I think it’s great that you’ve taken the first steps, and would encourage you to go ahead and sign up.
In my experience, arguing with people who’ve decided they definitely don’t want to do something, especially if their reasons are irrational, is never productive. As Eliezer says, it may simply be that those who stand with you will be your friends and the family you create, not the family you came from. But I would guess the best chance of your sister signing up would be obtained by you going ahead right now, but not pushing the matter, so that in a few years the fact of your being signed up will have become more of an established state of affairs.
It’s a sobering demonstration of just how much the human mind relies on social proof for anything that can’t be settled by immediate personal experience. (Conjecture: any intelligence must at least initially work this way; a universe in which it were not necessary, would be too simple to evolve intelligence in the first place. But I digress.)
Is there anything that can be done to bend social instinct more in the right direction here? For example, I know there have been face-to-face gatherings for those who live within reach of them; would it help if several people at such a gathering showed up wearing ‘I’m signed up for cryonics’ badges?
I think it’s great that you’ve taken the first steps, and would encourage you to go ahead and sign up.
In my experience, arguing with people who’ve decided they definitely don’t want to do something, especially if their reasons are irrational, is never productive. As Eliezer says, it may simply be that those who stand with you will be your friends and the family you create, not the family you came from. But I would guess the best chance of your sister signing up would be obtained by you going ahead right now, but not pushing the matter, so that in a few years the fact of your being signed up will have become more of an established state of affairs.
It’s a sobering demonstration of just how much the human mind relies on social proof for anything that can’t be settled by immediate personal experience. (Conjecture: any intelligence must at least initially work this way; a universe in which it were not necessary, would be too simple to evolve intelligence in the first place. But I digress.)
Is there anything that can be done to bend social instinct more in the right direction here? For example, I know there have been face-to-face gatherings for those who live within reach of them; would it help if several people at such a gathering showed up wearing ‘I’m signed up for cryonics’ badges?