X-Message-Number: 30471
References: <>
From: Kennita Watson <>
Subject: Re: What makes people take action? 
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:35:39 -0800

David Stodolsky <> wrote:
> ... significant predictors of the action item, "I believe that
> Cryonics is an exciting idea and intend on looking into it further.":
>
> young again *
> will not work *
> too costly
> too selfish *
> love life
> under no circumstances *
>
> * p<.01
>
> We conclude that any of the above items can predict whether a person
> will indicate intention to act.

Thus I see my mission as being to affect people's
responses to these items where possible.    In the
case of "will not work" and "too costly", it may
be a matter of imparting information.  For the
rest, all I can do is plant memes.

> Those who agree more that their attitude toward suspension would
> change "under no circumstances" agree more that cryonics "will not
> work". The relationship is dominated by those who respond neutral and
> disagree to "under no circumstances" and correspondingly neutral and
> disagree to "will not work".... The response neutral appears to
> be overused.

I can set up the survey so that "Neutral" is not
allowed:  Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Slightly
Disagree, Slightly Agree, Agree, Strongly Agree.
For this to help, I'd also need to remove the
choice "Don't Know".  This would probably annoy
some people.

> ... People willing to change their attitude indicated that the were  
> more
> likely to seek information, if they agreed more that "I'm excited
> about the prospect of waking up in a body made young again through  
> bio-
> technological advances.", "I love being alive and I want to remain
> alive and healthy for as long as I can.", and agreed less with,
> "Cryonics doesn't interest me because I just don't think it will  
> work."
>
> A stepwise regression selects the following, in order of entry:
>
> young again *
> will not work *
> human revived *
> too weird *
> love life
> optimistic future *
> ([the rest] are not individually significant and only raise the
> RSquare from .33 to .34)
>>
> ...
> "I'm excited about the prospect of waking up in a body made young
> again through bio-technological advances." is the runaway best seller
> accounting for half of the effect (RSquare = .17). "Cryonics doesn't
> interest me because I just don't think it will work." boosts the
> RSquare to .23 and from there on the effect of items goes down fast.

So I want to emphasize that patients will be revived
into young, healthy bodies, and to present evidence
that cryonics can work.  How convincing that evidence
will be for any given listener may depend more on the
predisposition of that listener than on the evidence
itself.

> ... Even when we include only those who
> claim they are willing to change their attitude, the strongest
> negative effect is due to, "Cryonics doesn't interest me because I
> just don't think it will work." In other words, these people will not
> seek information about cryonics, because they don't think it will
> work. The problem is that they are willing to change their attitude,
> but they never will seek information that could make them change their
> attitude. So, getting these people to signup would require an
> educational effort directed toward the entire population or at least
> the most likely demographic, which still would mean a large segment of
> the population. The alternative would be to repackage bio-stasis so
> that it comes with other benefits, that would promote information
> seeking or reeducation. This appears to be the most economical and
> self-sufficient approach given the resources available to the cryonics
> movement at this time.

What "other benefits" do you have in mind?
I really don't know what one would
repackage cryonics with to "promote
information seeking or reeducation".

Live long and prosper,
Kennita

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