X-Message-Number: 7194 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 05:47:06 -0800 (PST) From: Joseph Strout <> Subject: How I got "recruited" Randy wrote: > Maybe I'm wrong, but haven't most people been recruited into cryonics > through a friend/acquaintance? Is that venue actually more numerically > successful than media publicity? I can only speak for myself, but perhaps it will be illustrative. I independently (and very gradually) developed the concept of mind uploading from my interest in neuroscience and AI. It struck me one day that since uploading requires only preserved structure (as opposed to biological viability), perhaps these "cryogenics" nuts I had heard about weren't so crazy after all. As I recall, this struck me as rather funny. So I subscribed to the cryonet and Extropians mailing lists. After several months, I concluded that while the Extropians really are nuts, the cryonicists as a whole were a reasonable bunch making the best of a bad thing (i.e. death). So I dropped the latter and stayed with the former. Now, several years later, I am finally in the process of making arrangements (though I had underestimated what a chore this would be!). It has been a very gradual acceptance process. No media affected my decision, though I was very gratified to see Minsky's article on uploading in SciAm a year or two ago. And I think that the more exposure we get, the better, since most people will not even consider the idea without some prodding. I wonder how other newcomers came to be involved? ,------------------------------------------------------------------. | Joseph J. Strout Department of Neuroscience, UCSD | | http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~jstrout/ | `------------------------------------------------------------------' Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7194