X-Message-Number: 25926
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 00:05:25 -0800 (PST)
From: rr ss <>
Subject: re: cryonics marketing & Flavonoid's comments 

Flavonoid wrote:

>Perhaps a small increase in the number of individuals
>interested in 
>cryonics would provide a larger pool of potential
>research donors.


Agreed. Besides, cryonics is not about reviving people
or reviving animals or developing the tech to do so.
It  is about BEST preserving people. And the
conditions and circumstances of cryonics might be
described as such: it is an experiment to see if
people cryopreserved as best possible can someday be
revived. "Some day" being in the distant future. 
These conditions and circumstances of the cryonics
experiment are inherent and integral to cryonics
itself. If "the masses" want to see proof before they
sign up, well, then, they are not talking about
"cryonics" per se, but something else.

>Judging from the actual membership figures published
>by cryonics organizations, the number of people on
the >planet who could be said to even 
>be interested in cryonics must number only a few
>thousand.  Is this really 
>the upper limit of potential for being interested in
a >science not yet 
>proven?  If 64 million people were interested in
>cryonics, it would be only 
>1% of the world's population.  If that seems too
much, >would 1% of 1% 
>(0.01%) be a realistic upper limit?  That would be
>640,000 people.  That is 
>probably around 50 times the number of people
>interested now, and were 
>these people brought on board as cryonics-aware, it
>would likely multiply 
>the membership of current cryonics organizations by
>roughly the same factor 
>(50) as well as increase the donations for research
by >a comparable factor.

An interestin and useful analysis. Now consider how
many people believe in religion, UFOs, astrology, pro
wrestling and many other unsupported beliefs. The
problem with cryonics is not so much that there is no
proof, but that it conflicts with so many aspects of
human culture, taboos, tradtions, and beliefs, which
are all very old and well established. Cryonics is a
disruptive technology, and one that is a threat to
long-established traditions.


>I say the above primarily to point out that current
>marketing efforts 
>should not and usually seem not to be directed
towards >trying to "gain 
>popular acceptance."  Clearly, in the range of
numbers >spoken of above, the 
>efforts should be towards increasing the minuscule
>percent of people who 
>are interested in cryonics to an only slightly larger
>minuscule percent of 
>people, with the potential of increasing resources
for >research funding to 
>a level that significant advancements can be made,
>such as resuscitation 
>which could, as some say, bring true public
acceptance >of cryonics.


You seem to be saying that we should make a marketing
push to increase the number of people in cryonics, and
that even a small increase in the percentage in
potential cryonicists could reap huge benefits. I
agree. And we should go with video/TV to get it done.
TV is an institution evolved and nurtured by the rich
and powerful people and institutions in America, and
most of whatever shows up on it is granted a certain
amount of credibility. Americans have a carefully
crafted relationship with what they see on TV, at
least to a substantial degree. If we can get a
pro-cryonics documentary on TV for a lot of time, we
can make some headway.


 

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