Rather than trying to convince people that cryonics works and they should sign up, it might be better to phrase your approach in terms of tolerant compliance with the wishes of the dying.
“Sure, folks, cryonics is kind of weird, but it’s not harmful to other people. If you don’t believe cryonics patients will be successfully revived, then you should consider cryonics to just be an unusual funerary practice. And ‘it’s unusual’ is not a good enough reason to prohibit a funerary practice.
“We prohibit funerary practices which are harmful to other people, for instance by spreading disease — if someone wants to dispose of their grandfather’s corpse in the reservoir we drink from, or throw it from an airplane, we have reason to object to that. But we don’t prohibit those which are merely unusual. For instance, cremation is unusual to the point of offending some people (notably many Catholics and Jews) and was once extremely rare in Western culture, but is now common.
“Cryonics patients aren’t asking you to pay for their preferred treatment; they’re not asking to subject you or your loved ones to it. They just want to deal with dying in a different way from other folks — one that is in line with their beliefs. Their beliefs may well be completely wrong, but we don’t have evidence of that; and even if they were, we should tolerate them rather than forcing them to bury or cremate someone whom they believe is not yet permanently dead.”
I appreciate your point. I actually didn’t mean trying to do a hard sell of cryonics, but just to present it in the most sympathetic way possible (which I’m sure was not at all clear, since this piece is still a draft and I never meant to post it).
Appeals to justice and fair treatment are far more effective when the suffering parties are seen sympathetically.
I remember this one time I read an article about an issue with the Anglican church here. This church as a whole is very socially liberal in Canada, a-ok with gay marriages or whatever, that kind of thing. But there was this one local congregation that was socially conservative, and they were all, “we wanna leave cuz that’s morally wrong” or whatever. And the main church is like, “Fine, but our organization owns the building, so we’re taking our ball and going home,” and the local congregation goes, “But that church is our community’s. Our ancestors were the ones who originally paid for it, and they’d agree with us about this!”
And I go, “Hm, yup, my sense of justice and fair treatment say the local congregation is in the right. If the decision was my responsibility, I’d have to give the building to them.”
But it’s not my responsibility, and I certainly never felt any impulse to try to make it. Because those homophobic nutjobs are a bunch of jerks and I can’t wait to see the historical back of them, so… how much can I really bring myself to care?
And I’m pretty sure I’m much better than the average individual at applying consistent standards of fairness even to people I don’t like.
Anyway yeah, a simple elegant sympathetic presentation of cryonics should be best for appealing to anyone who’d listen to the ″tolerant compliance” angle, as well as planting seeds for full support of cryonics in a fair portion of those people.
Rather than trying to convince people that cryonics works and they should sign up, it might be better to phrase your approach in terms of tolerant compliance with the wishes of the dying.
“Sure, folks, cryonics is kind of weird, but it’s not harmful to other people. If you don’t believe cryonics patients will be successfully revived, then you should consider cryonics to just be an unusual funerary practice. And ‘it’s unusual’ is not a good enough reason to prohibit a funerary practice.
“We prohibit funerary practices which are harmful to other people, for instance by spreading disease — if someone wants to dispose of their grandfather’s corpse in the reservoir we drink from, or throw it from an airplane, we have reason to object to that. But we don’t prohibit those which are merely unusual. For instance, cremation is unusual to the point of offending some people (notably many Catholics and Jews) and was once extremely rare in Western culture, but is now common.
“Cryonics patients aren’t asking you to pay for their preferred treatment; they’re not asking to subject you or your loved ones to it. They just want to deal with dying in a different way from other folks — one that is in line with their beliefs. Their beliefs may well be completely wrong, but we don’t have evidence of that; and even if they were, we should tolerate them rather than forcing them to bury or cremate someone whom they believe is not yet permanently dead.”
I appreciate your point. I actually didn’t mean trying to do a hard sell of cryonics, but just to present it in the most sympathetic way possible (which I’m sure was not at all clear, since this piece is still a draft and I never meant to post it).
Appeals to justice and fair treatment are far more effective when the suffering parties are seen sympathetically.
I remember this one time I read an article about an issue with the Anglican church here. This church as a whole is very socially liberal in Canada, a-ok with gay marriages or whatever, that kind of thing. But there was this one local congregation that was socially conservative, and they were all, “we wanna leave cuz that’s morally wrong” or whatever. And the main church is like, “Fine, but our organization owns the building, so we’re taking our ball and going home,” and the local congregation goes, “But that church is our community’s. Our ancestors were the ones who originally paid for it, and they’d agree with us about this!”
And I go, “Hm, yup, my sense of justice and fair treatment say the local congregation is in the right. If the decision was my responsibility, I’d have to give the building to them.”
But it’s not my responsibility, and I certainly never felt any impulse to try to make it. Because those homophobic nutjobs are a bunch of jerks and I can’t wait to see the historical back of them, so… how much can I really bring myself to care?
And I’m pretty sure I’m much better than the average individual at applying consistent standards of fairness even to people I don’t like.
Anyway yeah, a simple elegant sympathetic presentation of cryonics should be best for appealing to anyone who’d listen to the ″tolerant compliance” angle, as well as planting seeds for full support of cryonics in a fair portion of those people.