Here is what David Pizer said,

"We have just learned that our tax deduction status was automatically and wrongfully suspended by the IRS for not filing a form 990. In the past the IRS confirmed that we don't have to file that form. However it seems recently their equipment automatically suspended us. We are tax exempt, they have made an error and I will contact them on Monday. There is a process where the retroactively remove the organization from their auto-recovation list. That is what we are going to ask them to do although Idon't know how long it will take them to restore us. Meanwhile, I believe that people can continue to make donations and deduct them."

From Shannon Vyff in an email on this issue:

Let me explain what I heard from David. The notification of the Venturist status being on hold had been sent to an older address and not forwarded. David is looking into it and should have an answer on Monday. He is saying that it appears to be an error, since we were never notified that the tax status was on hold -and the reasons for it don't apply to our case. The reason was an automatic revocation from not receiving a 990 series form that the Ventursits had not needed to fill out for many years, so it looks like the issue will be resolved soon-within a week he thinks, he will also be writing you himself. The paperwork that said we were on hold, also says it may/or may not effect our tax deduction status--it looks like we just need to get the right paperwork in. The way the wording is, is that if we get the right form in our status is retroactively instated. I'm not sure when this started, but people were able to use donations to William O' Rights Cryonics Charity fund in '08 and '09 as a tax deduction.

Summary: There was confusion about paperwork requirements, and it should be resolved within a week.

(ETA: Shannon posts on this directly)

Around $7000 as of yesterday.

http://suozlogs.wordpress.com/

I talked with Andy at CI today, and he said that CI is not tax deductible. The Venturists have been in the past, and the notification we got saying it is on hold will retroactively instate our tax-deductible status after we get the right forms in. David Pizer is going to call to see what needs to be done on Monday, and he thinks the issue will be resolved within a week.

Andy didn't see there being a problem with CI giving money raised for an individual to Alcor, but thought the board would have to approve it.

Anyway, I want to see Kim be preserved. She has bravely come forward to her family about wanting to try cryonics, and has had some hostility. Her boyfriend of four years is supporting her, and her mother. Some of her family was upset with her saying she is an atheist, she is trying more "gentle" terms like humanist --but the funding isn't there from her family. I feel it is up to the cryonics community to help Kim, the money goes to a cryonics organization and the more people that are preserved the safer it is for all of us (more family caring about the preserved, more people with the potential to be alive that other cryonicists will look-out for). The cryonics community in general needs to discuss in what cases there should be charity, but Kim's case is clearly one of them.

I should also note that tax-exempt organizations generally cannot set up funds for particular individuals. At least, they can't do that and have donations be tax-deductible - I think they can safely administer an account.

The key question everyone was asking is whether Kim's circumstances have been verified.

What I don't get is that the "bus argument" is not used more. I knew a woman who was hit and killed by a bus, she was a family friend from when I was younger. One can die from an accident at any time and the vast majority of transhumanist minded people, I'd think, would be signed up for cryonics while they are young--just in case some thing happened to them before any techno-singularity they think will happen, happens...

I support SENS, and volunteer at LongeCity/ImmInst which gives anti-aging projects funding. One can support IEET, H+ and otherwise, while still not believing aging will be ended in their lifetime, or there will be artificial bodies they can upload into and have brain back-ups while they are still living. I personally don't feel that will be available for my youngest child, now aged 10, within her lifetime even-let alone mine, and I practice calorie restriction and generally live in as life-extending a manner as possible (sans the newer experimental meds such as TA-65--just exercise and supplements). I signed up for cryonics in my twenties, because I knew my life could end at any moment really and it seemed common sense to have a backup, not that I believe cryonics will work, but that it is better to have a slight chance to get more of what we see as "time" in our current lives.

I've seen great advances in the past decade in life extension therapies and near-term possibilities --yet, I still see it as a slow climb to where we can achieve escape velocity to actual indefinite life-spans. I feel it will take hundreds of years or more, and it is telling that Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzweil both are signed up for cryonics. There simply should be a back-up in case we don't realize within our lifetimes what we feel may be possible some day. Even if that back-up itself is no guarantee of continuation of life as we know it now.

January 21, 2010

Eliezer Yudkowsky writes (in Normal Cryonics):

The part about actually signing up may also be key - that's probably a ten-to-one or worse filter among people who "get" cryonics. (I put to Bill Faloon of the old guard that probably twice as many people had died while planning to sign up for cryonics eventually, than had actually been suspended; and he said "Way more than that.") Actually signing up is an intense filter for Conscientiousness, since it's mildly tedious (requires multiple copies of papers signed and notarized with witnesses) and there's no peer pressure.<

Comment: there’s that, but if that was all it was, it wouldn’t be harder than doing your own income taxes by hand. A lot more people manage that, than do atheists who can afford it manage to sign up for cryonics.

So what’s the problem? A major one is what I might term the “creep factor.” Even if you have no fears of being alone in the future, or being experimented upon by denizens of the future, there’s still the problem that you have to think about your own physical mortality in a very concrete way. A way which requires choices, for hours and perhaps even days.

