“However, Alcor remains something of a shadowy organization that many within the cryonics community are suspicious of.”
Really? That’s a remarkable statement. Alcor has a long history of open communication with its members and the cryonics community in general. Among the ways Alcor does this:
See: http://www.alcor.org/newatalcor.html
“Mike Darwin, a former Alcor president, has written at length on both organizations at http://www.chronopause.com, and on the whole, at least based on what I've read, Alcor comes across looking less competent, less trustworthy, and less open than CI.”
Darwin is a member of Alcor, not CI. How do you explain that? Darwin thoroughly enjoys criticizing Alcor (rightly or not) but remains a member. In a related comment, ahartnell says “from what I have read both seem to provide basically the same service”.
This is a remarkable belief. Alcor uses the most advanced cryoprotectant, M22, to perfuse whole bodies and neuros. CI uses a less advanced (and cheaper) cryoprotectant but cryopr...
Darwin has also criticized CI here:
http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/04/14/cryonicists-teach-your-children-well/
And this situation isn’t hypothetical either, because when the Cemetery Board came down on the Cryonics Institute (CI) , CI, and thus the American Cryonics Society (ACS), decided to surrender control of their patients to the state. Now, it is the laws and jurists of the state of Michigan that determine the conditions under which a patient can be removed from a cryostat at CI, and be relocated elsewhere, not the CEO or the Board of either CI, or ACS. If you want to understand the practical implications of this, you can go to http://www.bhsj.org/forms/disinterment%20and%20reinterment.pdf and to http://law.onecle.com/michigan/333-health/mcl-333-2853.html and read what you find there. It isn’t pretty.
http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/02/13/on-the-need-for-prosthetic-nocioception-in-cryonics/
...I do not want to seem too harsh on Alcor here, because Alcor did have cameras, and does lock its patient dewars. The Cryonics Institute does not even lock their patient dewars – this is an issue I have raised with their management several times over the years, but to no avail
In my role as an Alcor director, I had the painstaking and unpleasant task of investigating the veracity of Johnson's book allegations to determine which of them required legitimate corrective action or litigation for defamation. Some of the allegations published in New York Daily News and wire services in 2009 promoting the book weren't even anywhere in the book (e.g. allegations that Alcor dismembered live animals). Such lies about the book itself were apparently just invented to get international media attention two days before the book's release. Some of the allegations inside the book were so outrageous that no reasonable person knowing anything about cryonics could believe them, such as Alcor kidnapping teenagers and homeless people and burying them in the desert, or engaging in drug trafficking and wild car chases. Other allegations, such as certain cryonics cases being "botched," I knew immediately were false because I had personal knowledge of the cases, or because they were repeats of false allegations Johnson made during his previous reach for fame in 2003.
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/sportsillustrated.htm
Many other allegations required investigation....
coughs er, though I'm sorry that it was said about people about whom it wasn't true, it seems a little unfair on those of us who enjoy deviant sex to include it in such a list.
Yet, as others have pointed out, CI operates as a "cemetery," and the bureaucratic mind doesn't allow for the removal of bodies in cemeteries to subject them to experimental medical procedures
I don't think that really matters: if revivification works, there will be a way around that. The important thing is getting bodies intact to that point. Subjecting them to procedures might be an interesting restriction on CI, except as far as I know, once one is cooled, there are no procedures besides topping up the tanks and every blue moon being switched from tank to tank.
I take Darwin as pointing out that CI has legal vulnerabilities to outside coercion and pressure that Alcor has apparently avoided; I haven't read his links so I don't know what, but lawsuits and activist public officials and overly broad public health laws come to mind.
I found the Thiel-Gilder debate.
Thiel's list of fields where "innovation in stuff was 'outlawed'":
I can believe that changes in the law and the legal-political climate have hampered innovation in at least some of those fields, but by "outlawed" Thiel seems to mean "a bad career choice", judging from what he says at 42:17.
