Cryonics Conference, October 25-27, 2013 in Laughlin Nevada
Alcor members Max More and Aubrey de Grey will be among the speakers at the Venturist’s Cryonics FAQ Conference in Laughlin, NV, October 25-27. Details here.
Alcor Northern California Group – Meeting and Potluck Meal
Please join the Alcor Northern California Group for a meeting and potluck meal
Date: October 20th – 3:00 pm
Hosted by: Gail Haspert
Where: 745 Lola Lane – Mountain View, CA 94040
For more information: 650-967-2569 or 650-796-0962
Tim Shavers steps down as director
Tim Shavers has stepped down from the Alcor board of directors, citing a major move, a second baby, and other major life changes. Tim was elected to the Board of Directors on April 25, 2009. We will miss the considerable time and energy he devoted to his role, and the steady, calm professionalism that he brought to it.
Alcor’s newest board member: Catherine Baldwin
Alcor welcomes Catherine Baldwin to its board of directors. See:
New discounts for Alcor members of 25 and 30 years standing
Not long ago, Alcor president Max More proposed that those who had been Alcor members for 20 years or longer should receive a 30% discount on their membership dues. This is a reward for their loyalty and a strong sign than members will not face ever-escalating dues.
Adding to this, at the September 7, 2013 board meeting, Max proposed that members of 25 years standing should receive a 40% discount, and members of 30 years standing should receive a 50% discount. The board unanimously approved the motion. Here is the motion that was passed:
Starting January 1, 2014, the discount on membership dues given to members of 25 years standing will increase from 30% to 40%, and the discount on membership dues given to members of 30 years standing will increase from 30% to 50%.
Hold the presses! Membership dues reduced 5%!
You’ll have to excuse the newspaper-style headline. The popular story is that Alcor dues just keep going up. (That’s not surprising, since the price of almost everything goes up due to inflation. A dollar today is worth less than a dollar of any previous year. That has been true for many decades.)
However, Alcor members paying the regular rate of dues (that is, not receiving discounts as family members, students, or long-term members) will — from January 1, 2014 — receive a 5% discount. This proposal by Alcor president Max More was supported by the Alcor board at the September 7 board meeting.
5% is not a large amount in absolute terms. But: It is the first time that dues have gone DOWN. Other initiatives presented at the meeting (to be covered in detail in Cryonics magazine) may enable further reductions. We will continue to do our best to reduce the cost of cryonics. Remembers — you will receive a credit on your dues if you get someone else to join and credit you for doing so.
Here is the wording of the motion that passed:
Starting January 1, 2014, dues for members paying the full rate of $620 will be reduced by 5% (rounded down to $30). If funds are received specifically for the purpose of reducing dues (such as through the proposed Membership Dues Reduction Fund), the 5% reduction will be folded into the new reductions rather than added on to them. That is, if the Membership Dues Reduction Fund reduces the top rate by 30%, the reduction will be 30% and not 5% + 30%.
2013 Alcor Annual Board Meeting and Strategic Meeting
The 2013 Alcor Annual Meeting will be held on Saturday, September 7th at 10:00 AM (PDT) at the Alcor facility (7895 East Acoma Drive in Scottsdale, AZ). The elections of directors and officers will be conducted at this meeting and a wide range of topic will be discussed publicly both before and after a lunch break. Members and the public are encouraged to attend this meeting.
The 2013 Strategic Meeting is also scheduled the same weekend. This is a closed meeting but a summary of the topics discussed at the 2013 Strategic Meeting will be posted to our blog and newsletter.
40 Scholarships Available to Teens & Twenties 5 2014
By Cairn Erfreuliche Idun
The Fifth Annual Young Cryonicists Gathering
Teens & Twenties 5 2014:
Getting to Know You –
You Getting to Know Each Other
Fri-Sun; April 4-6, 2014 Deerfield Beach FL
Host: Life Extension Foundation
Greetings to Young Cryonicists,
Please follow the link to the full Teens & Twenties packet. You will find your
scholarship application and schedule.
All attention will be focused on:
our getting to know you and
you getting to know each other.
PLUS: an update on the latest emergency response technologies
& revival strategies.
Who is Eligible?
Fully signed up young cryonicists from all cryonics organizations in their late
teens through age thirty (17-30) as of Apri l 10, 2014 – may apply to attend.
Younger Cryonicists With Parent (s)
Twelve through sixteen year olds may attend when accompanied by
their parent(s) or guardian.
Parents/guardians of attendees aged 17-19 are also encouraged to accompany
their child. All attending parents will be put in touch with each other should
they choose to have their own “get together” during the “young cryonicists”
gathering.