And they aren’t comforting choices, either, such as planning your own funeral. The conventional funeral is an event where you can imagine yourself in a comfortable nice casket, surrounded by people either eulogizing you, or kicking themselves because they weren’t nicer to you while you were alive. These thoughts may comfort those contemplating suicide, but they don’t comfort cryonicists.

No, you won’t be in any slumber-chamber. Instead they’ll cut your head off and it will push up bubbles, not daisies. At the very least they’ll fill your vessels with cold dehydrating solution and you’ll end up upside down and naked at 321 F. below zero, like some shriveled up old vampire.

Will you feel any of this? No. Is it any more gruesome than the alternatives of skeletonizing in a flame, or by slow decay? No. But the average person manages to mostly avoid thinking of the alternatives, and the funeral industry helps them do it. But there’s no avoiding thinking hard about this nitty-gritty physical death stuff, when you sign up for cryonics.

There’s even some primal primate fear involved, something like the fear of snakes. Except that cryonics taps into fears about being alone and alienated in the future, along with primal fears of decapitation (monkeys hate seeing monkey parts, particularly monkey heads). My illustration of the power of these memes is Washington Irving’s short stories: out of the very many he wrote, only two are now remembered, and yet, at the same time, remarkably almost everyone knows those two. They are Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. There’s a reason for this.

The psychological factors can surprise the most dyed-in-the-wool atheists who have experience with death. I myself came to cryonics as a physician, already having spent most of a year dissecting corpses, and later seeing much real-time dying. It didn’t completely fix the problem of my own physical mortality. When I came to actually signing up for cryonics, already having been convinced of it for some time, I felt significant psychological resistance, even so. There’s a difference between what you know intellectually and what your gut tells you. Cryonics is like skydiving in that regard.

At this point, it’s worth repeating two of my favorite cryonics stories (the intellectual world is composed of stories, as somebody said, in the same way the physical world is composed of atoms).

Story #1 involves the winner of the Omni magazine essay contest of Why I Want To Be Cryonically Suspended. The prize: a free sign-up to Alcor, no money needed. The young man who won with the best essay about why he wanted to do it, was duly offered the prize he’d eloquently convinced himself, and everyone else, that he wanted. And when it came down to doing it, he couldn’t make himself do it. Interesting.

Story #2 is about Frederik Pohl, atheist S.F. writer of a lot of good tales, including one of the better cryonics stories, The Age of the Pussyfoot. Thirty years ago Pohl was approached by a cryonics organization about signing up, on the basis of his novel and known beliefs. He gave the usual counter argument about the chance not being worth the expense. The return was an offer to cryopreserve him free, for the publicity. He was taken aback, and said he’d have to think about it. Later, after much prodding, he produced what he admitted (and hadn’t realized before) was the real reason: he couldn’t get past the creep factor. Pohl is still alive as of this writing (he’s 90), but he’ll eventually die and won’t be cryopreserved, even though his intellect tells him (and has long told him) that he should.

So, in summary, I’m happy that Eliezer spent some time in Florida socializing with happy yuppies who had already made it past the barrier to signing up for cryonics. But for those out in the world who haven’t actually done that yet--- signed and notarized--- there is one more test of mettle for the Hero, which even they may not realize yet awaits them. This is a test of the power of will over emotion, and it’s not for the faint of spirit. In some ways it’s like the scene from the Book of the Dead where the dead person’s heart is weighed, except that this is where the would-be cryonicist finds that his or her courage is being weighed. It’s like doing the long tax return while signing yourself up for organ donation or medical school dissection, or the like.

I wish them luck. I wonder if anybody asked people at the conference what their own experiences had been, in getting past the tests of the underworld, or the under-MIND, to gain that strange chance to be your own Osiris.

Steve Harris, M.D. Alcor member since 1987

Hah, "Magic Click" --I see that all the time, people who don't know cryonics is real-or have not met anyone actually signed up. Left and right, every day kids and adults think it is a "cool" idea, they express interest--but they don't go through the steps to become a signed cryonicist. I'm not sure what causes one person to go through all the paperwork and another just thinks they might want to do that some day--from what I've seen, people who sign up for cryonics have had a brush with death and seem more motivated--it could come down to a person's personality and their level of planning things in life too. Thank you for your comment bshock. Some religions could take the stance that you must be signed up for cryonics, because if it works then it is your purpose to do more good for your faith. I could imagine how frustrating it would be to work at Alcor, the paperwork truly needs to be simplified-but cryonics is not yet large enough to be safely accepted, they have to cover every angle possible that could come up. CI is a lot easier to sign up with paperwork, but they don't have a higher success rate--I think that you are right-at first cryonics is fun because it seems like a way to escape death possibly, then finalizing it is acknowledging that you will die.

I'll be attending. I've been reading "Science Fiction And Philosophy" and enjoyed the section on Ethics within AI and with creating AI. I'll be bring my youngest child, age 8 who has been reading "21st Century Kids" and really thinking about AI and her own sense of self for the first time in depth. Will be a great talk, look forward to it!