CryoNet #33064 - #33068

CryoNet - Tue 23 Nov 2010

    #33064: Re: CryoNet #33061 - #33063 [Gerald Monroe]
    #33065: Aussie Rolling Stone cryonics article [Rudi Hoffman]
    #33066: Re: CryoNet #33061 - #33063 [Gerald Monroe]
    #33067: Re: CryoNet #33061 - #33063 [Gerald Monroe]
    #33068: Re: Alcor funding minimums / "in good shape" [David Stodolsky]

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Message #33064
References: <[email protected]>
From: Gerald Monroe <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 07:08:19 -0600
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33061 - #33063

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Looks like charles platt has issued another one of his periodic rants
> against us oh so irresponsible cryonicists. We are all such libertines.
> Partying our lives away. Tsk tsk.
>
> Charles, the rich cryonicists will just have to cover alcor on any funding
> shortfalls. THat is just the reality of it.
>
> that is the only way the rich people can have a chance of ever being
> cryopreserved. Even the rich need us poor folks to help them make it to the
> future. They need us. And so they will have to help alcor and other cryo
> orgs make it, too, or else they will have no chance at the future.
>
> I think the rich cryonicists recognize this. And they accept this.
>
> I think however that the uber-libertarian cryos do not accept this fact. It
> must really gripe their guts to think that their hard-earned/inherited money
> will have to go to help others. It must really grind on them that they will
> have to depend on others to get a chance at future revival.
>
> Libertarians, what a laugh.
>
> I think that Libertarianism in a person of advanced age could well be a
> sign of some sort of severe personality disorder. I mean, it is one thing to
> be a libertarian at age 30. Hey, I gotta confess I was one at that age, too.
> But to be one at age 50? Time to put away childish things, dude....
>
>
Keep some perspective, please.  2.4 million people die every year in the
United States.  A ridiculous, almost inconceivably vast number.  Everyone
reading this will have their number come up eventually.  Beating this so you
wake up afterwards *has never been done in human history.*  There's roughly
*100 billion* humans who have died before.  This isn't an appropriate
subject for name calling.  Each of us is trying to beat a personal
extinction of our existence that will make everything we accomplished in
life meaningless.

The wealthy ones among us want to use their wealth to increase their
personal odds of success.  If you had 10 million instead of the minimum
buy-in, wouldn't you want to use the funds to boost your odds further?  It's
just human nature.

I think the right approach is to focus on how a lot of things the wealthy
can pay for to benefit *themselves* also benefit the poor folk who "only"
pay a hundred grand.  If the wealthy were to pay for an armored underground
vault with armed guards at the surface patrolling, the fixed costs are such
that making the vault store thousands of people would not cost much more
than making it store 10 wealthy people.  Research is an even better example.
 Enormous amounts of research need to be done eventually or this will never
work.  If a wealthy person were to donate money to research it would benefit
everyone as much as it benefits one individual.

A vault store thousands of people is also a lot safer than one storing 10.
 It would be MUCH harder for the government to close the place down for some
reason if there were the extended families of thousands of people protesting
than just the families of 10.

What we really need is for cryonics to become a common medical procedure
supported by medicare.  I keep hearing about how 40% of all medicare dollars
are spent on the last month of life.  It would save the government (and
society) ludicrous amounts of money if cryonic preservations were done
rather than medical procedures that have low chances of success.  And if the
federal government built the vaults, they could be in decommissioned missile
silos next to military bases and other places that would be virtually
guaranteed to be intact for centuries with minimal odds of failure.

I don't know what it would take to get to that point (other than
demonstrated success with an actual revival of a human) but I know that more
research funding and more people frozen is a step in the right direction.  A
few elite rich folks putting themselves in a private bunker away from
everyone else is *not *a step in that direction.

--001485f9a53e7213770495a3f468

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Message #33065
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 08:45:13 -0500
Subject: Aussie Rolling Stone cryonics article
From: Rudi Hoffman <[email protected]>

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Hello, Cryonetters,

Marta Sandberg is a CI Director and cryonics activist living in Australia.

She provides this link to one of the best (defined as most positive)
articles in a mainstream publication I have seen in a while.

While I wished the affordability of cryonics through insurance would have
been better covered, the article and pictures are quite good.

We certainly need as much good news...genuine and real good news...as
possible, so I wanted this link to get wide play.

