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James_Miller comments on We really need a "cryonics sales pitch" article. - Less Wrong Discussion
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As we talk about sales pitch here, just one question: how can we distinguish between genuine cryonics research and quackery?
Don't forget that wishful thinking is deeply ingrained into human psychology, and it seems that many people on this site are ready to throw money at any organization who claims to work on cryonics.
Given that we don't have any evidence of cryonics working (as far as I know, no successful revival has been ever done), it is only hoped that it might work some day in the future. This can also attract scammers.
Authority. Look at who has signed up for cryonics. Peter Thiel, Robin Hanson, Ray Kurzweil, and Aubrey de Grey are all Alcor members.
Eh, smart people can rationalize doing dumb things - Skepticism 101.
I would point to cryobiologist Greg Fahy, Ph.D., as a more relevant authority:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Fahy
Those are all also examples of famous contrarians, as well as famous futurists... anyone who knows who those people are will also know that.
If I wanted to play the devil's advocate, i would point out two issues with this:
Most of the people in your example seem to be very rich. For such a very rich person the costs might be as insignificant as the cost of buying a beer might be for me. This means, if it turned out to be a scam, they wouldn't lose almost anything. I, on the other hand, might lose a significant portion of my net worth, which might have had a better use in the hands of my family than in the hands of a fraudster.
There are famous celebrities who join a certain very infamous cult disguising itself as a religion, whose name I don't mention because that might be enough for them to sue me. Of course, most of those celebrities are no scientists or engineers, so this point can be weak against your list of examples.
If everyone outside of cryonics thinks of it as a rich man's indulgence, then why haven't adventuresses showed up? In the real world, cryonics acts like "female Kryptonite."