X-Message-Number: 849
Subject: Re: Dirty Linen
Date: Sat, 23 May 92 15:34:03 -0400
From: 

In Ralph Whelan's message, he ends with a story about a person won't
do cryonics because he wants "eternal rest" but nevertheless goes on
to have a coronary bypass operation.  Judging from context, he seems
to be saying that CRFT needs to be rewritten to reach people like
this.  I don't think that's a good idea.

There are people whose highest value is conformity.  I've heard in
various places that these people may comprise 95% of the population.
If you try to persuade one of these people to do something unusual
(like cryonics), they will provide rationalizations because one is
expected in this society to have rational reasons for one's decisions.
These rationalizations don't matter; what really matters is that the
authority figures (or maybe the herd of peers) recognized by this
person don't agree with you.

(By the way, I have actually heard a person say that they won't do
cryonics because extending life by that means is not compatible with
the culture she believed herself to be in.  Some conformists know they
are conformists and like it!) 

The path to success that I see for us is to first go after the 5% of
people who don't feel compelled to conform.  After we get them, a
conformist who happens to find himself in the vicinity of enough
cryonicists will feel compelled to join, so things will proceed quickly
from there.

So, it would be a great loss if rewriting CRFT in an attempt to reach
the fellow in seach of eternal rest causes us to reach fewer
non-conformists, like maybe the person on sci.med who spoke in terms
of lawyer's eyelashes.

I would be very interested to read the draft of the next CRFT before
it's printed up.

Tim

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