Marta's email and link follows:


Hi everybody,
There is a great article published in Rolling Stones (Australia) about
cryonics.
This link should lead you to a pdf of it.
http://db.tt/LmUDKyG
Long life,
Marta
Rudi

(PS...Regarding more current cryonet threads, I will weigh in on the
"cryonics funding issue" in an article I am writing for Cryonics magazine,
probably also to be posted here.  For now, may I just say that it is good
that the dialogue is occurring on this issue, ranging the gamut the informed
and thoughtful observations of Charles Platt and Brian Wowk to the
entitlement blatherings of unperson.  It is vital that the funding issue be
carefully discussed, and for a background I recommend you check out the
links Wowk has provided...especially the astounding complete analysis by
Robert Frietas.)


-- 
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/
Securities offered through Broker Dealer Financial Services Corp. Member
FINRA and SIPC.

--000325574f9630de520495a4771e

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Message #33066
References: <[email protected]>
From: Gerald Monroe <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 07:52:04 -0600
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33061 - #33063

--001485f9a68cf10f150495a490e9

This talk of the optimal strategy for a rich person gave me an idea.  If one
were a billionaire, as in you had 1 billion dollars in actual spendable
assets, how could you optimally maximize your chance of a revival?

If you're a billionaire, you've traveled the globe.  You've seen every
wonder of the world.  You've been showered with accolades and awards.
 You've lived in mansions with the best decor and the best artwork money can
buy.  You've had sex with the most attractive partners nature can produce.
 You've driven automobiles with incredible performance.  And so on and so
forth.

But one day, you'll develop a tumor or your heart will fail.  As a
billionaire, you probably will not just drop dead - billionaires have
bodyguards trained in CPR and probably don't spend much time alone.  You'll
fly in the best doctors in the world, experts from famous places like
Hopkins or the Mayo clinic.  They'll run countless tests and give you dozens
of drugs.  You might have a personal doctor at your bedside 24/7.  And those
doctors will not be able to stop you from dying in the end.

At the end of the story, it all goes black.  All those incredible
experiences will fade away like they never happened.  Or, at best, you'll
end up in a realm not in this universe where it probably won't matter that
you earned billions of dollars in your lifetime.

How could you prevent this from happening?  Well, you could donate your
wealth to 'good works' that mainstream society approves of.  You'll get
immediate accolades now, and it might help in the hereafter if there *were
one.  *Gates and Buffet are spending billions helping out the poorest
peoples of the globe.

But none of that will help in the slightest if death is what every empirical
science says it is - total oblivion.  You'll feel really great about all
those people in Africa you helped at the moment of your death perhaps, but a
moment after and you won't be feeling anything at all.

So paying for a cryonics preservation might be a good thing.  It MIGHT work.
 You might just wake right back up with a fresh body as if you'd just taken
a quick nap.  Your new brain might not even have the same atoms as the old
one, and would probably be chock full of extra circuitry implanted during
the rebuild, but you would feel like you were exactly the same.  But, right
now, there's less than 100 people worldwide in the freezer and the mass
media ignores the issue or makes fun of it.

How to fix this? A billionaire could build a billion dollar facility for
just themselves.  A whole office building sized structure somewhere with
permanent scientists on the payroll commissioned to make a revival happen.
 But, imagine how people would be tempted to cheat this 'kook' out of his
preservation fund.  Imagine the court battles with the living family members
trying to rob the fund for their own use.  Imagine how the media would
perceive the whole thing...just some crazy old man wasting his money.

Or, what if the billionaire were to do something totally crazy.  Something a
libertarian like Charles would probably turn red in the face over.  What if
the billionaire were to pay for the cryonics preservations of thousands of
other people?  (and spend the other half of his funds on R&D)  That is, he
would pay the costs for anyone who signed up and put some skin in the game.
 (the person who signed up would have to agree to spend some fraction of
their assets and the billionaire's fund would cover the rest.  Would have to
design the program very carefully to control the incentives.)

Assuming he bought cryonics preservations in bulk, and the individuals
covered some of the costs.  How much would this cost?  25k a patient,
perhaps?  At that price, for 500 million dollars there would be 20,000 more
people joining the billionaire in the freezer.  5 billion dollars, and
that's 200,000 people.  Assuming each frozen person has a few surviving
family members.  *Now* you've got the beginnings of a movement.  People want
this.  Everyone's afraid of death.  They just don't really take the idea of
cryonics seriously for a variety of reasons.  I think thousands of people,
all talking about the subject could make an enormous difference.