Edit: Thiel does not just mean "a bad career choice"; he gives some examples of what he does mean at about 9:50 of this July 16 2012 debate with Eric Schmidt:
...I think it's because the government has outlawed technology. We're not allowed to develop new drugs with the FDA charging $1.3 billion per new drug. You're not allowed to fly supersonic jets, because they're too noisy. You're not allowed to build nuclear power plants, say nothing of fusion, or thorium, or any of these other new technologies that might really work. So, I think we've basically outlawed everything having to do with the world of stuff, and the only thing you're allowed to do is in the world of bits. And that's why we've had a
CharlesR: First of all, let me say that I have sufficient funding for whole body, yet I have chosen the neuro option. I find it difficult to fathom why anyone would want to bring along a broken-down old body which is going to have to be replaced anyway. We can store ten neuro patients for the cost of one whole body patient (which means that we are probably underpricing WBs currently). A neuro arrangement with Alcor currently costs $80,000. Although WB prices may have to rise before long, I've heard no suggestion that neuro rates need to rise anytime soon.
However, assuming someone is determined to take along their complete body, no matter how old and infirm, to answer your question: You CURRENTLY need a MINIMUM of $200,000. At that rate, we are currently drawing between 3% and 4% of the amount going into the Patient Care Trust for indefinite care and eventual revival. That may be sustainable, but is more than our desired conservative estimates. We aim to draw no more than 2% per year. Currently, I'm driving to reduce our costs, especially for liquid nitrogen. Early next year, we should be able to revise our contract and bring these down significantly.
Even so, you should plan to ha...
Yes, unquestionably some of the "information" that constitutes your person hood is in your gut, your glands, your immune system and your peripheral nervous system. However, your position would seem to imply that these things, and things much more central to your identity, such as your brain structure, are like unchanging books or artifacts on a museum shelf. They aren't. In fact, by the time you are 80, you will have lost roughly a third of your brain mass and your brain will be a tattered "remnant" of what it once was. You're now losing roughly 80K neurons a day. The practical consequences of this will be a massive transformation of your personality and of your functional capabilities. If that change were to be imposed on you all at once, you would not only be horrified, you likely wouldn't even recognize the resulting individual as the same person. More likely, you'd consider that individual to be a cruel and sadistic parody of yourself.
The point is that your "identity" is a dynamic thing which is badly degraded over time by aging. This is important information to keep in mind, because it provides context for what I'm going to say now. I have known ...
There's no mystery about why I have comparatively few criticisms posted about CI. My reasons for this are as follows:
1) Ci is what it is. What you see is pretty much what you get, and that this is so is evident from the discussion here. The perception of CI as a "mom and pop" outfit is but one example I could cite from this discussion. Ci does not project itself as using a medically-based model of cryonics. It's case histories are ghastly - and anyone who doesn't take the time to read them, or who can't see what the deficiencies are, well, you can't (as I've learned the hard way) fix clueless.
2) I am not a CI member. The reason I am not a CI member can be divined from my written criticisms and by looking over point #1, above. If I were a Ci member, I have no doubt that I would have posted reams of criticisms. Note that I said "posted," because, in fact, I have written reams of criticisms, suggestions, detailed technical advice and countless letters and personal communications on specific deficiencies at CI. I have also generated Power Point presentations and written many pages of material on how CI could improve its capabilities. To their credit, CI has at least...
The major problems at Alcor are truly abysmal management, for which the Alcor Board of Directors is to blame, and lack of a professional culture and staff to administer the front end of cryopreservation. The situation is almost identical to one that would exist if the board of directors of a hospital tried to deliver medical services without physicians and nurses, but rather hired "the best they could find" to do these professionals' jobs. Thus, there might be a veterinarian doing cardiac and neurosurgery, a chemist operating the heart lung machine, and so on. The absence of credentials, per se, is not the core issue here, because it is perfectly possible for such individuals to do these tasks and to do them "reasonably" well.
Because cryonics did not become a mainstream medical, industrial, or business activity, it necessarily is in the realm of very small "visionary enterprises," like the early days of flight or radio, or perhaps in the realm of the dedicated (professional) amateurs. A good example of the latter is amateur astronomy, where the people involved are fantastic - mostly level headed, focused, responsible and astonishingly capable. Amateur...
