X-Message-Number: 842 Date: 22 May 92 05:36:49 EDT From: Bob Smart <> Subject: CRYONET: Dirty Linen II Actually, I had intended only to raise the issue of "slick" literature, then slink away and watch the discussion...but now that Ralph Whelan has gone and addressed me directly, I suppose I'm actually going to have to participate. NOW see what you've done! I apologize in advance for the length of this post...but this is what happens when you push my buttons. Let sleeping Bobs lie! First off, I'm not convinced that there's necessarily any correlation between "human-interest stuff" and "slickness." That is, I think "human interest" concerns can be addressed, without leaving people feeling as if they've just been hard-sold or hyped. I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that if the idea you're "selling" has much merit (and it's hard for me to imagine an idea of greater importance, or of greater merit, than cryonics), it will more or less "sell" itself if you do no more than express it clearly, then step back out of the way and let it sink in. But when I see literature (not just ours, but any promotional literature) that shows me an endless parade of shiny, scrubbed faces, happy-happy smiles, and never any breath or hint of a "downside," I find my built-in cynicism filter module running a little warm. EVERYTHING has SOME kind of a "downside," everything has tradeoffs, and when I see literature that doesn't acknowledge that, or that I think is soft-pedaling that...I assign it credibility inversely proportional to the level of hype I smell. Maybe I'm just excessively crochety...but that's how I tend to view these things, whether they're selling encyclopedias or life extension. I'm not suggesting that we should have a heavy emphasis on doom-and-gloom, only that we step away from (what I perceive as) gilding the lilly. The distinction I'm trying to describe might be characterized as that between POPULARIZING and PATRONIZING. I think it's possible to educate interested persons who might not be familiar with our technology, without also manipulating them (or making them feel as if we were TRYING to manipulate them, which is just as counterproductive). As for the thoroughness of coverage about cryoprotectants and the like, this seems to me a symptom of a larger issue: what is the book supposed to be FOR? Perhaps we shouldn't try to use a single publication to address all our promotional and introductory-educational needs after all. Perhaps we should devise some kind of package, including a book of "human interest" information, speculations, and so forth, plus some collection of _Cryonics_ back issues or reprints? My guess is that we have some small number of target audiences, but their information needs are sufficiently different that no single booklet will ever really address all of them satisfactorily, and attempting to produce such a single booklet may only guarantee that we end up addressing none of them adequately. Does this make sense? I realize that the innovative advantage of CRFT was that it drew all those diverse materials together under one cover for the first time, and a suggestion that we return to a multiple-titles approach might seem like a step backwards. But I think somewhere between the extremes of, on the one hand, a single all-purpose booklet, and on the other hand, dozens of anonymous and chaotically-arranged individual leaflets, there probably lies an optimum arrangement of specific content assembled for specific audiences. That optimum arrangement might well change over time, but that's why editors will never be out of work. Besides, our technology is ALSO likely to change, so we can expect to continue revising our publications for that reason alone. We might as well make necessity into an opportunity, and take a good, hard look at who we believe our target audiences are each time we have to rework the literature anyway. As for mechanical discussions of suspension techniques being "off-putting," that's certainly true. I think we can handle that sort of material tastefully and without being excessively ghoulish...but ultimately, it ain't a very pretty ride. People have a right to know what they're getting into. You're right that a plastic surgeon would want to show you pretty "after" pictures of successful new noses...but any ethical one would ALSO caution you that there is no guarantee that this will come out as well for you, and help you explore your reasons for wanting anything as radical as reconstructive surgery. If you think you want a new nose, but really your problem is that you hate your parents, then rhinoplasty is not for you...and a good doctor will explore that with you before anybody gets cut. If you decide to go on, at some point you WILL get a lecture (and maybe grisly photos) about how painful and repulsive your new nose definitely WILL be while it's healing...anything less would be a gross breach of professional ethics because anything less would preclude the possibility of "informed consent." And to continue the comparison with plastic surgery, the fact is that there have been many successful rhinoplasties, start to finish. We have some good reasons to believe that we're onto something, here, but we're not in any position to make even as solid a set of promises as a plastic surgeon can. I myself would go so far as to say that nanotechnology is "likely," but not "inevitable." (Maybe we'll have a massive nuclear war next year and all wind up eating grubs and beetles while we watch our hair fall out. Hard to do research under those conditions.) Is it really part of Alcor's mission to persuade people that "life is good?" I'm not at all convinced that any pamphlet can really do that; if it were so simple, why would we still have cases of clinical depression and general existential angst? Wouldn't someone already have written a booklet that would lift you up out of your despair? There are plenty of religious tracts available that were written for precisely that purpose, and they're not especially effective. It seems to me that this is a Big Project all its own, independent of cryonics! Finally, I'd like to speak to your notion of increasing the amount of content related to what life in the future might be like. I heartily agree that we have a big stake in that sort of issue, but here's another area where our image, as created by first impressions, might get in the way of our message, regardless of its merits. You noted "less than five pages" about life in the future, and proposed increasing that coverage to 30-40 pages. That's fine, as far as it goes, but "futurism" is as much a separate specialty in its own right as are cryonics and counseling. Alvin Toffler made a big splash writing about "futurist" concerns, but look at the scale of his work--he wrote entire BOOKS just about that subject. I think if we take on the task of modeling the future in our literature, we have to be EXTREMELY careful to avoid giving the impression of being cursory or shallow in our approach...which will be difficult, because in the limited space of a promotional or introductory booklet, it's pretty hard to be anything OTHER than "cursory" about anything! But we have to find some way around that limitation, because if we're obvious about just sketching or skimming the surface of ANY issue, we'll end up looking like crackpots who don't think things through. And we won't get a chance to strut our stuff, won't have an opportunity to show that we DO have detailed, thorough bases for our activities, because we'll already be on the same junkpile as every other whacko group that sends out literature. Personally, I suspect this last issue (trying to cover entirely too many bases in a single, short publication) is probably at the root of my own discomfort with CRFT. One of the characteristics or components of "slickness" is a superficial treatment of what should be complex issues, presumably (in the case of deliberate "slickness," anyway) in the hope that uncritical readers will be swept along before they have a chance to probe the eggshell-thin treatment of the material at hand. Given the apparent ambitions of CRFT, and given the limitations of its size, it seems inevitable that it would take on an aura of "slickness." Perhaps we can reduce that effect by creating a series of booklets, each with a more tightly-focussed scope? I propose the creation of a Standing Literature Project, whose task it will be to design a coordinated set of publications, see that they get written, and revise the literature as necessary. I also volunteer to help, in a capacity to be determined later. Relentlessly, Bob Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=842