CryoNet #32324 - #32325

CryoNet - Wed 20 Jan 2010

    #32324: New Yorker article on Ettinger has unfortunate tone [Rudi Hoffman]
    #32325: cryonicscalculator.com is online [Brook Norton]

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Message #32324
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:46:12 -0500
Subject: New Yorker article on Ettinger has unfortunate tone
From: Rudi Hoffman <[email protected]>

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Hello, cryonetters:

This is Rudi from Florida, where it has finally warmed into something like
Florida weather.

I followed the link Mark Plus provided to the New Yorker article on Bob
Ettinger.

Did those of you who read this find it rated pretty high on the annoyance
scale?  The link is in today's cryonet.

This writer *so misses the point of cryonics...and Ettinger's remarkable
insights.  While I sometimes wish Bob were less sanguine about the multiple
details that are and may be necessary to make cryonics a legitimate evidence
based technology, no one can deny that his possibility thinking and outside
the box mentality enable his seminal and singular influence.

The article was a disappointment...shallow, superficial, facile, and harshly
judgemental.  Cryonics comes across in this article like a desperate and
kooky hobby, practiced by self centered weirdos in a business park which is,
unhelpfully pointed out, "behind the sewer plant."

It isn't the first bit of unfortunate press...and won't be the last...but I
was saddened by the tone...I am trying to find a better adjective than
"snarky" because I think this is colloquial...but and it was simply not nice
enough to be merely "snarky."

"Mean spirited" might be a more appropriate descriptor.

In other news, a call came in this morning, as I was preparing for my bike
ride.  My neighbor, a long time friend and client, about age 50, was crushed
yesterday in an accident at work and is, astoundingly and unexpectedly, very
dead.  He lives...lived...around the corner, about 150 meters away from
where I write these words.   He is now permanently dead...he was a science
fiction and Star Trek fan...but way too religious to consider cryonics.

I spent the afternoon starting the process of the death claim.

Surprisingly, with several thousand clients over the last 32 years or so in
the life insurance business, I have only had about a dozen claims.  And now
I am processing not one but two at once.  Both on gentlemen who I genuinely
cared about.  Perhaps I should care more about 200,000 Haitians dying.  But
I confess my two friends dying has more immediacy and emotioanal impact on
my psyche.  Most of us, as Dale Carnegie has observed, are much more
troubled by a toothache than by reports of death and destruction far away.
But death is still winning, and we need heros.

We are engaged in an epic and historic struggle against involuntary death
and degradation.

This is not expected, nor supposed to be... easy, inexpensive, or not
involve huge levels of effort, money, and sacrifice.  We need hundreds of
labs working on various ideas...published and peer reviewed articles, a
legitimate career track for researchers and students to travel, continuous
improvement protocols, multiple conferences in multiple locales, a sense of
genuine community...the list goes on.

We are still pioneers...  Those reading this would do well, it could be
said, to think of themselves as visionary leaders...the harbingers of a
Spring for mankind.   We look with awe upon the leaders who founded our
country...but are we not engaged in founding something even more dramatic?
A possible future free from the tyranny of involuntary death and frailty?

If you are just thinking of cryonics or antiaging activism now...the good
news is that you have not missed the pioneering days.

The bad news is also that you have not missed the pioneering days.

And, of course, the pioneers tend to get the arrows.  Including snarky and
snotty New Yorker articles.

If I may lapse into the vernacular once more for effect, Bob, Andy, and
Ben...just in the unlikely case that your feelings were hurt by the tone of
this article...

That writer can go fuck himself.  He simply does not "get it."

But some of us do...and appreciate the pioneers doing the day to day work of
making cryonics a real science.

Rudi


-- 
Rudi Richard Hoffman CFP CLU ChFC

World's Leading Cryonics Insuror rudihoffman.com
Former Board Member Financial Planning Association fpafla.com
Board Member Salvation Army salvationarmy.org
Member Alcor Life Extension Foundation alcor.org,
Member Cryonics Institute cryonics.org
Certified Financial Planner(TM) CFP Board of Standards
Member World Transhumanist Association http://transhumanism.org/

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Message #32325
From: Brook Norton <[email protected]>
Subject: cryonicscalculator.com is online
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:27:40 -0800

cryonicscalculator.com has been created to help individuals assess for themselves "What are the odds of cryonics working?" You provide a few answers to questions such as "What are the odds of a fire at your storage facility?" and "How long before reanimation technology becomes available?" and the calculator gives you the overall odds of success, like "51%".

The intent of the web site is to provide a cryonics-big-picture view with insight into what the biggest risks of failure are, and consequently, what areas our community may want to stay focused on.

You are encouraged to play around with the inputs to see the effect on the result.

Brook Norton

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