LESSWRONG
LW

All of mkmk's Comments + Replies

Convincing my dad to sign up for Alcor: Advice?
mkmk00

maybe he would consider the one of the less expensive cryonics organizations. I heard the Cryonics Institue will cryo preserve people for 28,000$. This is somewhat more palitable for many people.

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Alcor vs. Cryonics Institute
mkmk00

I was at CI's AGM when Aschwin and Chana during their talk took the time to trash talk CI at its own conference and I was upset despite maxes assertion otherwise. Fortunately for the de wolfs, the audio at the meeting was substandard and for those of us who heard it there was no chance to challenge these absurd statements. No where was there any attempt to quantify or verify alleged damage. To the best of my knowledge the de wolf's have not been allowed to autopsy and remove brain tissue from CI or Alcor patients to do a scientific comparison. There was al... (read more)

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3benbest
Last October Aschwin de Wolf replied to misinterpretations of his presentation at the 2011 CI AGM with the following statement which he authorized me to reproduce at that time, and which I will reproduce again here. -- Ben Best ** Aschwin's comments below * It has come to our attention that our recent presentation has caused some controversy on the CI members mailing list. As far as we can tell, a lot of the criticism is aimed at how other people (including Alcor Officials) have interpreted our presentation. In our presentation there is no comparison between Alcor and CI at all. As a matter of fact, we deliberately avoided framing the issue like this. Our presentation just summarized the practical implications of our research for cryonics. One of the most robust findings in our studies, and scientific papers of others researchers going back to the 1960s, is that cerebral ischemia produces perfusion impairment in the brain in a time- and temperature dependent manner. In cryonics such perfusion impairment translates itself into ice formation. The real difference is not between Alcor and CI but between people who do not receive rapid stabilization and cooling and those who do. In ourpresentation we outlined a number of things CI members can do to reduce warm and cold ischemia, including relocation and ensuring that there will be rapid cooling after pronouncement of legal death. We did not use the phrase "2/3 of CI members" in our slides but we did point out that the majority of CI members experience prolonged periods of warm and cold ischemia - this can be easily verified by checking the case reports on the CI website. Such ischemic delays produce perfusion impairment and ice formation. Most CI members can do something about the probability of this happening to them, so this can hardly be construed as an endorsement of Alcor. As a matter of fact, speaking for myself, I prefer a model where a cryonics organization leaves more flexibility to its members as to whether a
Alcor vs. Cryonics Institute
mkmk00

Robert Ettinger had a superior cryosuspension because he didn't rely on long distance remote standby from SA or elsewhere. He planned and had his ducks in a row so to speak. Many Alcor and SA contracted patients have rotted for many hours waiting for the very expensive far away teams. Some of these things were due to to matters out of anyone on the remote standby team's control but distance cannot be removed as a factor. Robert had set up his own local standby with family, friends etc and the results speak for them selves.

Also the only reason CI ever had t... (read more)

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Alcor vs. Cryonics Institute
mkmk20

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... (read more)

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