I wrote a blog post arguing that people sign up for cryo more for peace of mind than for immortality. This suggests that cryo organizations should market towards the former desire than the latter (you can think of it as marketing to near mode rather than far mode, in Hansonian terms).

Perhaps we've been selling cryonics wrong. I'm signed up and feel like the reason I should have for signing up is that cryonics buys me a small, but non-zero chance at living forever. However, for years this should didn't actually result in me signing up. Recently, though, after being made aware of this dissonance between my words and actions, I finally signed up. I'm now very glad that I did. But it's not because I now have a shot at everlasting life.

http://specterdefied.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-cryo-membership-buys-peace-of-mind.html

For those signed up already, does peace-of-mind resonate as a benefit of your membership?

If you are not a cryonics member, what would make you decide that it is a good idea?

What plans could a prospective cryonicist try out, beyond simply signing up, that could increase the odds of eventually having a pleasant re-animation experience?

To show what I mean, here are the main ideas I've managed to come up with so far. None of these particular ideas are a standard part of a cryonics preservation package. Some are easier to implement than others, some are more likely to have an effect than others, some have potentially greater effect than others.

* Arranging for as much information about oneself (photo albums, emails, grade school report cards, etc) as possible to be placed on archival media and stored along with one's body. Reasoning: If the cryo-preservation procedure causes brain damage, and technology advances sufficiently before re-animation, then this information potentially allows for that damage to be at least partially reconstructed.

* Requesting additional data about the cryo-preservation procedure used on oneself be archived. Eg, requesting that, to whatever degree doesn't interfere with the procedure, it be videoed.

* Making arrangements for an animal body to be cryo-preserved with the same procedure one's own body was preserved with. A lab chimp would be ideal, but difficult to arrange for a number of reasons; more likely, a more common animal of around human mass would be feasible, such as a dog or goat. Even a few lab-rats might help. Reasoning: It gives future re-animators an additional opportunity to experiment with re-animation techniques, before attempting to re-animate a person.

* Noting down one's preferences and requests for future re-animators. Eg, from "I'd appreciate having a cat nearby to pet and calm down as I wake up" to "If you have to rebuild my body from scratch anyway, and it's within cultural norms, I would appreciate being gender _____" to "If you create a digital/electronic/computer/data copy of my mind, I would like a copy of that to be placed in offline, air-gapped storage, so that if every active copy of my mind is destroyed, there will always be that original backup available to re-instantiate myself." Or just more general ideas, such as, "My goal is to live forever, and I would prefer whatever means most likely lead to that happening to be tried."


I'm not nearly as creative as I wish I could be; so I'm hoping that the local group-mind here might be able to offer further ideas, or improvements or refinements to the above ones.

So: What extras can you think of?

I'm about a third of the way through "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber, and am enjoying the feeling of ideas shifting around in my head, arranging themselves into more useful patterns. (The last book I read that put together ideas of similar breadth was "Economix: How and Why Our Economy Works" by Goodwin.) "Debt" goes into the origins of debts, as compared to obligations; and related topics, such as exchanges considered beneath economic notice ("Please pass me the salt"), debts too big or unique to be repaid, peaceful versus violent interactions, the endless minor obligations that form the network of social connections, and even the basis of whole societies.

The reason I'm posting about this book here... is that it's giving me some new perspectives from which to consider the whole cryonics subculture, and, for instance, why it remains just a subculture of a couple of thousand people or so. For example, a standard LessWrong thought experiment is "Is That Your True Rejection?"; and most of the objections people raise to cryonics seem to be off enough that, even if those objections were solved, those particular people still wouldn't sign up - that is, they feel some fundamental antipathy to the whole idea of cryonics, and unconsciously pick some rationalization that happens to sound reasonable to them to explain it.