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lsparrish comments on Suspended Animation Inc. accused of incompetence - Less Wrong Discussion

38 Post author: CronoDAS 18 November 2010 12:20AM

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Comment author: lsparrish 18 November 2010 05:38:13AM -1 points [-]

Assuming there's something to what she says, it would be interesting to consider why this is happening. Why is competence so hard to come by in the cryonics world? Is it because cryonics is a small isolated community that tends to operate more by group loyalty rather than meritocracy? Are there other factors of the small scale, such as a relatively small hiring pool? Does belief in cryonics tend to act as a negative filter towards responsible people, or towards responsible thinking?

Comment author: jsalvatier 18 November 2010 04:04:54PM 5 points [-]

Part of it may be that it filters for people predisposed to think they know better than others, since they are already bucking the trend. This might lead them to rely less on established practice than they should.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 November 2010 06:04:12AM *  3 points [-]

I think the first thing to consider is incentives. The cryonics industry is for-profit, meaning that it is in the best interest of cryonics providers to attract more patients. This also means that they have incentives to keep their costs down wherever possible. One way to do this is, as Melody suggests, is to make it look like you know what you're doing--whether you actually know what you're doing is irrelevant. Hence, if cryonics providers think they can continue to appear competent, they have no incentive to actually become competent by performing research and hiring trained personnel, as doing so would only raise costs.

Comment author: lsparrish 18 November 2010 05:56:25PM *  6 points [-]

The cryonics industry is for-profit

Um, SA is nominally for-profit. EUCRIO might be as well. CI and Alcor aren't.

But that's irrelevant, as keeping costs down is obviously a priority regardless of the nature of the institution. I'm not sure the appearance of competence is cheaper in the real world though -- Melody accuses them of being inefficient with their resources and underutilizing pre-existing technologies.

Hence, if cryonics providers think they can continue to appear competent, they have no incentive to actually become competent by performing research and hiring trained personnel, as doing so would only raise costs.

Cryonics is run largely by cryonicists. There is a non-monetary incentive to actually be competent. It's just (apparently) not working well enough.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 November 2010 06:11:20PM 3 points [-]

I'm not sure the appearance of competence is cheaper in the real world though

You may be correct in terms of equipment and research, but not in terms of hiring competent staff. It might be that Meoldy's assessment of the situation is closer to the truth:

When I tried to convince my manager that the equipment SA needed to perform these procedures already existed, I was met with a tremendous amount of resistance. I wanted to believe that person was simply ignorant of vascular cannulations and perfusion and the related equipment, but it was impossible to believe that, for very long. It soon became quite clear to me that he did not want to use existing equipment because the "research" we were doing was the construction of HIS designs. Not only were his designs vastly inferior to existing equipment, but they were exponentially more expensive than existing equipment, due to the man-hours involved. He was easily making six figures, and he was paying several people, very generously, to assist him with his "R&D" projects, none of which would have made sense to anyone familiar with the medical procedures SA was trying to deliver. (He was also engaging in adolescent, manipulative behaviors, such as asking his employees to spy on one another, and coercing them into allowing him to use their email addresses, to support his own projects and further his political agendas.)

What are your thoughts on her conclusions?

There is a non-monetary incentive to actually be competent.

I agree only to a certain extent--I wouldn't be surprised if a large number of cryonicists were just trying to make some money. From Melody's blog:

At first, I was unaware of the amount of money involved, so when I was told SA couldn't buy certain equipment, or hire qualified personnel, because such things were "too expensive," I believed those lies. Later, I found out Suspended Animation was receiving over a million dollars a year, from Life Extension Foundation (LEF) / Saul Kent and Bill Faloon. Others at Suspended Animation agreed with me, that the many of the projects were a ridiculous waste of time and money, but at least two of them encouraged me to "play along," so we could all keep collecting our very generous salaries. It's hard to blame them, for wanting that. We could come and go, as we pleased, or sit at our desks playing on the Internet all day, and no one would complain...at least not for so long as we didn't object to the mind-bendingly ridiculous design and fabrication projects, going on in the workshop.

Comment author: advancedatheist 07 December 2010 02:02:18AM 3 points [-]

Actually cryonics resembles progressive talk radio in most American markets. Those stations can't compete with profitable conservative talk radio stations, so they need private donations to stay on the air.

Cryonics also resembles Austrian economics, which requires subsidies from American businessmen like the Koch brothers to stay in existence because otherwise its professors can't find regular academic jobs and get their books published. (I call these professors "kept Austrians," analogous to "kept women.") Even then Austrian economists often have to give their books away, like Jehovah's Wtinesses or something, because nobody wants to buy them. By contrast, the non-Austrian economists who publish those Freakonomics books seem to meet a genuine market demand.

Comment author: Khoth 18 November 2010 05:28:01PM 2 points [-]

Competence is pretty hard to come by in any industry. There's no reason to expect cryonics to be different, especially when you can't really tell from the outside which companies are competent until it becomes time to revive people.

Comment author: lsparrish 19 November 2010 04:45:50PM 2 points [-]

It seems to me there should be some less direct way to measure competence of personnel besides the patient being revived with intact memories. I believe this kind of feedback mechanism was the original goal of case reports. Perhaps having everyone wear video glasses and audio recorders would be ideal. The more detail of what actually goes on is available for review (not necessarily to the public for patient privacy reasons, but perhaps to independent experts) the less likely mistakes will be repeated.

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