X-Message-Number: 30312
Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 16:57:12 -0800 (PST)
From: david pizer <>
Subject: HONEST AND OPEN DISCUSSIONS CONTINUE
WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES FACING US RIGHT
NOW.
Mark Plus and I work together and he is a good friend.
I like Mark's and Kennita's points in a recent
exchange I observed on one of the cryonics forums.
Kennita had said: I mostly worry that the
organizations will self-destruct before the technology
is developed. Also, every body that isn't put in LN2
now is a person lost forever, so if the organizations
aren't growing, more people are dying.
That was in response to what Mark had earlier said:
Except that cryonics has no market, therefore it
can't currently run as a "business." Hell, you can't
even give cryonic suspensions away. (I've heard that
the guy who won the "Omni Immortality Contest" in the
early 1990's doesn't want the prize now, for
example.)
Mark had been saying that he thought the slow
developments in technology were a threat to cryonics
and Kennita had mentioned that she was more worried
about the stability of the cryoncists suspension
organization lasting until reanimation time. Although
I agree that both are serious potential problems, we
do see advancements in technology crawling along, and
we do see cryonics suspension organizations failing,
all but two of all the cryonics companies ever started
up have either failed or have seemed to have gone
dormant. Therefore some cryonaughts were unfrozen and
allowed to rot away.
But the thing that struck me most about Kennita's
post, is that here she is a regular suspension member
and yet she seems to have a better handle on the most
serious problems facing Alcor then the board members
who run the organization, who have not joined with all
of us to discuss these issues. If they had to stand
for re-election by us they would not be ignoring us.
IS THERE DANGER OF PATIENTS SUSPENSIONS FAILING?
There already have been lots of failures in the
cryonics movement. Alcor, at only 900 members, is
still a tiny tiny organization. As Kenita points out,
we need growth. Some people think that growth is ok
for the living suspension members but we need
something different for protection of the patients. I
think most of us would disagree. We think the best
protection for the patients is a very large and very
strong *alive* membership group that can rally to help
the patients that become threatened as we did in 1988
during the Dora Kent Crisis. If we would have just
had the resources of 9 board members then, things
would have been much different. Although the
directors did do some heroic things to save Dora, so
did the larger group of the members, who put up money
for legal defense, did lots of work, gathered info
that Alcor could use to win the battles, and brought
their friends and many non-cryoncists to our side.
I think we need the growth and all that it brings if
Alcor is to survive. And I think that is a pressing
problem right that we can solve right now. We have
the resources now to increase growth (We only need to
make the right changes at Alcor and growth will flow
just like opening a faucet correctly). We can make
big change in growth right now, but we, as an
exclusive group, don't have the resources to bring on
workable nanotechnology. That doesn't mean that
working on growth is mutually exclusive to working on
advancing technology. I am only trying to say that
Alcor and its members CAN solve the growth problem
this afternoon. The board need only announce that
they are giving the vote to the membership (along with
a plan to build in lots of protections) and things in
the area of growth and all the other problems will
start to change quickly. I have explained why in my
last post on Cryonet.
Once we reach a larger size, say 5,000 to 20,000 then
we can start to seriously influence the rate of
advancement in technology especially the type that we
want advanced.
BACK TO MARK'S ORIGINAL THOUGHT: For now, I think
there is a huge market for cryonics. Not to get
people to sign up to be frozen but for what the goal
of cryonics is - to try to avoid death. No one, not
even us Alcor members, want to get into those tanks.
We have a saying in cryonics Dying and getting frozen
is the second worst thing that can happen to a
cryoncist.
What cryonics should NOT be marketed as is freezing
people. We need to quit selling it like that. My
biggest hero in cryonics is Robert Ettinger. He did
not call his book (that started this movement)
something like The Joy of Getting Frozen, or How
I can't wait to get into the tub of liquid nitrogen.
He called it The Prospect of Immortality. That's
what we cryonicists want. We don't want to be frozen
- we do want to not have to be dead forever!
WHAT DOES ALCOR NEED?
Alcor needs not just business people as part of their
leadership, but *successful* business people, and
successful marketing people, on the board. But I
believe the present directors are not going to elect
them. Successful business people are hard to control
Some board members want to keep electing people they
think will agree with themselves, keep strife down,
don't rock the little boat, keep that kind of bunker
mentality. The membership, on the other hand, at
least from the many, many, many private emails that I
have received lately (please keep them coming, they
help prop me back up after a few board members bawl me
out), want growth, a feeling of control, a bold plan
and direction, some heroes who are willing to takes
some risks to get the little life raft we are all in
moving faster. Make that life raft bigger. Make that
life raft safer. Change that life raft.
