[ExI] Avitar idea leads to Cryonics....

[Brent Allsop]

Extropians,

I had a great experience this morning during my physical therapy.  I had 
surgery on some rotator cuff tendon tears last year and have been going 
to physical therapy at this clinic 3 times a week since then.  (Almost 
back to normal, ready to graduate)  You get to know everyone there quite 
well, and have some great conversations about life, and so on.

Today, my physical therapists opened up with something like: "I bet 
you're like one of those guys that plans on having your head frozen when 
you die?" and of course was glad she recognized that, and very happy she 
brought this issue up for everyone to talk about.  This started a fire 
storm of conversation by everyone there, some saying things like: "I 
wish I had a spouse that could offord $80K for something like that." to 
"are you going to enjoy being frozen with the aliens from Area 51?"  
Some of them were real good questions like how are the bodies stored, 
and so on.  I of course responded to all such with the standard replies 
I'm sure all you cryonicists know so well.  Most of the curious and 
positive questions were coming from the younger people, and the 
ridiculing questions from the older people.  And it was all quite 
positive and fun, as things started getting back to getting some 
physical therapy done.

Then, quite a bit later, after she and everyone had been obviosly 
thinking about it very deeply she started the conversation up again 
with:   "So you're probably going to have your own 'Avatar' then?".  It 
took me a minute to fully realize what she was saying, and to recover 
from the shock from the way she phrased the question in a way indicating 
she was assuming it was going to eventually be reality.  But then I 
finally responded with: "Yea, my own avatar like body, then I'll try an 
eagle body, a dolphin body, ... and anything else I may fancy wanting to 
be...."

It made me realize just how powerful this Avitar meme is to help people 
to think about themselves as so much more than just this primitive 
mortal body, and what is going to some day be possible, along the lines 
of disembodied or uploaded Avitar experiences.  And I realized from this 
experience, once you get people there, it's a very small step to cryonics.

Brent Allsop