X-Message-Number: 30062
References: <>
From: David Stodolsky <>
Subject: Re: qualfications for social scientists
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:57:32 +0100

On 24 Nov 2007, at 04:57,  wrote:

> So I'll ask a few more questions. Admittedly I am  biased against  
> Stodolsky,
> who seems to me to hold all kinds of ridiculous  opinions, among  
> them the
> notion that peer reviewed publications and Ph.D.s hold  some  kind  
> of magic and
> deserve automatic respect.

I never said anything like this and have myself published articles  
showing it isn't true. Peer-reviewed publications are loaded with  
errors, however, all other sources of information are worse.

PhDs are supposed to know how to do research. If they do, then their  
writing on research questions is less likely to contain errors.


>
> The main question is what makes D.S. think he is qualified for this  
> job.
> First, exactly how would he characterize the goal, and what has he  
> accomplished
> in the past that suggests he might be successful?

The goal is to get cryonics accepted as a default treatment upon  
deanimation.

I have repeatedly developed and validated new technologies, and  
gotten them accepted.




> How much money does he want,
>  and how would he spend it?

Historically, end-of-life rituals are the responsibility of a church  
or equivalent organization. Such organizations typically perform  
other life transition rituals, related to birth, becoming an adult,  
and marriage. The organization can also provide a range of other  
services to members and the community. The objective would be to  
validate a working model for an organization of this type. Once the  
validation was completed, the effort could be duplicated by any small  
group of persons, perhaps with aid from a central service. The only  
way to validate this type of model is to try to set it in motion and  
see if the organization becomes self sufficient.

An adequate test would require a few different sites, each effort  
adjusted to the local conditions. A minimum time-frame would be 3  
years. At least two people would need support, one at the PhD level  
and another for routine work / familiarity with local conditions.  
Overhead would include a paid-up suspension for each of the efforts.  
A substantial amount of legal work would need to be done by a local  
attorney to set up the organizational structure and get approvals  
from local authorities. The launch would require a substantial  
publicity effort, since a minimum of one-hundred persons per site  
would probably be required for a valid test. Given the current state  
of the USD, this would cost about $800,000.

This is an optimistic figure. A serious legal challenge could use  
this entire amount by itself. While it is possible to insure a  
project against some of these types of unexpected events, there are  
legal risks that probably can't be covered by insurance. This is one  
reason that an effort in a few different legal jurisdictions offers a  
better chance for success.


> And if he has been working on it, as he says,
> what  has he arrived at so far?

So far, I have gotten the help available from the Venturist  
organization and contacted an attorney in Denmark. Calculations have  
shown that participation would be economically neutral in high-tax  
countries, such as those in Northern Europe. That is, after taxes,  
members would have the same disposable income. I have developed a  
marriage system designed to resist the transmission of diseases and  
to maximize social support among members:

Stodolsky, D. S. (1997). Automation of Contagion Vigilance. Methods  
of Information in Medicine, 36(3), 220-232.

http://dss.secureid.org/stories/storyReader$18


Also, I have reviewed the literature and performed some statistical  
tests on survey data related to cryonics, in order to identify the  
appropriate demographic. These are just the high points.



> I could stop here, but I can't resist pointing
> out  some D.S.. bloopers.
>
> D.S. writes: "We have been seeing
> 1/4 year increase  in life expectancy per year since 1839. Therefore,
> it will be a long  time before there is no need for suspension. Life
> expectation will  only be increased by 17 years in 2074."
>
> Laugh or cry? Aside from the absurdity of linear extrapolation   
> over long
> periods, he is referring to published figures for LIFE EXPECTANCY  
> AT  BIRTH. It
> doesn't take a Ph.D. to know that this figure stems mainly from   
> declines in
> infant mortality, and has nothing to do with life span or  
> expectancy of further
> life at advanced ages.

Infant mortality has long range effects, because it is an indicator  
of severity of infectious diseases in the infant population. That is,  
even the infants that survive serious infection are effected  
systematically in old age. The depletion of the immune system from  
such events reduces the ability to resist infection in adulthood, and  
therefore adult life expectance.


> The latter  figure seems to show increases close to
> zero, but  is difficult to estimate because of the complexity of  
> factors. (For
> example, mortality from heart disease and cancer have been much  
> higher in
> recent  times than a century or two back, and populations and life  
> styles  change.)

