CryoNet #32360 - #32363

CryoNet - Sat 6 Feb 2010

    #32360: Any idea what this refers to? [MARK PLUS]
    #32361: Re: Organic progress model versus the Drunkard's Walk [David Stodolsky]
    #32362: Organic progress model versus the Drunkard's Walk [John de Rivaz]
    #32363: Re: CI growth rate decreasing? [benbest]

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Message #32360
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 07:25:51 -0700
Subject: Any idea what this refers to?
From: MARK PLUS <[email protected]>

From the Cult Education Forum, dated Feb. 5, by someone posting as "Anon1":

http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?12,64749,81738#msg-81738

>Got some interesting news that I will post here within the next few days. Just want to get my facts in before I post. Looks like more national news about Alcor and its leaders from Johnson is on the horizon. Mr Ross, you're going to like this one."

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Message #32361
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Organic progress model versus the Drunkard's Walk
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 18:44:47 +0100
References: <[email protected]>

On 3 Feb 2010, at 11:00 AM, CryoNet wrote:

> The Obama Administration's relinquishment of manned space travel, a
> key component in the progress mythology from way back, suggests that
> the drunkard's walk better fits the data than the organic model. Human
> civilization has no more inherent reason to keep building rockets and
> sending men into orbit than it had to keep building pyramids.


Ultimately, the survival of the human race depends on getting off this  
Planet. However, since that problem is, hopefully, far in the future,  
we can't expect it to have much political effect. In general,  
scientific progress continues according to the number of scientists  
and their level of funding, to a lesser degree. However, technological  
progress is often triggered by political events. For example, WWII led  
to a tremendous jump in technology with radar, the atom bomb, etc. The  
Space Race was triggered by the Soviet Union's launch of the first  
satellite. If the SU had announce they were going to put a man on  
mars, there would probably be people there today. Likewise, space  
colonies were feasible in the 1970s and if there had been some  
political push, millions could be living in orbit today.

There is no way that nuclear energy is going to be forgotten. Bertrand  
Russel commented that these weapons would have to be kept safe until  
the Sun grew cold. So, there is a rachet effect with some technologies  
and that eliminates any random walk model.

Cosmism asserts that there is a teleological imperative inherent in  
intelligent civilization, which will propel the exploration of the  
Cosmos.

http://www.cosmism.info/what-is-cosmism


>
> The drunkard's walk model also seems to fit the history of cryonics
> better than the organic model. It wouldn't surprise me if cryonics
> organizations start to lose members and even fail for financial
> reasons in the next couple decades, independently of the merit of the
> cryonics idea. Why? Human civilization has no acorn-like imperative to
> want to conquer aging and death, either


A biological analogy is often used in social/organizational analyses,  
but it isn't appropriate. There is a literature on social movements  
that could be applied.

There has been an increase in life expectancy of a quarter a year per  
year for over two hundred years. Trends like this usually continue. In  
any case, there is an incentive to retard aging, and vast sums are  
being spent to look younger right now. No doubt, when the technology  
to retard aging comes online, there will be plenty of takers and  
plenty of funding to make improvements.

With respect to the cryonics enterprise, the main problem appears to  
be that a formula that has shown success will continue to be used long  
after it has outlived its role. To someone working at a cryonics  
provider, a steady stream of new suspendees will not be seen as a  
problem, even though this represents a declining growth rate with  
respect to the size of the organization. This can lead to unwarranted  
complacency.

To overcome political risk, the cryonics movement has to make the  
transition from a type of separatist subculture only understood by  
insiders, to a movement that is accepted as a routine part the  
mainstream culture. If this doesn't happen, then there is a risk of  
decline, internal disruption, or repression by the mainstream.  
According to the standard models of social movements, cryonics has  
already passed thru the preliminary stages of emergence, coalescence,  
and bureaucratization (at least  preliminary). If these theories  
apply, then we are at the point where the future of cryonics will be  
decided. According to these models, the transformation will be  
revolutionary, so the risk should not be underestimated (see my  
earlier CryoNet message, "Decline of the Soul's Immortality: A Danish  
history," to get an idea of what the last transition of this type was  
like):

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Sociology/Social_Movements


dss


David Stodolsky
[email protected]  Skype: davidstodolsky

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Message #32362
From: "John de Rivaz" <[email protected]>
Subject: Organic progress model versus the Drunkard's Walk
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 08:32:59 -0000

In New Scientist this week [p6] there is an artist's impression of the proposed (and now cancelled) moon landing with the caption

"No, we can't".

-- 
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

 Content-Type: text/html;

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

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Message #32363
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:56:03 -0500
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: CI growth rate decreasing?

Ben Best wrote:

> There was a growth
> spurt in the 1997-2001 period which
> is probably entirely attributable
> to the fact that CI gained a website
> and people started finding our
> organization through the internet.

...

> Selecting average growth from the
> 1998-2004 period as a predictive base
> is arbitrary, as compared to
> 2001-2007 or 1990-1996.

David Stodolsky wrote:

> My analysis showed that this 'spurt', that is, 23% yearly growth,  
> continued thru 2004.

