A first pass at a script with the requested topics covered; may or may not be doable in under a minute but should be shy of 90 seconds. Not really aimed at people who’ve never heard of cryo before—couldn’t fit that in with the rest of it. I could do more of these covering different subtopics/different audiences if that would be worthwhile.
[Scene: An office of some sort. Two women in business casual wear are talking.]
NADIA: So, how do you hold up with the ice crystals in your body? [cut to a cartoon of cells methodically sliced up by a diamond-shaped crystal expanding.] Voiceover: Won’t they do damage, even if everything else works?
JOICE: Well, they’re not going to drop me in a vat without some prep work. They have chemicals called cryoprotectants [fluid pours into the cartoon, wearing the crystal into a harmless little ball] that reduce the ice crystals. It’s almost like what goes in ice cream [closeup of cartoon ice cream cone] to keep it smooth.
NADIA: Ice cream. [Zoom out from ice cream to show cartoon Nadia holding it, and looking at it skeptically.]
[Cut back to office scene.
JOICE: You know what I mean.
NADIA: Sure. But I looked at that website, and it costs thousands of dollars [cut to cartoon Benjamins piling up] to get preserved. Where’d you get that kind of money? [cartoon vignette of Joice wearing a ski mask holding a bag marked $ and posing evilly.]
JOICE: I didn’t get that kind of money. [Ski mask and bag of $ disappear; cartoon Joice is wearing her normal clothes and shaking hands with a dude in a suit, who then departs.] Life insurance pays out when you’re legally done for, [cartoon Joice keels over; cartoon doctor and cartoon lawyer with a briefcase appear on the scene and gesture energetically] but not too late for cryonics to step in [team of cryo folk troop in and carry cartoon Joice off in a stretcher]. I have my insurance set up to pay the cryonics organization. [Dude in suit shakes hands with one of the cryo folks] It costs me less than my phone plan! [Scale, with a phone weighing more than a snowflake]
NADIA: Not nothing, though. [Phone is replaced with a feather, scale tips] You’ll feel silly if astronomers find, say, an asteroid on its way to destroy civilization. [Cut to asteroid, on its way to destroy civilization. Asteroid cackles evilly. Cartoon Joice smacks herself in the forehead.]
JOICE: I’d feel sillier about buying a house [zoom out from cartoon Joice with her hand on her forehead to show a house], if that happened. But in the real world, [asteroid goes poof] I need a house to live in [Joice in her house, smiling] - and cryonics to have the best shot at living.
I could just be mind projecting but for people similar to LWers, i.e. the low hanging fruit, it would be helpful to call attention to a meta issue: that the skepticism is motivated. In a finite amount of time, you can only refute a finite number of counter-arguments, the problem isn’t that people believe the ice issue unsolved, it’s that they are bottomless wells of objections because it feels icky.
Any commercial would make the idea more normal/available to people; there might actually be little difference in positive impact from a fairly well designed pro-cryonics commercial and an moderate quality anti-cryonics commercial that brings up the issue and implies the existence of an opposing side.
A first pass at a script with the requested topics covered; may or may not be doable in under a minute but should be shy of 90 seconds. Not really aimed at people who’ve never heard of cryo before—couldn’t fit that in with the rest of it. I could do more of these covering different subtopics/different audiences if that would be worthwhile.
[Scene: An office of some sort. Two women in business casual wear are talking.]
NADIA: So, how do you hold up with the ice crystals in your body? [cut to a cartoon of cells methodically sliced up by a diamond-shaped crystal expanding.] Voiceover: Won’t they do damage, even if everything else works?
JOICE: Well, they’re not going to drop me in a vat without some prep work. They have chemicals called cryoprotectants [fluid pours into the cartoon, wearing the crystal into a harmless little ball] that reduce the ice crystals. It’s almost like what goes in ice cream [closeup of cartoon ice cream cone] to keep it smooth.
NADIA: Ice cream. [Zoom out from ice cream to show cartoon Nadia holding it, and looking at it skeptically.]
[Cut back to office scene.
JOICE: You know what I mean.
NADIA: Sure. But I looked at that website, and it costs thousands of dollars [cut to cartoon Benjamins piling up] to get preserved. Where’d you get that kind of money? [cartoon vignette of Joice wearing a ski mask holding a bag marked $ and posing evilly.]
JOICE: I didn’t get that kind of money. [Ski mask and bag of $ disappear; cartoon Joice is wearing her normal clothes and shaking hands with a dude in a suit, who then departs.] Life insurance pays out when you’re legally done for, [cartoon Joice keels over; cartoon doctor and cartoon lawyer with a briefcase appear on the scene and gesture energetically] but not too late for cryonics to step in [team of cryo folk troop in and carry cartoon Joice off in a stretcher]. I have my insurance set up to pay the cryonics organization. [Dude in suit shakes hands with one of the cryo folks] It costs me less than my phone plan! [Scale, with a phone weighing more than a snowflake]
NADIA: Not nothing, though. [Phone is replaced with a feather, scale tips] You’ll feel silly if astronomers find, say, an asteroid on its way to destroy civilization. [Cut to asteroid, on its way to destroy civilization. Asteroid cackles evilly. Cartoon Joice smacks herself in the forehead.]
JOICE: I’d feel sillier about buying a house [zoom out from cartoon Joice with her hand on her forehead to show a house], if that happened. But in the real world, [asteroid goes poof] I need a house to live in [Joice in her house, smiling] - and cryonics to have the best shot at living.
I could just be mind projecting but for people similar to LWers, i.e. the low hanging fruit, it would be helpful to call attention to a meta issue: that the skepticism is motivated. In a finite amount of time, you can only refute a finite number of counter-arguments, the problem isn’t that people believe the ice issue unsolved, it’s that they are bottomless wells of objections because it feels icky.
Any commercial would make the idea more normal/available to people; there might actually be little difference in positive impact from a fairly well designed pro-cryonics commercial and an moderate quality anti-cryonics commercial that brings up the issue and implies the existence of an opposing side.