I’m not clear on whether I should advocate this, but I wonder if you could spin not-cryo as a conspiracy (without outright lying):
“Have you heard of cryonics?”
“Heard of what?
“Yeah, didn’t think so. They have a hell of a time getting past the typical story about death. Cryonics isn’t even like crackpot theories, like the Rapture or what have you, that get a hearing simply for being ridiculous—”
“Okay, but what are you talking about?”
“There are organizations that will preserve legally dead bodies, frozen. The definition of death has slid forward over time—right now it’s brain death, but for a long time we had to make do with heartbeat, for instance. It might keep on sliding to the point where being frozen isn’t ‘dead’ anymore, and they’ll know how to fix the preserved patients. Might not, too—everyone seriously advocating admits that, which is why there aren’t frothing maniacs raving about it. But you can look at it as an experimental medical procedure no one thinks you need to hear about.”
It’s the grandfather that’s in to conspiracies, not her. And it was mentioned that the grandmother doesn’t much listen to conspiracy theories, so this is probably a Very Bad Approach.
I considered this because of your article Light Arts, and rejected it because I disagree with that article in at least some cases, this being one of them. I could talk about it as I think about it—a good idea that people, even scientists who should know better, reject because of unwillingness to think about death and unwillingness to believe it isn’t final—and let him draw his own opinions on why it isn’t common knowledge (like I could prevent him anyway), but saying myself that it has a reasonable chance of being a conspiracy, or even implying it, is not something I could do.
I’m not clear on whether I should advocate this, but I wonder if you could spin not-cryo as a conspiracy (without outright lying):
“Have you heard of cryonics?”
“Heard of what?
“Yeah, didn’t think so. They have a hell of a time getting past the typical story about death. Cryonics isn’t even like crackpot theories, like the Rapture or what have you, that get a hearing simply for being ridiculous—”
“Okay, but what are you talking about?”
“There are organizations that will preserve legally dead bodies, frozen. The definition of death has slid forward over time—right now it’s brain death, but for a long time we had to make do with heartbeat, for instance. It might keep on sliding to the point where being frozen isn’t ‘dead’ anymore, and they’ll know how to fix the preserved patients. Might not, too—everyone seriously advocating admits that, which is why there aren’t frothing maniacs raving about it. But you can look at it as an experimental medical procedure no one thinks you need to hear about.”
It’s the grandfather that’s in to conspiracies, not her. And it was mentioned that the grandmother doesn’t much listen to conspiracy theories, so this is probably a Very Bad Approach.
Presumably she means to advocate it to the grandfather
I considered this because of your article Light Arts, and rejected it because I disagree with that article in at least some cases, this being one of them. I could talk about it as I think about it—a good idea that people, even scientists who should know better, reject because of unwillingness to think about death and unwillingness to believe it isn’t final—and let him draw his own opinions on why it isn’t common knowledge (like I could prevent him anyway), but saying myself that it has a reasonable chance of being a conspiracy, or even implying it, is not something I could do.