...

> The selection was based upon a statistical test, which rejected the   
> hypothesis that growth rates were the same before and after 1998. It  
>  was later noted that the website went online in that year and that   
> this could explain the change.

...

> Using the 1998-2004 rate of 23%/year):
>
> 163 suspendees predicted by 2010.1.1
> 85 suspendees actual by 2010.1.1
> (Ten patients received from the American Cryonics Society in 2004  
> are  not included. Thus 58 suspendees on 2005.1.1 and 85 suspendees  
> on  2010.1.1)

http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=32353

______New_______New
___Patients___Members

1990____0_______07
1991____3_______08
1992____6_______08
1993____0_______07
1994____3_______10
1995____2_______13
1996____5_______05
1997____2_______05
1998____6_______19
1999____2_______41
2000____5_______42
2001____4_______62
2002____5_______63
2003____5_______76
2004____8+10____63
2005____3______100
2006____5_______76
2007____9_______71
2008____6_______61
2009____4_______62

   The number of new CI Members in
2001, 2002, and 2004 look similar
enough to me to justifying calling
the 1997-2001 period the "growth spurt"
period -- leaving 2003 as an outlier.
New Members in 2008 and 2009 also
match these figures. Even if your
conclusion of a 23% growth rate
in the 1998-2004 period were a
justified basis for prognostication
of new Member growth, there was
no similar growth rate for new
Patients during the 1998-2004
period -- which does not justify
imposing the growth rate of new
Members onto the projected growth
rate of new patients. In my experience,
the majority of new cryonics patients
at the Cryonics Institute have been
people who have either been signed-up
"post-mortem", or who signed-up within
a year before their deanimation.

  Also, why do you insist on
using the term "suspendees" rather
than patients? Even if you do not believe
that they are patients, or that it is not
scientific to call them patients, "suspension"
is (obsolete) non-scientific cryonics jargon.
"Cryopreserved persons", or even "cryonically
preserved persons" would be more scientific
terminology.

Ben Best wrote:

> Membership growth has been roughly
> constant since 2001, with a spurt
> in 2005, which I have attributed
> to a New York Times article (we
> had a huge spurt of growth in the
> weeks of the time of that article.

David Stodolsky wrote:

> This is a fine hypothesis, but without systematic data collection   
> making possible a correlation between publicity and growth, it can   
> hardly be considered anything more than a post-hoc attempt to  
> explain  events.

   I believe that my observation was systematic
enough to have merit. When there is a growth
spurt of new Members within a span of weeks
and those Members non-systematically mention
how they learned of cryonics, that is evidence
justifying the hypothesis.


David Stodolsky wrote:

> Thus, using the data from 1998 forward gives us the best estimate of  
> what growth should be in the Internet Age.

...

> I see no reason that the effect of the website would stop in 2001,  
> unless there is a fixed pool of potential sign ups. If there is,  
> then it supports the atheist millionaire hypothesis. However,  
> drawing a conclusion after examination of the data is not considered  
> to be a valid method of hypothesis testing.

    Prior to the mid-1990s the percentage of
the population with internet access was very
small. Between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s
the percentage of the population using the
internet went from being a small minority
to a majority in the developed countries.
The growth rate of internet users was
exponential during that period, but could
not continue to be exponential once a
majority of people were already on the internet.


> So, if we combine the results for both membership growth and  
> suspendee  growth, we can see decreases feeding thru the system. We  
> would expect  suspendee growth to lag membership growth, since in  
> most cases people  become members some time before they become  
> suspendees. Therefore, the  data is consistent with a decreasing  
> growth rate at CI. The ALCOR data  is problematic, since it has  
> proceeded more in spurts (and even a  decrease) and therefore can't  
> be modeled with these simple curves, or  probably at all, given the  
> limitations of the data. However, I expect  the same factors that  
> influence CI growth to effect ALCOR growth.
>
> There is nothing new about these conclusions. There has been talk of  
>  'stagnation' for some time and the recent 'teens and 20s' meeting  
> was a recognition that there has been a drop in interest.

   I think that the word "stagnation" is unnecessarily
negative. The roughly linear growth of Alcor and the
Cryonics Institute is disappointing compared to hopes, but
not "stagnation". I think that comparing Alcor growth
to Cryonics Institute growth is very relevant if we
are concerned with discussing the attractiveness of
the cryonics idea in society and expected growth
of cryonics organizations in general.

  Looking at the Alcor data I think you could
use the same sort of analysis about the
Alcor exponential growth in the 1986-1992 period:

http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/membershipstats.html

Drexler's ENGINES OF CREATION was published in
1986. It would not be unreasonable to think
that the advent of the "Drexler/nanotechnology age"
was the explanation for that exponential
period of growth (the Dora Kent case in the
late 1980s also added to the growth, apparently).
On the basis of the dawn of the
"Drexler/nanotechnology age" exponential
growth, Alcor should have had over a thousand
Members not long after the middle of the 1990s.
We are still in the "Drexler/nanotechnology age".

        -- Ben Best

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