I feel that I am being misunderstood: I do not suggest that people sign up for cryonics out of spite. I imagine that almost everyone signed up for cryonics does so because they actually believe it will work. That is as it should be.
I am only pointing out that being told that I am stupid for signing up for cryonics is disheartening. Even if it is not a rational argument against cryonics, the disapproval of others still affects me. I know this because my friends and family make it a point to regularly inform me of the fact that cryonics is “a cult”, that I am being “scammed out of my money” by Alcor and that even if it did work, I am “evil and wrong” for wanting it. Being told those things fills me with doubts and saps my willpower. Hearing someone on the pro-cryonics side of things reminding me of my reasons for signing up is reassuring. It restores the willpower I lose hearing those around me insulting my belief. Hearing that cryonics is good and I am good for signing up isn’t evidence that cryonics will work. Hearing that non-cryonicists will “regret” their choice certainly isn’t evidence that cryonics is the most effective way to save lives. But it is what I need to hear in order to not cave in to peer pressure and cancel my policy.
I get my beliefs from the evidence, but I’ll take my motivation from wherever I can find it.
This post convinced me to make a physical backup of a bunch of short stories I’ve been working on. At first I was going to go read through the rest of the comments thread and then go do the back up, but further consideration made me realize how silly that was—burning them to a DVD and writing “Short Story Drafts” on it with a sharpie didn’t take more than five minutes to do and made the odds of me forever losing that part of my personal history tremendously smaller. Go go gadget Taking Ideas Seriously!