of the reversal test.)
The point being that if cryonics were taken for granted, it would go on being
taken for granted; it is only the state of non-cryonics that is unstable,
subject to being disrupted by rational argument.
And this cryonics meetup was that world. It was the world of the ordinary
scientists and programmers and sound studio technicians who had signed up for
cryonics as a matter of simple common sense.
It tears my heart out.
Those young cryonicists weren't heroes. Most of the older cryonicists were
heroes, and of course there were a couple of other heroes among us young folk,
like a former employee of Methuselah who'd left to try to put together a
startup/nonprofit around a bright idea he'd had for curing cancer (note: even I
think this is an acceptable excuse). But most of the younger cryonicists
weren't there to fight a desperate battle against Death, they were people who'd
signed up for cryonics because it was the obvious thing to do.
And it tears my heart out, because I am a hero and this was like seeing a ray of
sunlight from a normal world, some alternate Everett branch of humanity where
things really were normal instead of crazy all the goddamned time, a world that
was everything this world could be and isn't.
Then there were the children, some of whom had been signed up for cryonics since
the day they were born.
It tears my heart out. I'm having trouble remembering to breathe as I write
this. My own little brother isn't breathing and never will again.
You know what? I'm going to come out and say it. I've been unsure about saying
it, but after attending this event, and talking to the perfectly ordinary
parents who signed their kids up for cryonics like the goddamn sane people do,
I'm going to come out and say it: If you don't sign up your kids for cryonics
then you are a lousy parent.
If you aren't choosing between textbooks and food, then you can afford to sign
up your kids for cryonics. I don't know if it's more important than a home
without lead paint, or omega-3 fish oil supplements while their brains are
maturing, but it's certainly more important than you going to the movies or
eating at nice restaurants. That's part of the bargain you signed up for when
you became a parent. If you can afford kids at all, you can afford to sign up
your kids for cryonics, and if you don't, you are a lousy parent. I'm just back
from an event where the normal parents signed their normal kids up for
cryonics, and that is the way things are supposed to be and should be, and
whatever excuses you're using or thinking of right now, I don't believe in them
any more, you're just a lousy parent.
End of CryoNet Digest
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