X-Message-Number: 12040 Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 10:24:13 -0400 From: "Raphael T. Haftka" <> Subject: People ignore cryonics because it makes sense to ignore it Aren't we so smart! All the explanations that I read (I am not sure I read all) of why people ignore cryonics imply a deficiency on the part of the rest of the world, while we, cryonicists, are so smart. If several billion people ignore cryonics, they may be smart, and understanding this may help us. People do not only ignore cryonics, but most other fringe movements which may require large investment of resources. These include religious cults, extreme Y2K groups, survivalists, white supremacists, government conspiracy groups, etc. The logic of ignoring these groups rather than scrutinizing their claims carefully is sound if you agree with the following assumptions: 1. The overwhelming majority of the ideas these groups espouse are bogus. 2. Our powers of discrimination are not perfect even with substantial investiment of time to study claims. For example, assume you may want to examine 100 movements, and that if you spent 2-3 days each, you will have 90% chance of telling which one really deserves your participation. Assume that two (cryonics and one other) are deserving. Then after spending 200-300 days examining all the evidence, you will have a good chance of identifying cryonics and that other movement. However, out of the 98 bogus movements, you will conclude that about 10 also deserve your participation. This is not a good outcome, for example, if one of the 10 is Hari Krishna. This problem, which in medical diagnosis is known as the false positive, makes it a sound policy not to examine seriously fringe movements. This conclusion means that we may have to sneak up on people to get them to make the time investment to understand cryonics, rather than go by direct marketing. The very young are a good target, because they have not raised their guard yet, and indeed, my recent survey showed that most of us have become interested in cryonics at a very young age. Most important is Robin Hanson's post on health altruism. I liked his reasoning, and it means that we may want to focus on recruiting people to help us with arrangments. They then acquire familarity with cryonics without the threat of being recruited into a movement that will require many thousands of dollars, and also appear crazy to their friends. Indeed, a year ago I had myself interviewed in the local paper in the hope of smoking out cryonics candidates in my town. Nobody was interested, but a nurse, a patient representative in one of the local hospitals, offered her help. Rafi Haftka ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- Raphael (Rafi) Haftka University of Florida phone:352-392-9595 Department of Aerospace Engineering, fax: -7303 Mechanics and Engineering Science http://www.aero.ufl.edu/~haftka Gainesville, FL 32611 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12040