Growing Biostasis

Ideas about growing cryonics

On January 13, 2023, I gave a presentation to members of the biostasis community consisting of Biostasis Technologies (BT), Resurgence Biomedical Sciences (RBS), and Resurgence Medical (RM). This presentation covered familiar and less familiar thoughts on the challenge of growing biostasis, currently most represented by cryonics.

---

Biostasis offers a way to possibly continue living on into the future despite the failure of the body. For the last half-century and still today, it is the only way to have a chance to continue living after the clinical death of the human organism. Given that anti-aging research has had no real breakthroughs to date and progress remains minimal, it remains the only means of possible long-term survival. Despite this, biostasis is incredibly unpopular.

In 2012, I gave a talk at the Bil conference in Long Beach, California titled “Join the 0.00002%”. With very modest growth since then, and the start of several new organizations, the number of cryopreservation members now amounts to around 0.00004% of the world’s population. Let’s restrict the population to the WEIRD countries. (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.) These constitute around 12% of global population. The number of people signed up for biostasis then accounts for around an underwhelming 0.00024% of the WEIRD population. [1 in every 240,000.]

Around 150,000 people die every day. All patients in biostasis – as accumulated over the last 50 years – represent only 0.33% of global deaths in a single day.

After half a century or more, why are there so few of us? I’m not going to rehash this old question here. You have probably heard the explanations before. People don't sign up for cryonics because:

• it's not traditional

• they are skeptical of anything they haven't seen work

• it costs money

• they are afraid of what their friends might think

• they live in denial of their own death

• they don't want to think about the subject

• they procrastinate

• they don't like life well enough to want more of it

• they are afraid of a future in which they may be alienated from friends and family and a familiar social environment

You might ask: Do well really need to appeal to more people? The answer is that the cryonics/biostasis industry might be able to survive without vigorous growth but the chances will be better with more supporters and more resources. More resources means more ability to defend our rights legally, more funding for biostasis research, and more economies of scale.

So, how can we appeal to more people? An incomplete list of approaches would include the following.

Demographic targeting: What kinds of people have signed up for biostasis (in the form of cryonics) in the past? I don’t have access to data from Cryonics Institute but the story from Alcor and Tomorrow Biostasis is remarkably similar. Average age at signup is 35 to 37. (Average age of existing members at Alcor is 45.) 79% are male and 21% female. At Alcor, 55% are signed up for whole body cryopreservation, and 45% for neuro-cryopreservation. Most members of cryonics service organizations are in the USA but with relatively significant numbers in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe, with the latter currently growing faster. People with biostasis arrangements are typically more highly educated than average and many work in the fields of computer hardware or software.

Should we double down on our demographic? Or should we try new approaches to appeal to a mainstream audience, or to a limited but different demographic? The answer has to depend partly on our level of resources. We should be open to all demographics but limited resources implies focusing on our most promising targets primarily. There is much more we could do with the existing most promising demographic groups if we had the resources for a dedicated marketing and outreach effort. An old-fashioned approach would be to buy mailing lists of the target demographic group. That may be worth trying with an email campaign if suitable contact lists can be acquired. More modern methods would target online publications and social media channels relevant to the target demographics.

We may be missing promising demographic groups simply because they have not been exposed before. With sufficient resources, it’s therefore worth reaching out to untried groups. In some cases, such as science fictions fans, we have tried but not met with success. But does that mean those groups are hopeless or that we didn’t have the right message? Whatever the target group, a good marketing campaign will simultaneously test out multiple messages to see which are most effective. I’m told that Tomorrow Biostasis has done some of that but with no obvious resulting lessons. Of course, a bigger budget would enable much more testing.

Giving talks can be far more effective than trying to reach people through emails or brief social media messages. Are people on TikTok who can’t maintain their attention for more than 20 seconds really likely to be the best prospects? Unfortunately, what little marketing communications currently being done by Alcor is targeting those young, probably not well off, and attention deficit blighted persons.

Those of us with knowledge and communication skills could give talks to tech companies, suitable meetup groups, and universities. The downside of this approach is that it’s time intensive. It takes considerable work to secure a venue and to present to those audiences. Even when you have an opportunity to talk for long enough to educate an audience (a podcast can be particularly good), you still have the challenge of turning any interest into action. Converting interest into action is difficult enough in marketing generally but seems to be especially hard in cryonics for reasons such as those listed above.

What about referral programs? Some years ago when I was in charge of Alcor, I instituted a policy of waiving a year’s dues for any member who was given credit for bringing in a new member. This had little observable effect. More recently, Patrick Harris introduced a code that members could give out. Anyone using the code received a discount on their first year dues, as did the member giving out the code. It may be too soon to tell what effect this may have, but Alcor’s membership has grown even more slowly in the couple of years since it was introduced. Perhaps the referral program might be more effective if combined with other changes in marketing and education.

Media: Most companies would kill for the amount of free exposure cryonics gets from the media. During my 12 years at Alcor (and some before that), I did hundreds of interviews, resulting in plenty of favorable stories in newspapers, magazines, TV news pieces, and documentaries. Alcor and I even appeared as characters in a novel (Frankissstein)! Cryonics organizations have never been good at detecting where new members come from. (And even worse at figuring out why many members quit.) From my conversations with people media certainly helps but, despite its often wide reach, is from a sure thing. It’s a well-known dictum in marketing that multiple communications are usually necessary to get someone’s attention and to motivate them to action. Communication through the media remains important and its effects should build over time.

