Your funeral arrangements are a private matter. At least they are in my culture. If it is the same in yours rely on that convetion rather than try and explain to them why you think this will make you not-quite-dead. You don't need to be an evangelist about cryonics, when the subject does come up just state these are your wishes. If you opt for neuro preservation your relatives can still cremate the corpse and do with it as they please.
As to relationships, don't worry starting new relationships shouldn't be affected by this since its unlikely to come up. Perhaps just bring it up around the time oxytocin induced pair-bonding is peaking. "Love" helps people rationalize all sorts of stuff and later inertia and precedence should carry you through.
Perhaps just bring it around the time oxytocin induced pairbonding is peaking. "Love" helps people rationalize all sorts of stuff and later inertia and precedence should carry you through.
This post is the epitome of the timing I should have planned for in my last predicament.
Over the past few months I've been doing a lot of reading about cryonics, and though I agree with the arguments of Eliezer Yudkowsky and Robin Hanson on the issue, I still feel uncomfortable about actually signing up. Upon reflection, my true rejection is my fear of the social cost of cryonics, i.e. being perceived as weird and completely incomprehensible by everyone around me. I've read the "Hostile Wife Phenomenon" article on Depressed Metabolism, the New York Times Magazine article on Robin Hanson's personal situation (as well as Robin's reply), and scores of comments on LessWrong, and it looks a lot of cryonicists do indeed experience the feeling that Eliezer describes in Lonely Dissent.
My concerns about the social cost of cryonics can be broken down into two categories:
Overall, though, I have very little information about what the social cost of cryonics really is beyond a few scattered anecdotes and secondhand descriptions of cryonicists' lives. Ultimately, I don't really know how many of my fears would actually be realized if I signed up. This makes it difficult to for me to make a decision, as I am very risk-averse and I feel reluctant to choose something that could potentially make the next six or seven decades of my life miserable. As a result, I have decided to engage in some data collection.
To do so, I would like to hear about your experiences. If you are currently signed up for cryonics, I would very much appreciate it if you took a minute or two to describe the effects that signing up has had on your relationships and your social life in general. If you are not signed up, your feedback on this topic is still welcome. Links to articles would be good, but discussion of personal experiences would be better.