Cryonics organizations can’t even give suspensions away. Alcor and Omni magazine (remember that publication?) about 20 years ago offered a contest with a free suspension membership as the prize. As I recall, someone with a disability won the contest, but he didn’t follow through with the arrangements and didn’t respond to efforts to communicate with him. About 30 years ago, Mike Darwin offered the science fiction writer Frederik Pohl a free suspension, which he refused despite having written a novel and some other things about cryonics in the 1960′s.
So do you think we’d see “reverse psychology” at work by forbidding women from joining, with the effect of getting them interested in cryonics for the same reasons they’ve wanted to invade the other male-dominated social spaces they associate with power? Or would the discrimination just reinforce something they don’t want to do anyway?
I don’t know if it would make any women want cryonic preservation who didn’t want it already, but I’m sure it would anger plenty of women aside from those who wanted cryonic preservation in the first place.. It’s arbitrary discrimination. You don’t have to want to attend a country club to be angry that other people want to keep you out.
Well that’s the trick isn’t it? Convincing people to sign up for something because another group says they shouldn’t even if it takes money, many of us have sworn to avoid similar mind-hacks but the ones who haven’t may find something to use here.
If you were to actually attempt that approach, I think you’d get a reduction in signups because it would make cryonics seem even more cultish and anathema to mainstream norms, reducing the number of potentially amenable people who would consider it at all.
There are plenty of dark arts to choose from other than those relating to scarcity. To reduce the perception of cultishness around an idea, raise awareness of cultish groups that oppose it, and count on people mistaking reversed stupidity for intelligence and being repelled by the negative halo.
No, see, what you do is you have one cryonics group forbid women, and the rest of them make a lot of noise about how the first group is a bunch of jerks and don’t speak for the community at all. The first group takes a status hit, yeah, but the other groups get a nice status boost, and the whole thing generates a fair bit of attention—and high-quality, ‘this relates to me personally’ attention, at that—if done right.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I would find it terribly irritating. Would also wonder how much money I could get off a lawsuit. I am not yet sure if cryonics would be helpful in living to my maximum lifespan (which I would like to be as long as possible), but I certainly don’t think this proposal sounds reasonable.
Also, how would it make sense to stop offering cryonics to women who decide to get the procedure in order to punish women who don’t? And wouldn’t that also punish husbands with wives who agree to be placed in cryonics with them? And if you are only postulating stopping unmarried women from joining, rather than women who have husbands who also want to join, again how does this punish these people you dislike who would probably only smile smugly at the news and think “well at least that’s a few less people who can try for immortality!” These women aren’t really any different from a large number of men who say they object to cryonics mainly because they think immortality is wrong (I don’t really think this objection makes any sense, but a lot of people seem to think this way). The only difference is that they happen to be married to men who want this procedure. And if one or the other seriously thinks this disagreement is a problem, maybe they need to end the relationship.
I’m hesitant to downvote the proposal of a way to put one’s beliefs to the test, even a hypothetical one, but I seriously doubt your prediction.
Cryonics organizations can’t even give suspensions away. Alcor and Omni magazine (remember that publication?) about 20 years ago offered a contest with a free suspension membership as the prize. As I recall, someone with a disability won the contest, but he didn’t follow through with the arrangements and didn’t respond to efforts to communicate with him. About 30 years ago, Mike Darwin offered the science fiction writer Frederik Pohl a free suspension, which he refused despite having written a novel and some other things about cryonics in the 1960′s.
So do you think we’d see “reverse psychology” at work by forbidding women from joining, with the effect of getting them interested in cryonics for the same reasons they’ve wanted to invade the other male-dominated social spaces they associate with power? Or would the discrimination just reinforce something they don’t want to do anyway?
I don’t know if it would make any women want cryonic preservation who didn’t want it already, but I’m sure it would anger plenty of women aside from those who wanted cryonic preservation in the first place.. It’s arbitrary discrimination. You don’t have to want to attend a country club to be angry that other people want to keep you out.
Well that’s the trick isn’t it? Convincing people to sign up for something because another group says they shouldn’t even if it takes money, many of us have sworn to avoid similar mind-hacks but the ones who haven’t may find something to use here.
If you were to actually attempt that approach, I think you’d get a reduction in signups because it would make cryonics seem even more cultish and anathema to mainstream norms, reducing the number of potentially amenable people who would consider it at all.
There are plenty of dark arts to choose from other than those relating to scarcity. To reduce the perception of cultishness around an idea, raise awareness of cultish groups that oppose it, and count on people mistaking reversed stupidity for intelligence and being repelled by the negative halo.
Like so.
Alternately, just use a Boombox
No, see, what you do is you have one cryonics group forbid women, and the rest of them make a lot of noise about how the first group is a bunch of jerks and don’t speak for the community at all. The first group takes a status hit, yeah, but the other groups get a nice status boost, and the whole thing generates a fair bit of attention—and high-quality, ‘this relates to me personally’ attention, at that—if done right.
Interesting, if i ever attempt it ill take that into account :)
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I would find it terribly irritating. Would also wonder how much money I could get off a lawsuit. I am not yet sure if cryonics would be helpful in living to my maximum lifespan (which I would like to be as long as possible), but I certainly don’t think this proposal sounds reasonable.
Also, how would it make sense to stop offering cryonics to women who decide to get the procedure in order to punish women who don’t? And wouldn’t that also punish husbands with wives who agree to be placed in cryonics with them? And if you are only postulating stopping unmarried women from joining, rather than women who have husbands who also want to join, again how does this punish these people you dislike who would probably only smile smugly at the news and think “well at least that’s a few less people who can try for immortality!” These women aren’t really any different from a large number of men who say they object to cryonics mainly because they think immortality is wrong (I don’t really think this objection makes any sense, but a lot of people seem to think this way). The only difference is that they happen to be married to men who want this procedure. And if one or the other seriously thinks this disagreement is a problem, maybe they need to end the relationship.