Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4

lukeprog

This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.

Ask away!

Previously: round 1, round 2, round 3

From the original thread:

This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.

Ask away!

If I understand correctly, I can extract those flags, in descending order of redness:

Their cryopreservation facility does not exist (yet).
Their cryopreservation facility is not open to scrutiny.
Governance shows signs of "for profit" behaviour, or fail to demonstrate "non profit" behaviour.
Governance merely changed, while you trusted the previous one.

That also suggest signs of trustworthiness:

Their cryopreservation facility exists and is open to scrutiny.
This is a non profit with open and clean accounts.
They are researching or implementing technical improvements.

I'd like to have more such green and red flags, but this is starting to look actionable. Thank you.

One strong signal that I think some cryonics orgs implement is preferentially hiring people who have family members in storage.

4drethelin14y

In the longer run, the governance of a cryo organization should be designed to try and prevent drift. I like how Alcor requires board members to be signed up as well as to have relatives or significant others signed up, but this still doesn't work against someone who's actually unscrupulous.

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Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4

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Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4

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