X-Message-Number: 2911
Subject: CRYONICS Pool Party Report
From:  (Ben Best)
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 1994 23:26:00 -0400


    About 20 people attended the Cryonics Pool Party in Toronto, Canada
on July 16th. Five of these are signed-up cryonicists (2 CryoCare,
2 ACS, and 1 Alcor). Two others expressed an interest in signing-up
within a year. Conversation was mostly one-to-one or in groups of 3
until the end when people gathered in a circle, in part to listen to
Paul Wakfer share some of the knowledge of cryonics he has acquired
while working with Mike Darwin in California for the past 2 years.

    At one point Paul seemed to be challenging one of the signed-up
cryonicists to become more active by saying that if cryonics doesn't
grow to include 1% of the North American population, none of us will
be reanimated. Paul later said that his wording had been too strong.
Nonetheless, his evident intent reminded me of the Nanotechnology
debate. A noncryonicist might take the statement to mean that there
is no point in wasting effort being a signed-up cryonicist until
1% of the population has signed-up. A cryonicist, however, would
presumably be goaded to increased activism. Paul could have made a
similar argument concerning the need for local response capability --
saying that the cryonicist should contribute to local response or he has
no chance for survival. Could this approach backfire and convince a
cryonicist to terminate his/her arrangements or cause those over-hearing
to not begin the sign-up process? I'm not going to presume that there is
a universally correct answer, but I want to raise the problem.

   We sold books for the first time, and I was reasonably satisfied with
the result (spreading memes, as much as making money). Paul is returning
to California for 6 weeks, stopping on the way to visit Robert Ettinger
in Detroit and Libertarian-Cryonicists in Fort Collins, Colorado.

               -- Ben Best (ben.best%)

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2911