There was recently a proposal that we should create YouTube commercials for cryonics. This is an area where the cryonics community is sorely lacking fresh content, and which in my opinion has higher leverage per unit effort relative to other kinds of content, for making the kinds of cultural changes that need to be made for cryonics to gain acceptance.

One important strategy to beat procrastination, is to turn ideas into concrete action quickly rather than talking about them for too long. Another is to raise the amount of positive feedback a person expects to receive. Prizes have been used successfully in the past for the promotion of creative efforts with considerable success, and I have long thought that this would work for cryonics promotions as well. It's time for a simple empirical test.

To get things started, I am offering the nominal sum of 10 bitcoins¹ as a prize to whoever creates the the most "liked" promotional or educational video for cryonics on YouTube for the month of May, 2011. If anyone wishes to contribute to the prize and thus increase its size, send bitcoins here: <removed>

All funds sent to the above address will be transferred to the address of the person whose YouTube video promoting cryonics receives the most "likes" on YouTube during the month of May. Donors who let me know that they have donated will be given credit for donating below.

• Start date: May 1, 2011 at 12:00 AM GMT. Entry video cannot have been released on YouTube sooner than this.
• End date: June 1, 2011 at 12:00 AM GMT. This is when the votes (likes) will be tallied and the prize awarded.
• Video must promote cryonics and/or answer common questions about cryonics.
• Multiple submissions per person are allowed and encouraged, as are collaborations².
• Xtranormal videos, slide shows, stick figure cartoons, voice-overs, and anything else that can go in a YouTube video are acceptable.
• Winner must have or obtain a bitcoin address³, and must let us know what it is along with a link to their video (which must be posted to YouTube) in the comments section of this post.
• In the event that there are multiple videos with substantially similar numbers of likes (to within 1% of the top number) at midnight of June first, they will all be treated as co-winners and receive equal shares of the prize.

Anyone who wants to donate to non-winning entries that they liked is welcome to do so as well (the bitcoin address of each entry will be visible below).

Let the games begin!

1. These are a digital commodity that I thought would make a more fun and interesting prize than dollars, and seem to have a positive reputation on LW so far. It is also easy for me to keep track of. Market value was about $4 per bitcoin as of April 31.
2. One bitcoin address per video please. Teams are responsible for divvying up the prize money among members.
3. The simple way is to create an account on MyBitcoin. You can also install the Bitcoin client.

Current prize fund (to be updated): 14.75 BTC (103.29 USD @ 7.003)

Donors known so far:

• drethelin
• Pavitra