How to get cryocrastinators to actually sign up for cryonics

You tapped into a powerful persuasive technique unintentionally. Although I think 'trick' is too negative a connotation. Many things can influence decisions, such as being well dressed, or attractive, or using the right lingo. It's nothing more than effective communication to speak to your target in the most impactful way.

It's hard for me to think something as manipulative, when it's getting them to do something they already want and it's good for them as well.

Sort of.

Yes ladders function in two ways. One is commitment and consistency effects. Each question has the answerer define themselves in a way that makes them more likely to agree with subsequent questions and, eventually, the final conclusion. A positive no would still build up consistency effects.

The other way they work is by 'turning off your brain'. Shopping and similar decision making is controlled by a tug-of-war between the NAcc and the insula. A proper yes ladder lets the seller steer the conversation to the sale, without ever triggering the insula. If you have the buyer stop and think about something (eg, should my answer be yes or no?), it inhibits your ability to sell. You want them to just trust in you without ever activating the parts of their brain designed for second guessing. That means a lot of 'no brainer' questions. Positive no's don't necessarily do this, but it's a lot harder to build a safe positive no question, when you could just use a yes instead. Hence, I was always taught to just steer clear of them.

(In retrospect, it this tactic does sound slightly more dark artsy than when I was replying to JGWeisnman about it)

It would have been pretty impressive if I actually did get a girl to sign up for cryonics after she turned me down for a date.

Longevity is much less of a concern with CUK; they don't do storage, only standby and transport.

I live in the Bay Area now.

Thanks. "Modest" and "doable" are relative; how many hours did you put in?

Eliezer's judgement was that he had to get signed up to convince people to do the same. And he didn't have much money.

feeling it fairly urgent that I stop dithering and start signing up

Why the urgency?

Even assuming that cryonics works as advertised (which is probably a very strong assumption, but I digress), it's probably a bad idea to sign up before 45 - 50. You are very unlikely to die younger, and if you do, whatever kills you will probably destroy much of your brain before you can be cryopreserved.

Sure, life insurance prices go up with age, but assuming a normal career you will probably more than compensate with increased income and possibly savings.

IIRC, when people asked him why he had chosen CI whereas Robin Hanson had chosen Alcor, he said he didn't have that much money but Hanson did, so of course he would pick the cheap option and Hanson the high-end one.

I have the same tendency... I find it a lot of work to hold a conversation even with a friend–my mom is pretty much the only person I can comfortably have a phone chat with, probably because she has a very loud, clear voice and because she isn't unpredictable. Calling strangers, or answering a call which I think is from a stranger i.e. my phone/Internet provider company, is stressful. I'll put off phone calls as long as I possibly can, although I'm not sure if it's because of the anxiety or just because they're more time consuming than writing an email.

I've been working on this by forcing myself to offer to make any necessary phone calls at my current job (at the hospital). This is stressful because a) it's usually to strangers, i.e. a patient's family, a doctor, or the X-ray department, and b) it's in French, my second language. The act of saying "oh, I'll take care of that phone call for you" is both easy and rewarding, because I like being really really helpful, and then once I've said I'll do it, I'm committed and I have to do it. Weirdly enough, I'm still scared to answer the phone at work.

Disliking answering phones is part of a long list of semi-phobias I had as a kid–ordering food in restaurants, going up to the checkout to buy things in stores, etc. I still get anxious ordering drinks in a bar. It feels like this is part of the same category as my phone-phobia.

So, I'm not the only one. (I've partly overcome this, but I still prefer to only use the telephone for extremely short conversations (30 seconds or less) or when it's the only available medium for communicating with a given person.

I loathe phones with a deep and personal passion. I can function well in text, and I can do just fine in person, but my conversation skills just fail miserably with the combination of time pressure and missing non-verbal cues on the telephone.

Anyone agree, and have we discovered an interesting difference here or is it just a preference?

I really couldn't say; my dislike of using telephones follows straight from being hard of hearing, so I have no idea what my preferences would or would not be in a counterfactual universe.

Yes, this also makes signing up early a better deal, provided you think you are less likely than average to lapse and lose coverage.

I'll bet at least a few people save their money or donate to charity instead of buying stuff they don't really need.

That sounds like a bet you would win. However, the thing I claim no one is actually doing is taking the money they would be spending on whole life insurance premiums, and investing it as well as an insurance provider would, for the purpose of later subsidizing the larger premiums they would have to pay for whole life insurance when they are older. That would be a crazy thing to do, as it is more work, more risk in resources that are sub-linearly instrumentally valued, and doesn't cover you during the time you are investing instead of paying premiums.

I was explicitly talking about whole life insurance, which I advocate using for cryonics, and which I use myself. It is more expensive initially, but it lets you lock in your premiums when you are young and healthy.

If you do use term life insurance, it is cheaper when you are young because you are less likely to die during the term. But, unless you have a plan for how to fund your cryonic suspension after you survive the term, using it to fund cryonics is crazy.

I do not endorse citing the premiums for term life insurance as the cost of cryonics.