I think this doesn’t explain nearly as much as you think it does. There are only a couple hundred people on the planet actually signed up for cryonics. There are plenty of “sciency” scams which have attracted more people and more money (per person). Why doesn’t cryonics attract those sorts of fools?
Actual scams are designed to make the scammer money, and the scammer therefore has the funds to make the scam more effective. Cryonics, having been optimized for a different goal, resembles a scam only accidentally and therefore only somewhat; it is most like an underfunded, incompetently run scam.
Should we therefore encourage cryonics companies to mimic the tactics of scammers so as to make cryonics more popular, so as to make it less expensive for individual people to sign up?
Or in other words: maybe instead of donating to SIAI, we should donate to a fund to hire a good PR agency for a cryo corporation.
Should we therefore encourage cryonics companies to mimic the tactics of scammers so as to make cryonics more popular, so as to make it less expensive for individual people to sign up?
Perhaps because it isn’t built to? Indeed, “sciency” scams often rely on a lot of woo, whereas cryonics appears to require getting past the “soul” idea...
I think this doesn’t explain nearly as much as you think it does. There are only a couple hundred people on the planet actually signed up for cryonics. There are plenty of “sciency” scams which have attracted more people and more money (per person). Why doesn’t cryonics attract those sorts of fools?
Actual scams are designed to make the scammer money, and the scammer therefore has the funds to make the scam more effective. Cryonics, having been optimized for a different goal, resembles a scam only accidentally and therefore only somewhat; it is most like an underfunded, incompetently run scam.
Should we therefore encourage cryonics companies to mimic the tactics of scammers so as to make cryonics more popular, so as to make it less expensive for individual people to sign up?
Or in other words: maybe instead of donating to SIAI, we should donate to a fund to hire a good PR agency for a cryo corporation.
While that may outperform the current approach, it is almost surely not the best of all possible approaches.
You won’t be revived if everyone is turned into paperclips first.
Perhaps because it isn’t built to? Indeed, “sciency” scams often rely on a lot of woo, whereas cryonics appears to require getting past the “soul” idea...
more like a couple thousand, actually; 200 preserved to day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics, 424 funded members with contracts in CI only
Still very few, though.