X-Message-Number: 8789 Date: Sat, 15 Nov 1997 16:48:47 -0500 From: Brian Manning Delaney <> Subject: Suspended Animation and Recruitment. References: <> Please pardon the intrusion of someone who is both new to this mailing list, and not currently signed up for cryonics. I thought the perspective of someone not yet signed-up, yet extremely interested in life-extension, might be useful here. It might be worthwhile first to generalize the question: why aren't people interested in life-extension? and then consider the similarities and differences between this question and the question of willingness to sign-up for cryonics. Steve Harris pointed out that the main reason people don't sign up for cryonics is a fear of social or historical displacement of some kind. I think this is true of the populace in general, but suggest that this should also be understood as the main reason the average person isn't interested in life-extension, broadly construed. The nature of the social or historical displacement is different in the case of a continuously animated life-extension, to be sure, but the fear of this displacement, I believe, is at the root of the general antipathy towards life-extension, whatever the means of extension. There are other factors at play in the general unwillingness to extend life, but these, too, are probably operating in both the unwillingness to sign-up for cryonics, and the unwillingness to practice other kinds of life-extension: belief in the importance of the motivating force of imminent death (what I call the "_Being and Time_ argument"), fears of consequent population problems, etc., etc. The goal of recruitment is then twofold: 1) alter views about life-extension in general; and 2) get people already interested in life-extension to sign up for cryonics. I will speak to the second of these goals. The number of people signed up for cryonics is a tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people interested in life-extension. This is true even if we take an "interest in life-extension" to mean an interest in _extreme_ life-extension, i.e., an interest in doing more than merely preventing heart disease or adult-onset diabetes, and so on. A conservative figure for the number of people in the world who want to live for significantly more than the species maximum of ~115 years is probably a hundred thousand or so. The number could well be much, much higher. (I'm making my estimate based on numerous conversations with people over the years, examination of the readership of Sci.life-extension, etc. -- a "soft" number, to be sure, but probably way too low, if it's off.) How many people are signed up to be suspended? A few hundred? A thousand? It's a fairly small number, yes? Why, then, are so few people who are interested in extreme life-extension signed up for cryonics? For some, the difference between a gradual historical displacement and a discontinuous displacement may be paramount. For me, however, and for the many other non-cryonicist extreme life-extensionists with whom I've been in close contact for many years, this difference is not critical. Rather, the main reason we don't sign up for cryonics is, by far, that we believe it to be extremely unlikely that we will ever be reanimated, if frozen with today's technology. If it's true, then, that the many life-extensionists not signed up for cryonics would be moved to sign up after the achievement of suspended animation -- and I believe it is -- then the post-Prometheus surge in membership would be enormous. I would certainly sign up, as would many life-extensionists I know. One more point: Of the many people who aren't signed up for cryonics because of the fears of social or historical displacement, there are probably many who don't need to be convinced that the probability of eventual restoration to health is not low. It is, rather, their view of the _degree_ of expected historical displacement that is the problem. "Sure, science can achieve anything, given enough time, but thawing and repairing my frozen carcass won't be possible for at least 150 years! Everything I care about will gone." With perfected suspended animation, the barrier to restoration of life/health will be merely the curing of a disease (or, more difficult, aging), and not "bringing a frozen, fractured carcass back from the dead." People will expect (rightly, in my view) a much shorter gap between deanimation and reanimation. Sure, as Thomas Donaldson points out, there will be some diseases that won't be cured quickly, but many will be cured within ten to thirty years. People will believe that when they are restored, most of their world will still be present. In sum, I agree strongly with Saul Kent and others that the effect of perfected suspended animation on recruitment will be positive. I'd go further and say the effect is likely to be immense. I strongly suspect that huge numbers of (extreme) life-extensionists -- 10-20 thousand -- would sign up shortly after the advent of suspended animation. Then the rate of increase in membership would go way down, and would come to depend more on recruitment among those who aren't life-extensionists. Best, Brian. "Some people are born posthumously." -Nietzsche. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8789