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Community

Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2021 7:45 pm
by jordansparks
Over the years, I've purchased some land to expand my software company. In the process, I've ended up with seven rental houses, so I've naturally toyed with the idea of building a cryonics community. At one point, I even had plans drawn up for an RV park on part of the property. But here's the problem: Renting houses or RV pads must be done as part of a well-run business, and that requirement does not match up well at all with the goal of building a cryonics community. A given cryonicist applicant would need a down payment, be able to pass a credit check, commit to a lease, and even potentially be evicted for failure to pay rent. If I want to make exceptions for cryonicists, how would I decide who to make exceptions for, and how far would the normal policies be stretched? Is claiming to be a cryonicist good enough to get a free house? For how long? This sort of thing can easily end badly. It's also very unlikely that the timing could work out. Should a certain number of spots be kept open in case a cryonicist comes along? That seems expensive. Let's also not forget that some of these cryonicists may be near death. So now, we're really talking about also needing a nursing home. Running a nursing home is far beyond my capability unless I dedicate 100% of my energy to that job alone.

It's clear that each cryonicist is seeking very specific living arrangements suited to them. The variety of needs is extensive, including various sizes of apartments, different qualities of homes, roommate situations, RV pads, and nursing homes. One community cannot possibly meet all these different needs. Each renter is unique. They need to go out into the housing market and find a good match.

Communities based on shared interests do not really seem to exist. There are retirement communities, college communities, etc., but those have broad entry requirements, pull from a huge pool, and are large operations. I suppose a cult could be an example of of a successful community. But cryonics is not a cult. There is no dogma or charismatic leader to blindly follow. The glue holding a cult together must be very strong. Cryonicists, by contrast tend to argue and disagree, just like other normal Americans. The only reason cult communities like the Amish are growing is because their birth rate is higher than the rate of those fleeing the cult.

But let's assume a scenario where I build an RV park with 20 pads, and then successfully fill it with cryonicists who pay their bills and don't cause me grief. Now we have a community. This might allow a couple of the members to obtain a higher quality cryopreservation. But, unfortunately, I don't think it helps Oregon Cryonics at all. Lay people would not be allowed to volunteer at Oregon Cryonics. They would also not have enough skills to be hired. I need a bigger pool of applicants to pick from when hiring, and I must be able to reject many applicants in order to get a single quality employee. It's very unlikely that the pool of renters would contain a good employee match. So any such community would be solely for the benefit of the community itself and would not benefit Oregon Cryonics. This makes it much harder to justify the extraordinary effort required to create and run the community.

Re: Community

Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 8:28 pm
by Mati_Roy
I'm glad you shared this -- that makes sense.

At this point, I guess it's better for interested cryonicists to self-organize and rent a house near OregonCryo.

Re: Community

Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 8:42 pm
by Mati_Roy
By the way, I'd like to know if you have any job openings at some point (or business ideas!); I'm especially interested in operation / management roles. Here's my résumé: https://matiroy.com/resume.html

Re: Community

Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2022 7:08 am
by dennis
I know it's an old post that I'm responding to but I have some comments here:

-The community has to be evolve, and I think 20 is way too high a number.

- I would say even 2 or 3 is a pretty good start. This means when new people join in and if they are dysfunctional in some sense one can weed them out. If there are logistics that one discovers that will not work out, one can reverse the whole undertaking.

- For many people I think geographically tied down jobs are a big deal. Some like me have been relatively lucky I have been able to for work remotely for the past two years, but that is more of a rarity. So you are probably looking people who are somewhat retired.
I think approximately 1in 50 cryonicists would be perfectly reasonably dealble people (based on the cryonicists that I know,). This means that in the whole of US we are looking at a figure of at least 15 people.

- living in isolation, is just not good, regardless of whether one is a cryonicst or not. Both for one's physical and mental well-being. Many people living in urban areas ( which I think defines the stereotypical cryonicst ) live in isolation while being surrounded by multitudes of people that they're unfamiliar/ unacquainted with. The community can include a few libertarian types, given that the number of cryonicsts are way too few. Of course here again one has to very picky. A large number of libertarian types are just anti-authoritarian, they do not cooperate with others in any useful manner.