IS THERE A MARKET FOR CRYONICS? I think that at least
half the people on the face of the earth have taken
steps to try to obtain the same goals that we
cryoncists have taken - we joined Alcor and CI, they
joined religions - we all want to survive. There is a
market for the prospect for immortality. Quit
focusing on freezing and start to focus on a plan to
try to avoid death. Earlier in my efforts I thought
that the best way to tap into this market was to
compete with churches and call them to task for their
guarantees that joining with them, following their
instructions, WILL lead to immortality.
The greater group of people in the cryonics movement
convinced me that this would not work. (actually I
only wanted to discuss the matter at first but some
people misunderstood that). But I do think that there
are a lot of prospects that have partial hope for
religion but are also agnostic about it. That should
be our target for members to our group maybe more than
atheists. A lot of atheists have given up wanting to
survive this life. Agnostics, on the other hand, want
to survive this life and they are not sure god or
Heaven exist. There are hundreds of millions of
these people. I'll take that market for starters. I
like the idea of marketing a plan for agnostics of
leading a moral life, stand firm for what you believe
in, always try to do what is right, never deny the
existence of a higher power with 100% certainty, and
sign up for cryonics.
IS CHANGE DANGEROUS?
Mathew Sullivan had said on one of the forums :
Henry Ford was a great man, but great men can and do
get set in their ways when they become old. As the
market began to shift in a new direction he was a
little too attached to his model T and he wanted to
keep making it.
I *am not* a great man, but I *am* getting older. I
think Mathew's point is well taken, we should not be
afraid of change. If he was implying that the board,
like Henry, is unable to change, and they love Alcor
to be as the original Model-T-Alcor, then I agree with
him. Change brings risks, but sometimes lack of
change brings greater risks. I feel there are risks
in changing how directors are elected at Alcor AND
there are greater risks if we do not.
Then there is the story of how I changed my views. I
was a director of Alcor. The members came to the
board with complaints, concerns and suggestions. The
board thought their (the boards') position was right
and the members were wrong. A stalemate was created.
No one could break it. So finally the unhappy members
felt forced to try to start their own company. They
put those ideas into that company. About 100 of them
left Alcor over a four period. That's about 25 per
year. A lot of people talk about those times, they
call them the time of the Cryowars. Those 25 people
per year left because they felt they had no say in the
way Alcor was being run.
Today members still feel the same way. Twenty five
members per year are now leaving Alcor.
WHAT ARE THE PERCEPTIONS?
Melody Maxim said she doesn't know me but is willing
to give me the benefit of the doubt. I don't know her
either but I think she has a cool name, and I like
people who are open-minded. I have seen some of her
posts and she writes a strong argument and I want her
on my side - I certainly don t want her against me!!!!
She mentions that she has heard about a meeting. I
want to clear that up. I will tell as much about this
matter as is respectful to those others who were
involved.
There was a meeting between myself and several very
good and long time friends. Charles Platt was not a
party to any meetings. In fact our group had several
meetings. In fact fact, I have been called on for
suggestions from more then one very wealthy group.
This group wanted to invest a large amount of money
into cryonics and wanted to ask my advice about what
might be the best way to get the most bang for their
buck(sssssssssssss). Although they liked the idea of
investing money for research through Alcor, their
accountants and attorneys had reviewed Alcor's
published, and perhaps some other info on Alcor's,
financial statements, and other info about Alcor. The
attorneys and accounts were advising them NOT to
invest/donate any large sums of money to Alcor based
on what they (rightfully), perceived as poor
management results. At first I wanted to argue for
Alcor's behalf but when I became aware of what their
overall view of the big picture was, there was little
I could do to build an honest and valid argument that
Alcor has a good record of handling money. This is
the first time that I began to realize just how bad
Alcor has been doing. Since then Alcor, in my
opinion, has gotten worse. The best I could do is try
to put them in touch with people, who are not Alcor,
to see if that would be a good place to invest
research money.
There have been several meetings where people have
asked me what it would take to start a cryonics
company. I have not been interested in starting a
cryonics company so far. I don't think they were
ready either. Neither I, nor they, have given up on
Alcor yet. I am willing to take risks to try to help
turn Alcor around.
I was once asked by a person, I don't think he wanted
to start a cryonics company but he was just curious,
what it would take to start a company that could
compete with Alcor and my guess was $10,000,000.
As far as SA and CI combining to make things better, I
don't know if that arrangement *is* better. What I
meant to say (if I did say it wrong), is that Alcor
once had the *reputation* for having the most
technical suspensions and now some people think that a
suspension of combining the talents of SA and CI are
giving Alcor competition for the reputation. I have
never been to SA (or CI).
Although I do not *know* if CI is better, the same, or
worse then Alcor, I feel I know that CI's system of
letting CI members choose their leaders *seems* it is
allowing CI to start to take members from Alcor. The
indicators are all over the place (see my post of
Sunday Jan 13th lsewhere).
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