SarahC comments on Cryonics Wants To Be Big - Less Wrong

28 Post author: lsparrish 05 July 2010 07:50AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 06 July 2010 02:15:54AM 4 points [-]

While we're speculating, I think it's that "kin work" (keeping up with family and friends, taking care of the elderly, child-rearing) primarily falls to women. Churches provide a framework to do that. If you've noticed, women are highly active in the parts of a church that aren't explicitly about God -- fundraising committees, education committees, various organizing functions. It's community-building glue.

Cryonics, unlike Mormonism, doesn't have that aspect. As of now, it's a transaction made by an individual. I'm not sure how one would make cryonics by itself "church-like."

You could try to make a rationalist social institution -- like a Masonic lodge -- that combined charitable work, socializing, activities for children, educational lectures, and activities/volunteering opportunities for the elderly. Cryonics could be built into that. The point is, it has to be a family and community institution.