Mike, let's be fair about this. Veterinary surgeons for thoracic surgery (after loss of Jerry Leaf) and chemists for running perfusion machines were also used during your tenure managing biomedical affairs at Alcor two decades ago. You trained and utilized lay people to do all kinds procedures that would ordinarily be done by medical or paramedical professionals, including establishing airways, mechanical circulation, and I.V. administration of fluids and medications. Manuals provided to lay students even included directions for doing femoral cutdown surgery.
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/1990manual.html
The good cases that you were able to do with lay help (and being only a dialysis technician by credential yourself) are the stuff of cryonics legend. That was how cryonics was done back then. With the resources that were available then, and the need to provide cryonics response over vast geographic areas, using trained lay cryonicists was the most effective way to deliver cryonics care for many years. Some history of this is discussed here
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/professionals.html
In the 2000s Alcor began to supplement trained lay cryonicist teams by deploying a s...
http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/08/09/fucked/ and sequels have cost you more than one LWer's opinion of your judgment because it matched exactly the sort of doomsaying which has cost contrarians literally billions of dollars over the past 4 years in bad bets against the dollar and US stocks (eg. Peter Thiel's Clarium fund alone, or Dr. Doom for that matter). It's not a surprise if they acknowledge your facts but question your judgment, which is the same sentiment Max is expressing.
General advice: if you can afford it, sign up with Alcor. If you can't, sign up with CI.
If you want more information, I'd recommend the Alcor FAQs.
I should provide some context for my comments on Alcor's previous track record on creating endowments: we had just received a $7M bequest, had placed $3.5M into the Patient Care Trust Fund, and the Board had decided to put the other $3.5M into an Endowment and withdraw only 2% per annum, or about $70,000 per year, for Alcor's operational needs. Some members were feeling quite euphoric and were proposing that we spend some significant amount of the principal on various worthy projects, including reduced dues for said members and increased spending on certain pet projects. It seemed advisable to inject a note of sobriety into the discussion and to somewhat deflate the expanding expectations. While helpful, this bequest did not free us from the constraints of fiscal responsibility, and explaining why the Board was being so parsimonious with this windfall seemed appropriate at the time.
Given this context, I wouldn't interpret these comments as "disturbing".
the Board had decided to put the other $3.5M into an Endowment and withdraw only 2% per annum, or about $70,000 per year, for Alcor's operational needs.
Have they stuck to this plan, or has the piggy bank been smashed open?
Alcor has stuck to this plan. The board takes it very seriously. Not only have we not taken out more than 2% per year, the board have frequently pushed to add more to the Endowment Fund even where it could legitimately be put into operations.
the board have frequently pushed to add more to the Endowment Fund even where it could legitimately be put into operations.
By 'pushed to add' do you mean took actions that actually resulted in adding or that they made a noble effort?
So with all of that said, besides cost, what factors would lead or have led you to pick one organization over the other?
The cost difference isn't just large in terms of the actual cryopreservation fee. Alcor charges member $800 per year, while CI charges $120. That made the difference for me; I'm currently filling out the paperwork for CI.
People can vary in how much time, effort, knowledge and intelligence they put into the assessment.
If Yudkowsky is signed up with C. I., then that is slight evidence that C. I. is superior to Alcor. This is so not because he is famous, but because he is more intelligent, rational, and informed than I am. Of course, if I actually studied cryonics in-depth, then my new knowledge would screen-off most of the evidential weight of the opinions of these "famous" people.
As far as I can tell, Eliezer picked C.I. to minimize the cost of signaling his views about cryonics, not because he thought it was better than Alcor. See this comment.
See the comment below: My primary reason for signing up for cryonics was because I got sick of the awkwardness, in important conversations, of trying to explain why cryonics was a good idea but I wasn't signed up for cryonics.
Consider that it might actually be evidence for a different conclusion: Eliezer signed up for cryonics some years ago, when he had little income, bravely foregoing well-paid employment in favor of pursuing his core goals. (I can relate to that!) I would very much like to talk to E.Y. about whether it's time to reconsider his past decision based on current information and current finances. I'm just an email or a phone call away, Eli...
