Cryonics -- which organization?

[Zeta]

Many of us -- though not yet I -- have signed up for cryonics. I'm getting ready to do so myself, and, I'm told, the only serious options are Alcor (http://www.alcor.org/), and the the Cryonics Institute (http://www.cryonics.org/) -- though the American Cryonics Society (http://www.americancryonics.org/) seems perfectly legitimate to me.

 

Can someone weigh in on what they think the best of these is, and why?

 

From what I see, unless there's something seriously wrong with the Cryonics Institute, they would be the best choice, simply because their prices are so radically much lower than Alcor or the ACS.

 

Z

[Robert Cavanaugh]

I'll ask David Stern, our CR SocietyTreasurer, to respond on this topic later today when we speak.  He is onboard with post mortem re-animation.

 

Bob

[timc]

My concerns are on the de-animation side.  Good thing we'd already be dead at that point.

[Robert Cavanaugh]

David is traveling and cannot reply just yet and only do email at present.  I sent your post as an email and await his reply.

He is signed up with ALCOR. 

 

Here is a list of all the organizations: http://www.cryonet.org/orgs.html

[Taurus Londono]

 

CI's prices are radically lower for several reasons. As ever in life, you often get what you pay for.

 

My concerns are on the de-animation side.  Good thing we'd already be dead at that point.

 

If you were really "already dead," then what would be the point?

 

Unless your name is Lazarus and your experience is confined to the pages of the New Testament, you should have no reason to expect survival of death. You should only expect to resume conscious experience if you were never really dead in the first place.

 

"Death" is equal parts make-believe, coping mechanism, and ritual holdover. So deeply embedded into the fabric of human experience, it is a construct that exists in much the same form as it always has, withstanding the scrutiny of a vast, science-armed population. Within even the most learned and unbiased minds, death retains its supernatural patina; it implicitly involves either an impermeable and invisible soul (the *real* you) quietly leaping out of a husk of organic chemicals or an unsolvable "Mystery," an awe-inducer that stands astride the process like some supermassive black hole preventing all possibility of close investigation.

 

It is profoundly bizarre--almost surreal--that this state of affairs persists while elan vital does not.