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 thi...
[Edit: I did not mean to post this, just save it as a draft (I only remember pressing the 'save and continue' button, not the 'submit' button. That shouldn't've posted it, right?).
Anyway, that's why it dissolves into slightly cryptic point form notes to myself at the end. Don't have the time right the now to flesh it out, so I'm just leaving it as is.]
I just noticed that there is no facebook group with this aim. I would like to create one. I feel that it *might* be a way to finally get enough 'special interest/human rights' force concentrated on the problem to fix it, if the presentation is done well.
Would anyone like to help me write the group description and accompanying information, optimizing for effectiveness?
Such a group would have two main audiences, and two main purposes:
1 - For those who already understand and support cryonics, it would be a means to coordinate action and share information.
2 - For those who have never really thought about cryonics before, but may well be open to the idea, it would serve as an introduction and hopefully cause them to join the first group.
As regards the first group, the only major point to stress that springs to my mind is the importance of keeping their *effectiveness* foremost in mind when taking their actions, which mostly just means reminding them to be very friendly, polite, and pleasant while pestering and trying to educate the bureaucrats and politicians.
But for the second group, well, I don't need to describe the difficulty in leading people to understanding across this particular inferential distance. How to do it in a snappy, engaging way?
- The essential human issues at the root here: Hope and love, and freedom.
- That the group is intended for people in BC and people with friends and family here put in danger by the law.
- technical skepticism
- moral confusion
- image. Narrative, short story
Resources I am thinking of drawing on are:
Scientists' Open Letter on Cryonics
Ben Best's FAQs
This page on BC's anti-cryonics law at the Canadian Cryonics Society
This article in the Tyee
letter to mom after Sandy's death