Some bad media is inevitable. Cryonics used to get mostly bad treatments. In my experience since 2010, media is at least informative and fairly neutral in most cases, and quite often reasonably objective or even favorable. One self-defeating response to bad media is to stop talking to the media. If you stop talking to them, you stop generating positive stories, leaving the remaining unfavorable stories to stand out. The more media you do, the more you will spot and avoid helping media that is hostile. Out of the hundreds of interviews, the number of those that I regret can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The best media stores are those where we control the narrative. It’s especially good when an interviewer lets us explain cryonics in our own words. (Some examples: November 2022, Health News by Eglė Krištopaitytė; October 2022 Reuters story & video; Theo Von podcast).

The best media is the media we create ourselves. That’s true in terms of quality and accuracy of content though not in terms of viewership – unless we have someone to promote our media.

Here’s something that might have a strong effect on public acceptance: A TV series centered around cryonics as a positive. Imagine a show where every episode follows someone being revived from biostasis and figuring out the new world. As in many shows, the same basic premise can be used in every episode while varying the characters and situations. I did see a script for a series rather like this but it never came to fruition.

Messaging: Advocates of biostasis and cryonics tend to be rationalists in the broad sense – we aim to have beliefs that fit the evidence and we expect other people to do the same. We present reasonable arguments for why biostasis has a chance of working. We do not declare that it will work for sure. We know that all kinds of things can go wrong and there is no absolute guarantee that technology will ever be developed that can repair and revive us. Surely, if we just present the evidence and our reasoning, people will understand and see the good sense in biostasis. Alas, most people don’t even try to be rationalists and plenty of those who think of themselves that way can be unreasonable.

This doesn’t mean we should give up on persuasion through reason and evidence. But we do need to be aware of the style and approach of our arguments and presentations. Look and feel and emotional resonance matters as does cultural awareness. We want people presenting cryonics to be engaging and appealing and not combative and dogmatic. We may want to appeal to families as much as to individuals and to emphasize the benefits to society as well as the individual.

I suggest that we also consider other ways to shift people’s mindset in a more receptive direction. FAQs answering the common objections are good. But arguments, no matter how reasonable and right often fail to do the job. We might try a different approach – the Socratic method. Rather than telling someone why they should make biostasis arrangements, try asking questions like this: “What would it take to make cryonics attractive to you?” This opens up the mind to thinking in a positive direction without pushing. Or: “If everyone in your family and your friends decided to be preserved and hopefully come back in the future, what would you do?”

Better use of existing interest: There has been a failure to follow up with people who have expressed interest by requesting information or coming for a tour. At Alcor I started the process (with support from Marji Klima) of putting in place the necessary IT systems, starting with Salesforce. Alcor has continued to build on that platform and should be in a position to handle interested people more effectively. There should be periodic reminders to contact people who have shown interest and reminders to follow up on inquiries. If it’s too costly to hire staff to do this, perhaps use interns. Of course, it’s crucial to respond promptly to inquiries. All the IT capabilities in the world won’t help if someone doesn’t grab that initial interest.

A couple of months ago, I started using Duolingo to improve my French and then to learn Spanish. I never enjoyed non-English languages in school (perhaps due to a lack of practical application and immersion) but found myself practicing on Duolingo every day. (Currently, I have a 91-day streak.) The app is well-designed to be engaging and to motivate you to keep coming back. Imagine such an app to motivate people to work through the process of signing up with a cryonics organization and arranging funding. After that, it could help get you through other important steps such as selecting a Medical Power of Attorney, providing revival preferences, informing relatives and having them sign a relative’s affidavit, drafting a living will, and setting up an asset preservation trust. Today’s cryonics organizations don’t have the resources to create apps as sophisticated and compelling as Duolingo or Babbel but we should keep this approach in mind and figure out a simpler version that might be practicable.

Cryonics organizations should make better use of tested marketing techniques. For instance, it’s great to have clear explanatory videos but they need to lead to action. Marketers often use a dedicated landing page that’s much more focused than a general website. So far as I know, no one has tried this yet.

Use funeral directors? This is a tricky one. On one hand we don’t want to associate cryonics with the death industry. Biostasis is an extension of emergency medicine, not a method of disposal of remains. On the other hand, funeral directors are well-established and people turn to them when planning for the end, or when the end comes for a family member. If biostasis was an option explicitly offered by funeral directors (perhaps paid a referral fee), it could bring the option to the attention of far more people. We don’t want to strongly encourage funeral directors to push it as an option when people don’t have time or the emotional state to evaluate biostasis. (Although there can be a moral argument that we should do this.) However, when people are making plans in advance, it might be good to have cryonics mentioned to them as an option.

Estate and financial planners and life insurance agents: I have spoken to large groups of financial advisors and trust attorneys about cryonics as part of their continuing education. Estate and financial planners and insurance agents have clear relevance to biostasis and cryonics. It might be possible to give talks at conferences of these groups. It would surely be more stimulating to their audiences than hearing variations on the same themes yet again. One example might be the National Association of Estate Planners & Councils (NAEPC) conferences and webinars. These meetings take place both nationally and regionally.

If you have thoughts on how to implement any of these suggestions or if you have new ideas, I’d like to hear from you.

---