Once the funds ran out, do you think that all the friends of those thousands
of people that were frozen with the billionaire's money wouldn't sign up?
 Even a small chance of joining their friend or family member after death in
this world is better than none.  Imagine all the private donations and
public funding that would go to researching the technology for revival.  In
the long run, this decision could possible give the billionaire a large
return on his investment, in effect putting many times the amount of money
he originally spent towards developing the technology that would lead to his
revival.  (and everyone else's, and the effective end to most biological
death in human society)

--001485f9a68cf10f150495a490e9

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Message #33067
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
From: Gerald Monroe <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 08:11:59 -0600
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33061 - #33063

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Also, assume cryonics works.  The billionaire wakes one day in that swanky
hospital bed.  Out of all the people that were preserved using the same
techniques using the billionaire's money, he (or she) is one of the last to
be revived.  This means that all of the long term complications have been
worked out and by this point the procedures are perfect.  He awakens into a
world where tens of thousands of people owe their very existence to his
efforts and they all know it.

What is likely to be worth more real wealth in this world?  An investment
portfolio that has had decades to gain compound interest, *but also was
invested in a world that developed molecular manufacturing*.  Such a
technology could easily make the firms that developed it rich...and bankrupt
every other corporation on the planet almost overnight.

Or the gratitude of tens of thousands of living people?  Charles, please
answer this one question.  The same argument applies for a mere millionaire
who paid to preserve his friends and family members instead of putting all
his funds into himself.

--001485f9a53e19913e0495a4d865

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Message #33068
Subject: Re: Alcor funding minimums / "in good shape"
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:26:26 +0100
References: <[email protected]>

On 22 Nov 2010, at 11:00 AM, CryoNet wrote:

> Unofficially, I think it is clear from this chart that members should
> plan on at least doubling their cryopreservation funding for each two
> decades of remaining life expectancy.  Officially, it impossible for
> Alcor to predict future inflation or future technology costs.


In the past, there have been periods of raging inflation, which made any preplanning impossible. Currently, the Feds 'printing press' is running at full speed. China is already moving to isolate itself from dollar problems:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/5/new_600b_fed_stimulus_fuels_fears

The Federal Reserve will pump $600 billion more into the US economy and keep interest rates at historical low levels. The short-term impact of the Fed's move, known as quantitative easing, has been a jump in stock prices across the globe. Many nations, however, have accused the United States of waging a currency war by devaluing the dollar. We speak to former Wall Street economist and University of Missouri professor Michael Hudson. "The object of warfare is to take over a country's land, raw materials and assets, and grab them," Hudson says. "In the past, that used to be done militarily by invading them. But today you can do it financially simply by creating credit, which is what the Federal Reserve has done."


There is already about 50 trillion dollars floating around outside of the USA. If confidence in the dollar fails and people decide to cash in their dollars, the situation could get out of control.


>        While some say that Alcor's response to the grandfathering
> problem hasn't been strong enough, others have harshly criticized
> Alcor's recent discussion of grandfathering for the opposite reason.

Previously, I suggested a 'pay as you go' plan for suspension funding. This would have the advantage of being able to raise rates to adjust for inflation or new technology, without triggering the disputes mentioned. It also would enhance growth, and with a pay as you go plan, that would mean many 'new' members paying for the suspension of a much smaller number of 'old' members. This approach would effectively cut costs, while ensuring suspensions would be provided, even under monetary instability.

If we could get back to the growth rates we were seeing up to 2004, it would mean that prices could be cut sharply:

http://cryin.secureid.org/stories/storyReader$52

Assume that the average membership lasts for 30 years, before the person is suspended. Given that the membership doubles every 3 years, costs could be cut by over thousand. (30 years / 3years = 10; 2 to the 10th power = 1024.)

So, if someone is paying 30,000 for a suspension now, they could pay a thousand a year for the average thirty years of membership to fully fund their own suspension with a pay as you go plan. However, since the membership would have grown by a thousand after 30 years, each new member would pay only one dollar to fund an old member's suspension. This is over optimistic, but I think the only important variable is the growth rate. Can someone set up to run these type of calculations give a more precise figures? I would set the starting rates to limit the risk of financial failure to one percent -based upon the Gambler's Ruin formula- and assume the organization could insure itself against that risk for a 'small' amount. 


dss


David Stodolsky
[email protected]  Skype: davidstodolsky

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