You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Alicorn comments on How hard do we really want to sell cryonics? - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: Strange7 29 April 2011 09:34PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (42)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Alicorn 30 April 2011 05:29:32AM *  11 points [-]

A first pass at a script with the requested topics covered; may or may not be doable in under a minute but should be shy of 90 seconds. Not really aimed at people who've never heard of cryo before - couldn't fit that in with the rest of it. I could do more of these covering different subtopics/different audiences if that would be worthwhile.

[Scene: An office of some sort. Two women in business casual wear are talking.]

NADIA: So, how do you hold up with the ice crystals in your body? [cut to a cartoon of cells methodically sliced up by a diamond-shaped crystal expanding.] Voiceover: Won't they do damage, even if everything else works?

JOICE: Well, they're not going to drop me in a vat without some prep work. They have chemicals called cryoprotectants [fluid pours into the cartoon, wearing the crystal into a harmless little ball] that reduce the ice crystals. It's almost like what goes in ice cream [closeup of cartoon ice cream cone] to keep it smooth.

NADIA: Ice cream. [Zoom out from ice cream to show cartoon Nadia holding it, and looking at it skeptically.]

[Cut back to office scene.

JOICE: You know what I mean.

NADIA: Sure. But I looked at that website, and it costs thousands of dollars [cut to cartoon Benjamins piling up] to get preserved. Where'd you get that kind of money? [cartoon vignette of Joice wearing a ski mask holding a bag marked $ and posing evilly.]

JOICE: I didn't get that kind of money. [Ski mask and bag of $ disappear; cartoon Joice is wearing her normal clothes and shaking hands with a dude in a suit, who then departs.] Life insurance pays out when you're legally done for, [cartoon Joice keels over; cartoon doctor and cartoon lawyer with a briefcase appear on the scene and gesture energetically] but not too late for cryonics to step in [team of cryo folk troop in and carry cartoon Joice off in a stretcher]. I have my insurance set up to pay the cryonics organization. [Dude in suit shakes hands with one of the cryo folks] It costs me less than my phone plan! [Scale, with a phone weighing more than a snowflake]

NADIA: Not nothing, though. [Phone is replaced with a feather, scale tips] You'll feel silly if astronomers find, say, an asteroid on its way to destroy civilization. [Cut to asteroid, on its way to destroy civilization. Asteroid cackles evilly. Cartoon Joice smacks herself in the forehead.]

JOICE: I'd feel sillier about buying a house [zoom out from cartoon Joice with her hand on her forehead to show a house], if that happened. But in the real world, [asteroid goes poof] I need a house to live in [Joice in her house, smiling] - and cryonics to have the best shot at living.

Comment author: lessdazed 02 May 2011 02:44:44PM 4 points [-]

I could just be mind projecting but for people similar to LWers, i.e. the low hanging fruit, it would be helpful to call attention to a meta issue: that the skepticism is motivated. In a finite amount of time, you can only refute a finite number of counter-arguments, the problem isn't that people believe the ice issue unsolved, it's that they are bottomless wells of objections because it feels icky.

Any commercial would make the idea more normal/available to people; there might actually be little difference in positive impact from a fairly well designed pro-cryonics commercial and an moderate quality anti-cryonics commercial that brings up the issue and implies the existence of an opposing side.