X-Message-Number: 7194
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 05:47:06 -0800 (PST)
From: Joseph Strout <>
Subject: How I got "recruited"

Randy wrote:

> Maybe I'm wrong, but haven't most people been recruited into cryonics
> through a friend/acquaintance? Is that venue actually more numerically
> successful than media publicity?

I can only speak for myself, but perhaps it will be illustrative.  I
independently (and very gradually) developed the concept of mind uploading
from my interest in neuroscience and AI.  It struck me one day that since
uploading requires only preserved structure (as opposed to biological
viability), perhaps these "cryogenics" nuts I had heard about weren't so
crazy after all.  As I recall, this struck me as rather funny.

So I subscribed to the cryonet and Extropians mailing lists.  After
several months, I concluded that while the Extropians really are nuts, the
cryonicists as a whole were a reasonable bunch making the best of a bad
thing (i.e. death).  So I dropped the latter and stayed with the former.

Now, several years later, I am finally in the process of making
arrangements (though I had underestimated what a chore this would be!).
It has been a very gradual acceptance process.

No media affected my decision, though I was very gratified to see Minsky's
article on uploading in SciAm a year or two ago.  And I think that the
more exposure we get, the better, since most people will not even consider
the idea without some prodding.  I wonder how other newcomers came to be
involved?

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
|    Joseph J. Strout           Department of Neuroscience, UCSD   |
|               http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~jstrout/  |
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