Consider that it might actually be evidence for a different conclusion
I'd express it this way: by conservation of evidence, Eliezer signing up for CI is evidence for CI and against Alcor. Within the set of reasons/scenarios which lead to him signing up for CI, the observation about when Eliezer signed up is evidence for the 'economizing' explanation in which his signing up is not evidence for CI over Alcor.
(This may sound contradictory, but the important thing is that A as a set can be shrinking in total probability even as individual members of A become more likely.
An example of this would be the hope function: if you're searching drawers one at a time for a letter, each time you search a drawer, you expect more strongly that the next drawer will hold the letter, even as you also expect more strongly that the letter is not in your desk at all.)
I realize I'm probably going to lose some points with you by stating this. But assuming the limit of perfect technology and the absolute correctness of the pattern theory of identity - if you can't accept these hypotheses, please just say so, instead of answering based on a different hypothesis - is there any definitive rejection of my admittedly naive notion that if you can literally read out every single atomic position, then "Chop off the head with a guillotine and drop it into a bucket of liquid nitrogen" should, yes, just work? I admit that my actual belief and assumption is that current cryonics efforts are massive overkill by people who don't realize that liquid nitrogen is not a secure encryption method for brains.
liquid nitrogen is not a secure encryption method for brains.
It doesn't have to be a secure encryption method to be a lossy compression method.
I'm thinking Cryonics Institute at the moment but I haven't done too much research yet. The main factors are that CI will be much closer to my next area of residence and that from what I have read both seem to provide basically the same service (except I think with CI you might need to get Suspended Animation to move your body).
EDIT: It looks like Alcor uses a better cryoprotectant and that many CI clients are damaged before being transferred to their facilities (I'm unsure if this is the case for those who contract with Suspended Animation).
EDIT 2: Aft...
To quote Peter Lynch, "I want to buy a company any fool can run, because eventually one will". Making a company fool-proof is essential when the main purpose of the company is to survive several hundred years (maybe even thousands), an exceedingly rare occurrence. None of the current cryo shops seem anywhere close to having the necessary structure in place.
Every time I posted about cryonics on my journal, I had to put in an addendum to say "WARNING: COMMENTS NOT ABOUT THE SPECIFIC SUBJECT OF THIS POST WILL BE DELETED", otherwise I ended up having all the usual arguments about cryonics in every post I made about it. This post is not here to have all those arguments again, or even the specific argument about whether a good enough firm to sign up with exists. This post is for someone who has decided to sign up to discuss which of two EXISTING firms to sign up with.
A while back I decided it was time to stop cryocrastinating, and discovered that CI do not offer any collection services to where I live and seemed to be largely "you're on your own if you're outside the US" while Alcor had... some kind of international process that I couldn't really clarify despite asking.
Eventually I got sick of Alcor seeming to only check their emails once per week and abandoned the whole quest. So I got pushed away from CI because they refused to help me in Australia, and pushed away from the other org because they consistent...
AIUI, since I'm in the UK, the only part of my cryopreservation that my US-based provider would handle is final cooldown and storage; the rest would be done by Cryonics UK in either instance. I think that means there's currently no downside in going with the cheaper provider.
Old thread, but here goes... does it matter if CI clients are more "messed up" on average than Alcor clients currently? If we believe in constant scientific progress, isn't it just a matter of Alcor clients being revived in the mid 2100's vs. CI clients being revived in the mid 2200's???
Having just started researching my own cryonic future, any significant updates as to this 2012 Alcor vs. CI thread...? It scared me off $29K CI back onto $220K Alcor...
As to full body, might my full body DNA be used to recreate my specific young adult body -- I am thinking I want full body with head detached for quick infusion... Might my aged original body have monetary value in 2200 that I can sell-trade for whatever...?
I have chose the Cryonics Institute for several reasons. It is not only the price which makes a huge difference to me because I can potentially save my entire family (5 people for less then the cost of 1 person at Alcor) but there is other reasons as well. While I might agree that in some circumstances Alcor can do a better job at profusion they often do not and certainly to me they do not justify the costs. Alcor has huge overhead compared to CI the number one expense being personnel. It only takes 2 people at CI to do what many more take for much more in...
