X-Message-Number: 29275
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 13:15:38 -0500
From: Keith Henson <>
Subject: Several replies

At 10:00 AM 3/8/2007 +0000, Shannon Vyff wrote:

>So my bubbly red headed eldest daughter, Avianna,
>proudly headed to her Texas elementary school today
>with a very awesome shirt.  The black shoulders, with
>white body, kind of a 70's sport style, with blue
>words on the front saying 'Cryonics Is Very Cool'.
>She told me she's explained to kids that cryonics is
>not cryogenics-before, and she can't wait to get into
>discussions over her shirt.

I used to have a button (lost in the moves probably) that said "

Cryonicists
stay stiff
longer."

That's probably a bit much for an elementary school.  :-)

snip

Kennita Watson wrote:

snip

>Charles would certainly not be the first person who
>comes off differently in person than in email.

I have commented about this for at least a decade (though--best I can 
remember--never about Charles).

>Seems
>somebody somewhere must have gotten a master's thesis
>out of this by now....

If someone *did* want to investigate it, doing fMRI studies on people who 
display similar vs highly divergent personalities in written vs in person 
would be the way to go.  I expect you would see areas of high activity in 
different brain locations for similar verbal/written tasks in the divergent 
ones.

Jeff Davis wrote:

snip

>Now to the matter of the "millions of cryonics customers hiding in plain 
>sight".
>
>Third person sales.  To those about to lose a loved one.  The set of
>all such people.

These are known as "last minute cases" and constitute a significant 
percentage of those in suspension.  Perhaps CI and Alcor could be persuaded 
to give a percentage.

Such cases have caused a disproportionate amount of problems as well--for 
reasons you can list as well as I can.

Now if the cost of suspension could be reduced to that of a modest funeral, 
some of the problems would go away.  But the cost of suspension seems more 
likely to go up than down.

snip

>It is my view that any person -- Mother, Father, Husband, Wife, Son,
>or Daughter -- desperate to save a loved one, has the highest possible
>level of motivation and the lowest concern regarding embarrassment or
>cost.

And when the grief wears off, the most motivation to cause trouble for the 
cryonics provider.  There is a long history which you might want to look into.

snip

>When I last dealt with this:
>Message-Number: 10435
>Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 15:04:47 -0700
>From: Jeff Davis <jdavis@**************.com>
>Subject: selling cryonics
>
>Dr. Ettinger began his response, in message #10446, with:
>
>Jeff Davis' piece on selling cryonics (Cryonet # 10435) has generated some
>criticism, much of it sound--especially the parts about ambulance chasing
>etc., an absolute no-no.
>
>"...ambulance chasing... an absolute no-no."
>
>I won't be coy. The implication is clear.  If you go "ambulance
>chasing" after hurting, desperate, vulnerable people who are suffering
>the imminent loss of a loved on, who can doubt you will bring down
>upon yourself the mother of all shitstorms?
>
>But that's where the demand is.

snip

>It is easy to IMAGINE how an ambitious outreach program of this sort
>could get energetically harrowing, even lead to catastrophe for the
>cryonics venture.  But if you step back from the unbounded nature of
>fear wedded to imagination, the REALITY might conceivably be a battle
>that is winnable.
>
>Perhaps it's not yet time for so aggressive an approach.  But sooner
>or later this fight will have to be fought.  Best think about it and
>be ready.

You might be right, on the other hand there might never be such a time.

The point where a majority of people realize cryonics is good chance to the 
point they quit dying from medical advances might be only a few months.  It 
might even overlap the other way.

Keith Henson

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