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advancedatheist comments on Open Thread, Apr. 20 - Apr. 26, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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That's very interesting. I'd be interested to see if this actually leads to an uptick of interest in Southeast Asia.
That region's newly emergent middle class people and wealthy people might lack Westerners' prejudices which have made cryonics such a hard idea to sell in our parts of the world.
For one thing, they have witnessed rapid economic progress in their own societies in their own generation, so they wouldn't understand the appeal of Western pessimism about apocalyptic and dystopian futures.
They likely don't have the same prejudices as Westerners but that doesn't mean that they don't have other prejudices.
Without understanding the local culture a lot more than most of of Westerners do it's hard to make this kind of prediction.
That's an interesting hypothesis. Is there any way to test it? Also is there any way to take advantage of it? That suggests that the window for cryonics there may not be very long, possibly on the order of 20 years or so.
I don't know how to test it, though I suspect the relative absence of christian beliefs in those countries would make a difference. And why would such a "window" even exist there? If these countries can figure out how to keep economic progress going indefinitely without the dysfunctions in Western societies identified by, say, Peter Thiel, then these countries could very well take the lead in becoming increasingly "futuristic" on their own, without having to look to the West for models and guidance.
I would be interesting to find out what the public reaction is in Thailand, and also to see what their science fiction is like.
By window I meant the following: you said that " they have witnessed rapid economic progress in their own societies in their own generation, so they wouldn't understand the appeal of Western pessimism about apocalyptic and dystopian futures." If that is what is going on, then the next generation may not see that as much. If so, we have around a generation. I agree that if the economic progress continues at a fast pace that may not end up with some of the issues we have here, but in general developing countries have as they've neared parity with the developed countries had their improvement rates by many metrics slow down and come more or less into alignment with Western growth rates. Look at for example infant mortality levels and expected lifespan.