[ExI] Ignemus lucem aeternam

[Keith Henson]

"What is wrong with those people?"

That's one way of putting it, the other is what is strange about the
few thousand who are signed up.

At one time, I was a large influence who signed up (after the Dora
Kent debacle).  It was probably because they were involved with space
and high tech more than knowing me.  When I signed up it was around
one in a million.

There is a darn good reason to want larger cryonics organizations,
economy of scale.

Wikipedia numbers are interesting.  Out of around a million living
people listed, there are 69 transhumanists and 41 cryonicists.  I know
that is low because I know that some are confidential signups. But
even among the Extropians, and Transhumanists not all are signed up.
I don't think Spike or Hans Moravec are.  A substantial number of the
early posters on this list are (or in some cases were) signed up.  But
there are people who wanted it, but for one reason or another (finance
mostly) did not.

If you buy into evolutionary psychology as a worldview, humans have
not been selected for signing up or living a very long time.  It's a
tiny corner of the human population that is attracted.  And frankly,
the rapid runup to the singularity is disorienting even for people who
have been involved for a long time.  I won't say I envy my parents (both
long dead) but I do understand them.

Finding aliens (if that is what we are seeing around Tabby's star)
might induce a few more to sign up.  If Ray Kurzweil is right, and
people quit dying around 2030, then the long-term population will have
a considerable number of people from this era.

It's been a topic of serious concern for just about as long as I have
been involved (1985).  I know Alcor has interviewed new members about
what induced them to sign up, but I have not seen those results.


Keith

On Thu, Sep 21, 2023 at 10:55 PM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> In between vegging out on YouTube today I was idly cogitating on the state of cryonics in the US and I was struck by the following statistic - out of 3x10e8 Americans there may be around 3 - 4 thousand who are signed up. Let's say that's one in a hundred thousand.
>
> Let that sink in - cryonics is a highly scientifically plausible way to avoid dying for a really, really long time, which is easily available to all but the poorest of the poor Americans and yet only 1 person in 100,000 intends to use it.
>
> What the holy fuck?
>
> One person in a hundred thousand wants to live to see the future and there will be a lot to see in the future. Telescopes as large as galaxies. Quasars remade into particle accelerators to probe the Planck scale. Oracle AIs whose thoughts will span billions of years. Negentropy driven infinite self-propagating thought substate.
>
> Ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine say "Nah, we're just gonna die. It sounds like a good idea. Eternal life? Hell, fuck no!". The mass insanity! The death cult!. What is wrong with those people?
>
> David Deutsch says that every day is the beginning of infinity. Those who make it through the rapture of the nerds will rise to heavens in fiery starships. They will conquer the firmament and piss on alien planets. They will carry the eternal light of thought into the lifeless void.
>
> I think it is the greatest idea since sliced bread. Life is good.
>
> Ignemus lucem aeternam!
>
> Rafal
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