No Bay Area Office

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jordansparks
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No Bay Area Office

Post by jordansparks »

I have finally abandoned my vision of having a branch office in the Bay Area. I'm getting older (47), and there just simply isn't enough time. I guess the good news is that it will allow me to focus more on my work here in Salem. By not spreading myself too thin, I think I can to a better job here. Good progress is being made every day, even if it seems slow to outsiders observers.
jordansparks
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Re: No Bay Area Office

Post by jordansparks »

Also, that office was dependent on one or two very wealthy people coming along to fund it. This does happen, but I now realize that even those kinds of people are not willing to pay the true monthly costs. They tend to be willing to pay for immediate tangible equipment such as an ambulance or a dewar. But they are unwilling to pay for a staff of 5 to 10 people on an ongoing basis. In any industry, you want professionals with at least a couple years of experience in the exact daily job that they are being asked to perform. Without the staff, the equipment is useless.
Mati_Roy
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Joined: Fri Jan 11, 2019 5:42 pm

Re: No Bay Area Office

Post by Mati_Roy »

That you say you will focus on improving preservation quality instead of increasing coverage area made me want to share the following musing.

I'm currently debating (with myself) whether I should try to improve cryonics coverage in Québec, or instead move in the city of an existing cryonics organisation and join forces (either by working directly toward improving brain preservations, or indirectly by funding it).

I think we (in Québec) have some of the necessary building blocks: interested medical personnel, wealthy cryonicists, a cryonics community, and operational capabilities. But I don't know if this is the best course of actions for any of my motivations. To protect myself, it seems better to improve preservation quality over coverage (given I'm okay with moving, most likely). To protect my tribe (family, friends, and allies), living near a cryonics facility might make it more likely that they would be okay with relocating near death (and also, some probably won't chose cryonics in either cases). To protect my civilisation, and all inhabitants of this world (at least the portion that's not into dying), it might also be better to push for quality first, as there's currently a push back from adopting a method that hasn't be perfected yet. Once we properly get from 0 to 1 technologically, globalization might unblock. But I don't know; I need to think about (and/or research) this more.

Also worth considering is that historically, a lot of cryonics organisations have closed (or merged). While the number of patients getting cryopreserved seems to increase rather exponentially (half of human patients, about 200, were preserved in the last 8 years), that trend would still just bring us to 13,000 patients worldwide in 40 years (with potentially 10 times as much members), with potentially a thousand members in Québec. Although I'd guess the ratio of heroes to members would get lower, and so I still wouldn't be confident there would be people to take over the organisation. And if I'm wrong, and cryonics interest does increase a lot, I can always come back.

Any thoughts?
DetnPx
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Location: The Netherlands

Re: No Bay Area Office

Post by DetnPx »

The success of any field in general, I think, depends mainly on the amount of minds focussed on it in parallel.

To take a situation to it's extreme: Which of these do you think aids cryonics R&D the most over the long term?

.- 200 groups of five cryonicists working full time around the world improving capabilities; or
.- 1,000 cryonicists working full time at Alcor or CI improving capabilities
jordansparks
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Re: No Bay Area Office

Post by jordansparks »

Mati_Roy, I think your projections are too optimistic. 13,000 patients in the next 40 years? Anyway, the number of patients or members doesn't really seem to correlate with quality of care. I would rather have my case be a sole good one rather than be one of 13,000 poor cases.

DetnPx, I don't quite get your point. Both of your extreme examples had the same total number of people. I don't see one clear winner between the two scenarios.
DetnPx
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2017 3:41 am
Location: The Netherlands

Re: No Bay Area Office

Post by DetnPx »

Competition boosts progress.

Hence "1,000 cryonicists working full time at Alcor or CI improving capabilities" would IMO produce results much slower than the other alternative presented. Once a field has active competition, people are forced to keep developing and making things better to retain work/funding/interest from the market.

Also, working in smaller focus-groups, targetting a specific project/improvement, is more efficient than in large groups discussing the very same topic at lunch. Larger groups dampen innovation.

Hence my advice for Mati_Roy would be to stay working with any reasonably sized group on innovative aspects around cryonics. This can be in Canada or anywhere else.
Mati_Roy
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Jan 11, 2019 5:42 pm

Re: No Bay Area Office

Post by Mati_Roy »

> Mati_Roy, I think your projections are too optimistic. 13,000 patients in the next 40 years?

I just published a post with more info on this: http://lessdead.com/how-many-humans-wil ... and-trends

> Anyway, the number of patients or members doesn't really seem to correlate with quality of care.

Still seems useful for cryonics responders to have regular practice, and a shorter feedback loop on improvement attempts. And also more money for fixed cost: research, infrastructure, etc.
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