X-Message-Number: 7198
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 14:22:41 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: Trust

Bob Ettinger:

> "10-20 words" Charles? Come on. The above is considerably more than that, and
> dollars to doughnuts that won't satisfy you either. 

On the contrary, I am very satisfied. Thank you! I admit it took a bit 
more than 20 words, but was still not a long message.

> And I can't resist adding that all this talk of CEOs and their qualifications
> is tiresome and silly. While we have large ambitions, we are small
> organizations, and even use of a term like "CEO" is ridiculous.

I agree. In my original message I suggested that in such small
organizations, technical qualifications may be more important than
management experience anyway. I only objected to Steve's use of the term,
which I felt was slightly misleading. 

Behind all of these quibbles is one serious point: there is ALWAYS a
temptation in cryonics to want to make ourselves look better than we
are--better funded, with more members, better qualified staff and better
facilities, offering a better chance of resuscitation. This is a very
natural yearning because we have such big dreams and such dreadfully
limited resources. Cryonics ought to be one of the biggest things in the 
world, and it's one of the smallest. That hurts.

Unfortunately the temptation to present ourselves in the best possible 
light (which I have been guilty of myself in the past) is ultimately 
dangerous for two reasons: 

1. It is a form of positive feedback, which means it is inherently
destabilizing rather than self-centering. In other words, we say things
that make ourselves feel good, and then because we feel good, we are less
skeptical about ourselves. This in turn results in less rigorous self
discipline, monitoring, and fault-finding. I would love to give examples
of this, but if I do, I will offend at least a dozen people and start a
flame war. All I can say is, I have seen it happen in ALL cryonics
organizations to some degree. The most flagrant, terrible case (which I
can mention because it was so long ago) was in the Cryonics Society of
California in the 1970s, when everyone felt so good (because Bob Nelson
was such a positive guy with such big dreams that he made seem so real),
they accepted patients without proper funding. They figured that growth in
cryonics would somehow take care of it. Well, they were wrong, the money
ran out, Nelson couldn't cope when his dreams fell apart, and the
subsequent disaster discredited cryonics for years. Now, this was an
EXTREME case. All I'm concerned with here is that we should not allow
ourselves to move even a millimeter toward the self-congratulatory,
self-aggrandizing mindset. We should be our own worst critics, especially
here in a free-discussion forum. 

2. If we make ourselves look better than we are, sooner or later someone 
will see the gap between hype and reality, and this will destroy trust. 
Since cryonics (like insurance and banking) depends TOTALLY on public 
trust, we should emphasize the bad along with the good. The cryonics 
sign-up documents at Alcor and CryoCare certainly do this (I haven't seen 
the CI documents, so I can't comment on them, but I'm sure they contain 
their share of dire warnings and caveats).

Yes, I am super-sensitive on these issues. But I think it's the only way. 
And if someone finds hype or exaggeration in anything that *I* write, here
or in CryoCare literature, I will be the first to thank them for setting
*me* straight, even though I will find the process extremely embarrassing
and uncomfortable. 

--Charles Platt
CryoCare


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