X-Message-Number: 32789 Subject: Marketing cryonics From: David Stodolsky <> Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2010 13:04:05 +0200 References: <> On 22 Aug 2010, at 11:00 AM, CryoNet wrote: >> >> What's needed: bring more females into the debate. >> > I'm a bit of a lurker on cryonet but always follow discussions. You suggest > that material directed towards women and anti-aging might be a good idea. > I'm a novelist ... I have sent out two proposals for novels (for women) with > cryonics as theme and one suggestion for a book on the lines of 'Cryonics > for Dummies'. No publisher or agent will touch either because > A) they do not have a guaranteed market > B) because I'm not a well known footballer, chef or politician. > > Chrissie de Rivaz > Unpackaged, cryonics is pretty much empty of a social component. Women are generally less attracted to physical technologies and more interested in the social aspects and implications of technologies. This is apparent from the Badger data. Women tended to reject cryonics because, it meant the loss of contact with family members, friends, etc. when waking up in the future. A major benefit from life extension technologies was perceived to be prevention of these types of losses. It could be an interesting exercise to show how a future, including cryonics, could support the social relationships that are often lost due to ageing, disease, etc. If you want to sell a book including cryonics to women, cryonics will have to play a secondary role. For example, a plot of the family relationships that develop when a suspended husband reappears and wants his 'old' wife back, who in the meantime has remarried could be interesting. > > Cosmism, a philosophy of life based on the works Hugo De Garis and offered > by dss in the above message, seems to me to be a very poor choice for > catagory shifting. In this philosophy, de Garis in postulating millions of > deaths in a Terminator like scenario, projects and reverses his own fear of > death onto our machines.....Paranoid and a poor matrix in which to embed a > life affirming technology such as Cryonics. I haven't read much of De Garis, but what I have seen doesn't present a coherent philosophical picture. It strikes me more like free association under techno-infatuation. I don't see any important relationship between it and the cosmism discussed by philosophers today or in the past: http://sites.google.com/a/cosmism.info/cosmism/what-is-cosmism > > This assumes two things > > 1. a package that **includes** cryonics > 2. that it is accepted by the population > > "the package" would have to contain a lot of material that is pertinent to the Chinese situation and the ruling party's ideology. I don't see how this could be created except by Chinese academicians. The Party ideology is pretty much irrelevant as far as I can see, since it tends to be empty of material relevant to individual existential concerns. We wouldn't see the resurgence of religion, if Party ideology could fulfill this role. However, any packaging of cryonics for the Chinese market would have to employ the local knowledge of Chinese academics or others who study Chinese society. > > On the basis that the Chinese ideology still owes a lot to the Communist Party, it would seem sensible to listen to the views of a spokesman for the Communist Party. This is from Radio Moscow in the 1980s: > http://www.cryonics.org/media/moscow1.htm > http://www.cryonics.org/media/moscow2.htm > http://www.cryonics.org/media/moscow3.htm > These broadcasts rather suggest that although the Communists seek to extend the "lifespan of the species as a whole" (by which I think they mean average lifespan) and are willing to consider researching anti-oxidants and so on, they regard cryopreservation as being specific to individuals and therefore not worthy of consideration. > -- > Sincerely, John de Rivaz: SU and China diverged ideologically, so I doubt if much from the SU CP would be relevant even at that date. The view expressed above is directly opposite of that of Russian Cosmism, which played a key role in the early days of the SU and in their space program. The reduced expectations expressed may more reflect the disintegration of the Soviet System, which was already apparent, even though the total collapse didn't come for about a decade. dss David Stodolsky Skype: davidstodolsky Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32789