X-Message-Number: 5567 Newsgroups: sci.cryonics From: (Brad Templeton) Subject: Don't talk about neurosuspension Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 02:19:23 GMT Message-ID: <> References: <4ch85p$> <4cmd83$> <> <4cvua6$> In article <4cvua6$>, Randy Smith <> wrote: >doing this for us. When I spent a class period on cryonics with my 7th >graders last year, at least half of them were already familiar with the >idea from a recent movie, _Demolition Man_. The movie, while not exactly Actually, the concept has been around in tons of movies and goes back further to myth and legend. But actually, after you get past the "death is part of the natural order" phenomenon, the thing that seems to turn most people off is the idea that anybody has signed up for neurosuspension. I've often seen people who hear about cryonics hear that and decide it's all kooks. Now I'm not going to rehash the neurosuspension argument here. But I wonder if it might be wise for all cryonics organizations to simply not talk very much about it -- except of course in the contract. Full body suspension is comprehensible to the world at large. Neurosuspension requires a *much* greater understanding of the principles and an extra leap of faith. Indeed, neurosuspension is an economic decision in part, since it's obviously *somewhat* riskier than full-body, but much cheaper. (It also may be less risky in some ways too, but the factors are quite different.) But I think the position should be that "We recommend full body suspension, though it is true that yes, some members, in order to save money on the cost of the suspension have elected to freeze only the brain, in the hope that revival technology will also be able to regrow a fresh young body for the brain in a process akin to cloning." Ie. to say, "Sure some people are doing that to trade off cost for the risk of not having their old dead body available." Look at little down on "them" even though it turns out it's almost everybody, even the people doing the talking. People will tolerate the concept of freeze-thaw-wake up. That's because they don't understand it at all. They'll buy a movie like Iceman, or think it's like a steak in the freezer. Cloning and nano to rebuild bodies or artificial bodies or even downloading -- that's just way too much for the public. -- Brad Templeton, publisher, ClariNet Communications Corp. The net's #1 E-Newspaper (1,160,000 paid sbscrbrs.) http://www.clari.net/brad/ Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5567