The fact is, we are now seeing people's life expectation at 60 years  
of age increasing due to a range of factors.

>
> Note: Perhaps D.S. got his 1/4 year per year increase  from Oeppen,  
> J.,
> Vaupel, J.W., Science, 296, 1029, 2002.  Possibly the world's most  
> prestigious
> journal. These guys must be good,  right? Well, they  not only  
> describe this 3
> month annual increase as  perhaps the "most remarkable regularity  
> of mass
> endeavour ever observed",  but further, they claim that on this  
> basis life expectancy
> can be expected to  increase at this same annual rate for the  
> foreseeable
> future. Anybody who  swallows their garbage really needs help, and  
> that clearly
> includes the editors  of Science.

We must distinguish between micro and macro analysis. On the micro  
level we might see discontinuous events, like the invention of the  
jet engine. On the macro level we see a continuous increase in the  
speed of human transport throughout history, even though we might see  
a clear limit at a given technological stage, like the "sound  
barrier." This curve as been linear on an exponential scale for  
centuries.


The previous posters idea was that there was no way to predict  
anything about the future need for cryonics nor the growth of  
cryonics organizations. I have extrapolated the current trends using  
the most widely accepted methods. Anything beyond this would require  
a substantial investment in order to apply much more sophisticated  
forecasting methods. It probably wouldn't work for the social aspects  
of the prediction.

The bottom line is that cryonics is going to become a political  
force, before effective immortality is achieved. We can see the  
traditionalists resistance to obviously beneficial technologies, such  
as stem cells, right now. These social forces are still going to be  
around in 50 years and they will not let an "earthly" power take over  
the job of "resurrection" without a fight. I don't see this  
happening, without a least a few bombings and assassination attempts,  
even if the justice system is supportive. Avoiding these types of  
problems would probably require the identification, and education or  
neutralization of a range of fanatical groups. This would be a  
supplement to a proactive campaign of general education to ensure  
that such groups remain isolated fringe elements.

Another factor is the hostility of many traditionalist groups to any  
effort toward radical life extension.  There seems to be a well  
supported and connected invisible college actively promoting the idea  
that death might be a good thing and is a necessary part of "being  
human." Given that a number of these "bio-ethicists" have adopted  
this stance as a career path, we can expect this propaganda to  
continue and to inhibit radical life extension research for the  
indefinite future. This virtually ensures the confrontation I refer  
to above.



> We also know to a virtual certainty that the  future will NOT be a  
> simple
> extension of the past.
> Relatively simple measures have already produced MAJOR  increases  
> in life
> span for some laboratory animals. There will be abrupt  shifts in  
> life.
>

While it may be obvious to you that massive increases in life  
expectation will occur shortly, a highly qualified person with hands  
on experience in the Human Genome Project sees a comprehensive  
understanding of the operation of the human cell and the associated  
life expectation changes a millennium away.

  I haven't seen any argument that allows us to extrapolate securely  
on any basis but the data we already have.


>
>
> D.S.. also wrote:
> "Social movements normally have an isolationist stage and then
> transition into being mass movements. So, there is no fixed rate of
> growth, but very slow growth at first, then a spurt, and then slow
> growth. The transition into a mass movement could occur at any time.
> Economic factors are in favor of offering cryonic suspension to the
> very sick in the advanced countries, since it would save money.
> Therefore, the barrier is cultural."
>
> Most of that translates as blah blah blah. The  conclusion--the  
> barrier is
> cultural--was and remains obvious based on simple  common sense and  
> not any
> "studies" of "stages" of movements.

The stage analysis is not related to the assessment of economic and  
cultural factors. The first is based upon studies of actual social  
movements. The second is an independent assessment of the  relative  
costs of medical care vs. cryonic suspension. The only relationship  
is that an economic argument can no longer be used against cryonic  
suspension, when all costs are considered.

This "simple common sense" was apparently not available to the  
previous poster. Unlike, physics and chemistry, etc. the social  
sciences tend to use English language terms for key technical  
concepts. This permits those unfamiliar with them to assume all of  
social science is "common sense". Unfortunately, this common sense  
differs from individual to individual and from place to place. The  
scientific concepts hold regardless of these factors.


dss




David Stodolsky    Skype: davidstodolsky

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