The above post may make more sense considered as a response to Platt's article.
If interpreted in that way, it fails completely. It doesn't respond in any way to Pratt's argument that the cryonics industry does not have the financial resources to deliver on its promises, and that the shortfall gets larger as more people sign up.
Isparrish simply advises people to ignore this and to optimistically sign up anyways. Since Isparrish does not seem to be irrational, I have to assume he is not attempting to respond to Platt.
Edit: Whoops. Bad assumption.
I should clarify that it was not his main point about shortfalls due to signups, but the peripheral point about cryonics being optimistic that I was replying to. I disagree with his main point to a limited degree, i.e. I consider it probable that Alcor is not going to go bankrupt, though I recognize the need to be alert to the possibility.
As he said, money has shown up in the past from wealthy donors who don't want it to fail. I'm not upset at the inequity there because the donors are purchasing social status, and I don't have a problem with paying slightly more (or, if I can afford it, a lot more) to help cover someone else's expenses. (I am more open to socialistic logic than most current cryonicists.)
Within the immortalist community, cryonics is the most pessimistic possible position. Consider the following superoptimistic alternative scenarios:
Cryonics -- perfusion and vitrification at LN2 temperatures under the best conditions possible -- is by far less optimistic than any of these. Of all the possible scenarios where you end up immortal, cryonics is the least optimistic. Cryonics can work even if there is no singularity or reversal tech for thousands of years into the future. It can work under the conditions of the slowest technological growth imaginable. All it assumes is that the organization (or its descendants) can survive long enough, technology doesn't go backwards (on average), and that cryopreservation of a technically sufficient nature can predate reanimation tech.
It doesn't even require the assumption that today's best possible vitrifications are good enough. See, it's entirely plausible that it's 100 years from now when they start being good enough, and 500 years later when they figure out how to reverse them. Perhaps today's population is doomed because of this. We don't know. But the fact that we don't know what exact point is good enough is sufficient to make this a worthwhile endeavor at as early of a point as possible. It doesn't require optimism -- it simply requires deliberate, rational action. The fact is that we are late for the party. In retrospect, we should have started preserving brains hundreds of years ago. Benjamin Franklin should have gone ahead and had himself immersed in alcohol.
There's a difference between having a fear and being immobilized by it. If you have a fear that cryonics won't work -- good for you! That's a perfectly rational fear. But if that fear immobilizes you and discourages you from taking action, you've lost the game. Worse than lost, you never played.
This is something of a response to Charles Platt's recent article on Cryoptimism: Part 1 Part 2