Program
Some individuals are social butterflies. This is not so for everyone. And we
want everyone to meet everyone . Therefore, I have designed a
diverse range of “getting to know you” activities. If you would enjoy
participating in these various getting acquainted activities, then
this is for you.
SCHOLARSHIPS:
Life Extension Foundation, through a generous education grant, is offering 40
scholarships that pay for ALL of the following:
– U.S. airfare to/from South Florida (or up to $1000 for origin outside the U.S.)
– Hotel accommodations for Friday and Saturday nights
– Meals and beverages on Friday night, all day Saturday, and Sunday breakfast
and lunch
– Registration fee – $350 – also covered
Please click on this website for a full packet with details & application forms.
Forever,
Cairn Erfreuliche Idun
Founder/Director: T2
PS Come Early. Stay Late.
Some attendees to T2 enjoy spending extra time in Florida – especially since their
flight is already paid for via their scholarship.
This is at their own expense for additional lodging and food.
I look forward to getting to know you.
Resuscitation and Reintegration of Cryonics Patients Symposium in Portland Oregon
On Sunday May 12, 2013, the Institute for Evidence Based Cryonics will organize a symposium about the resuscitation and reintegration of cryonics patients in Portland, Oregon. This is the first public meeting exclusively concerned with the repair, resuscitation, and reintegration of cryonics patients. Alcor President Max More will be one of the speakers at the event.
The symposium is being held at The Cleaners at Ace Hotel (The Cleaners at Ace Hotel
403 SW 10TH AVE, 97205) in downtown Portland, Oregon from 10:00 am to 07:00 pm.
Admission is free. Registration for the event is possible at the event Facebook page.
On Saturday evening, the day prior to the symposium, Aubrey de Grey and Max More will be speaking about rejuvenation biotechnologies and cryonics at the Paragon Restaurant & Bar in Portland, Oregon.
Admission for this event is free and registration for this event is possible on the event Facebook page, too.
The current line-up of speakers is as follows (the exact schedule will be announced soon):
BEN BEST – EFFECTS OF TEMPERATURE ON PRESERVATION AND RESTORATION OF CRYONICS PATIENTS
Macromolecular temperature is a quantification of atomic-level molecular motion. The ability to maintain and reconstruct cryonics patients could be critically dependent on low temperature atomic/molecular motion and on the ability to operate nanomachines at cryogenic temperatures. Possible problems and solutions will be discussed.
Bio: Ben Best was President of the Cryonics Society of Canada for about a decade, after which he was President of the Cryonics Institute for nearly a decade. He is currently Director of Research Oversight for the Life Extension Foundation. The cryonics section of his website is one of the best sources of information about the science behind cryonics available on the internet ( www.benbest.com/cryonics/
CHANA DE WOLF – RECONSTRUCTIVE CONNECTOMICS
Complete preservation of the “connectome” should be sufficient for meaningful resuscitation attempts of cryonics patients but it may not be necessary. As long as the original connectome can be inferred from what is preserved, damage associated with cerebral ischemia or suboptimal cryonics technologies do not necessarily exclude future resuscitation. In this presentation I will present a general framework for reconstructive connectomics and explore theoretical and experimental research directions for reconstructing damaged and altered connectomes.
Bio: Chana de Wolf lives in Portland, Oregon, where she works as a business manager and biomedical researcher. She holds a B.S. in Experimental Psychology (2001), an M.S. in Cognition and Neuroscience (2003), and has extensive management and laboratory experience. She has several years of experience working as a research assistant in a variety of laboratory environments, and has taught college-level courses in neuroscience lab methods and biology. She is a Director and researcher for Advanced Neural Biosciences. Chana joined as a member of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in 2007 where she also worked as a Research Associate at Alcor to help build a sustainable, multi-faceted cryonics research program
RANDAL KOENE – BRAIN EMULATION AND NEUROPROSTHETICS: A SYSTEM OF FUNCTIONS TO BE SUSTAINED
Being, now or following revival from cryopreservation, ultimately depends on one’s ability to experience and to do so in the manner that is characteristic of one’s individual mind. Recently, it has become possible to address this problem in a concrete and systematic manner, largely due to rapid advances in computational neuroscience and data acquisition, both structurally (the popular field of “connectomics”) and functionally (brain activity mapping). The process of personal experience – like any process – involves some mechanisms operating at a given time under the influence of an environment state, a state that can include sensory input and functional “memory” established as a result of prior conditions. An emulation or prosthesis is then the attempt to replace a system of processing with an equivalent set of mechanisms that carry out the same processing within established success criteria. The engineering approach to understanding a system sufficiently that it can be emulated or replaced by prostheses is known as system identification. I will describe how system identification may be feasibly carried out for an individual human brain, and how constraints and requirements can be learned through projects with iterative improvements. I will present the projects that are underway to develop neuroscience tools with which successful system identification may be accomplished.
