I heard that women are difficult to convince when it comes to signing up for cryo. In mentioning cryonics to a dying person, there seems to be a consensus that it's not going to happen. I encountered a post: Years saved: Cryonics vs VillageReach, which addressed my main objection (that the amount of money spent on cryo may be better spent on saving starving children, especially considering that you could save multiple children for that amount of money with high probability whereas you save only one life with low probability by paying for cryo). Now I'm open to being persuaded.
My first instinct was to go read a lot about cryo, but it dawned on me that there are a lot of people here who will want to convince family members, some of them female, to sign up - and these people may appreciate the opportunity to practice on somebody. It has been argued that "Brilliant and creative minds have explored the argument territory quite thoroughly." but if we already know all of the objections and have working rebuttals for each, why is it still thought of as extra difficult to get through to women? If there were a solution to this, it would not be seen as difficult. There must be something that pro-cryo people need for persuading women that they either haven't figured out or aren't good enough at yet.
So, I decided to offer myself for experiments in attempting to convince a woman to sign up for cryo and took a poll in an open thread to see whether there was interest. I don't claim to be perfectly representative of the female population, but I assume that I will have at least some objections in common with them and that persuading me would still be good practice for anyone planning to convince family members in the future. Having a study on persuading women would be more scientific but how do you come up with hypotheses to test for such a study if you have no actual experience persuading women?
So, here is your opportunity to try whatever methods of persuasion you feel like with no guilt, explore my full list of objections without worrying about it being socially awkward, (I will even share cached religious thoughts, as annoyed as I am that I still have them.), and I will document as many of my impressions and objections as I can before I forget them.
I am putting each objection / impression into a new comment for organization. Also, I have decided to avoid reading anything further on cryo, until/unless it is suggested by one of my persuaders.
Well, have fun getting inside my head.
Survivor's guilt (resolved objection):
Viliam Bur suggested survivor's guilt, and I realized that I was experiencing survivor's guilt while imagining getting cryo.
I wonder if women experience stronger survivor's guilt than than men. Testosterone supposedly makes one more selfish. Women are known for altruistic acts (many of which are pathological, like the phenomenon where women will often stay with an abusive partner trying to love him into changing), possibly because of some differences with oxytocin. I bet there's a connection here between hormonal differences and survivor's guilt that might explain the extra difficulty in convincing women.
Seeing that survivor's guilt didn't seem rational, I became curious about it and introspected for a moment. It seems to be resolved. I documented my thinking process:
I have thought of a question to ask myself that may get rid of it:
"Imagine that there are three people who I really want to see live. By random chance, something happens outside their control and two of them die but one of them lives. Do I feel happy that the one person lived? Or do I feel like they should die?"
My feeling is that they definitely should not die.
Now, I also feel compelled to try this:
"Imagine three people I don't like, but who I don't think deserve to die. Same scenario, one lives."
My feeling is that I prefer they do not die.
Now I'm asking "If it was more fair to the other two, would I have had them die along with them?"
No, I'd have tried to save them, and if the other two wanted to see the person die for "fairness" that's just crazy.
Okay, so now I'm asking myself:
If I was in that situation where two of the same people died but I survived by chance, would I feel it was crazy to think it was unfair for me to survive?
Yes, that is laughable now.
Something in me feels compelled to ask: "Were you better than those two other people?"
My answer is: "Who chose whether they died?"
Ah! Now this is separated. I have separated myself from the cause of their death. I had to see that I was not at fault for this.
The obvious question then is "What is the cause of most people dying except me who got cryo?"
Answer: All the causes. I cant stop them all. But I can tell more people about cryo and I can try to stop my own death, and this is good. That's the best that I can do.
Now, I have this warm feeling like my guilt is alleviated, like saving my own life isn't an affront to them, but something they would think was good - just as I thought it was good that one person survived when two died.
Okay, I think I figured out how to hack survivor's guilt, at least, as it applies to me. I will update here if the guilty feeling returns.
Now onto my other objections... (:
If I were to make a prediction for an experiment, I would guess no, because men are conditioned to see themselves as more expendable. I'm guessing that the same norms which led to more women in steerage class making it off the Titanic alive than men in first class would lead to men having stronger survivor's guilt than women.