I signed up with Bay Area Cryonics Society in 1977, and changed to Alcor in 1985, along with my husband, Thomas Donaldson, a mathematician and writer, who is now a neuropreservation patient with Alcor, as of 2006. We changed because of the dynamism and research brought to Alcor by Mike Darwin and Jerry Leaf, both of whom I first met in 1979. I switched to CI about ten years ago after moving back to Australia.
A big reason for moving back to Australia was largely because as a result of the lawsuits engaged in by Alcor, the Dora Kent case and Donaldson...
As I mentioned elsewhere, my biggest concern is the continuous operation of a cryoshop over the potential centuries or even millennia until the revival is attempted, as nearly no entities have ever survived that long. I have been unsuccessful in my search for an Alcor executive explicitly responsible for existential risk analysis and mitigation.
By existential risk to the company I mean an event that would result in the company failing to the degree that the stored patients are discarded, even though the outside world merrily hums along, and not an event t...
Such an acknowledgement, though appreciated, is frankly disturbing, considering that members depend utterly on these organizations remaining operational and solvent for decades, perhaps even centuries, after they are deanimated.
Decades? You are being ridiculous. If cryonics works it will be many centuries as an absolute minimum. And no organization in the entire history had unbroken record like that. Even the Catholic Church had breaks from time to time.
I searched but did not find any discussion comparing the merits of the two major cryonics providers in the US, so I figured it might be productive to start such a discussion myself by posing the question to the community: which provider would you choose, all things being equal: Alcor or the Cryonics Institute?
From my research, Alcor comes across as the flasher, higher-end option, while CI seems more like a Mom-and-Pop operation, having only two full-time employees. Alcor also costs substantially more, with its neurosuspension option alone running ~$80k, compared with CI's whole-body preservation cost of ~$30k. While Alcor has received far more publicity than CI, much of it has been negative. The Ted Williams fiasco is probably the most prominent example, although the accuser in that case seems anything but trustworthy. However, Alcor remains something of a shadowy organization that many within the cryonics community are suspicious of. Mike Darwin, a former Alcor president, has written at length on both organizations at http://www.chronopause.com, and on the whole, at least based on what I've read, Alcor comes across looking less competent, less trustworthy, and less open than CI.
One issue in particular is funding. Even though Alcor costs much more, it has many more expenses, and Darwin and others have questioned the long term financial stability of the organization. Ralph Merkle, an Alcor board member and elder statesman of cryonics who has made significant contributions to other fields like nanotechnology, a field he practically invented, and encryption, with Merkle's Puzzles, has essentially admitted(1) that Alcor hasn't managed its money very well:
"Some Alcor members have wondered why rich Alcor members have not donated more money to Alcor. The major reason is that rich Alcor members are rich because they know how to manage money, and they know that Alcor traditionally has managed money poorly. Why give any significant amount of money to an organization that has no fiscal discipline? It will just spend it, and put itself right back into the same financial hole it’s already in.
As a case in point, consider Alcor’s efforts over the year to create an “endowment fund” to stabilize its operating budget. These efforts have always ended with Alcor spending the money on various useful activities. These range from research projects to subsidizing our existing members — raising dues and minimums is a painful thing to do, and the Board is always reluctant to do this even when the financial data is clear. While each such project is individually worthy and has merit, collectively the result has been to thwart the effort to create a lasting endowment and leave Alcor in a financially weak position."
Such an acknowledgement, though appreciated, is frankly disturbing, considering that members depend utterly on these organizations remaining operational and solvent for decades, perhaps even centuries, after they are deanimated.
Meanwhile, CI carries on merrily, well under the radar, seemingly without any drama or intrigue. And Ben Best seems to have very good credentials in the cryonics community, and Eliezer, one of the most prominent public advocates of cryonics, is signed up with them. Yet the tiny size of the operation still fills me with unease concerning its prospects for long-term survivability.
So with all of that said, besides cost, what factors would lead or have led you to pick one organization over the other?
1: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/CryopreservationFundingAndInflation.html