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