Bio: Dr. Randal A. Koene is CEO and Founder of the not-for-profit science foundation Carboncopies.org as well as the neural interfaces company NeuraLink Co. Dr. Koene is Science Director of the 2045 Initiative and a scientific board member in several neurotechnology companies and organizations.
MAX MORE – MAXIMIZING REVIVAL PROBABILITY: PRESERVATION, RECORDING, INTERPOLATION, AND RECONSTRUCTION
The proper ultimate goal of cryonics is reversible suspended animation. While we should continually strive for that goal, we do not know if or when it will be fully achieved. Until then, we must grapple with the probability that cryopreservation will in itself not fully preserve personal identity critical information. A revived individual may be missing pieces of his or her life, or some of the existing pieces may be fuzzier than they were before clinical death. It may be feasible to fill in the gaps and to sharpen the focus by feeding into the repair and revival process biographical information with a high degree of resolution. That information may also serve to validate the accuracy of a reconstructed connectome. Up to the present, cryonics organizations have offered minimal storage of personal-identity relevant information. In this talk, I will consider ways in which members of cryonics organizations could use the emerging tools and technologies associated with the “Quantified Self” concept to capture and record detailed biographical information, and how cryonics organizations could assist with this and convey the resulting data to a future capable of repairing and resuscitating cryonics patients.
Bio: Max More is the President & Chief Executive Officer of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. More has a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from St. Anne’s College, Oxford University (1984-87). He was awarded a Dean’s Fellowship in Philosophy in 1987 by the University of Southern California. He studied and taught philosophy at USC with an emphasis on philosophy of mind, ethics, and personal identity, completing his Ph.D. in 1995, with a dissertation that examined issues including the nature of death, and what it is about each individual that continues despite great change over time.
KEEGAN MACINTOSH – REINTEGRATION OF CRYONICS PATIENTS: LEGAL AND LOGISTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Given the host of complicated problems to be solved before resuscitation of cryonics patients is possible, it is easy to leave planning for their reintegration for another day. However, this assumes that there is nothing particularly important that can be done about reintegration prior to patient cryopreservation, which might be impossible, or at least far more difficult afterward. It also underestimates the impact that fear of dis-integration has on individuals’ decisions on whether to sign up for cryonics, which might be alleviated if we had more concrete plans for reintegration, with presently actionable components. In this talk, Keegan Macintosh will survey several aspects of cryonics patient reintegration, both legal and logistical, that can be tangibly worked on today.
Bio: Keegan Macintosh received his J.D. from the University of British Columbia in 2012, and is Executive Director of the Lifespan Society of British Columbia, a non-profit organization established to educate the public on life extension strategies and protect access to potentially life-saving technologies. Keegan is a board member of the Institute for Evidence Based Cryonics, as well as the Cryonics Society of Canada.
ASCHWIN DE WOLF – CRYONICS WITHOUT REPAIR
Cryonics aims to stabilize critically ill patients at low temperatures in anticipation of future medical treatment. While the concept of cell repair is often associated with the practice of cryonics, it is not an intrinsic element of the procedure. Advanced cryonics technologies will permit reversible cryopreservation of the patient. If human suspended animation would be achieved cryonics would solely involve future treatment of the patient’s disease and its underlying pathologies. In this talk I will discuss why reversible cryopreservation is important and which technical obstacles need to be overcome to make it a reality.
Bio: Aschwin is a Director and researcher for Advanced Neural Biosciences, the editor of Cryonics magazine, serves as a consultant for a number of cryonics organizations, and has published technical articles on various cryonics topics.
Bring in a new member and we will credit your membership dues
Membership growth has slowed to a crawl. This is unfortunate because Alcor has reached a point where we could enjoy considerable economies of scale: We could manage many more members with minimal or no increase in staffing costs. That would enable us to reduce membership dues while building up our resources. A modest acceleration in membership growth would, I believe, move us into a virtuous circle where growth enables reductions in dues which further spurs membership growth.
The most effective way to bring in new members has been through direct encouragement by existing members. Many of us realize this, but may not make it a priority to nudge our friends a little more to sign up and potentially save their lives.
How can we spur more members to gently persuade those they care about to move ahead with making cryonics arrangements? Perhaps some financial incentive will help. At the April 6, 2013 board meeting, I proposed that anyone who is primarily responsible for getting a new member to sign up will, at their request, be given a one-year waiver of membership dues. The board approved this proposal.
For an existing member to receive the dues waiver, they must (a) be credited by the person who has signed up; (b) ask for the waiver; (c) not be otherwise profiting from the signup; (d) wait until the new member has completed all essential paperwork and has paid at least six months of dues. If the member signs up two new members, they are eligible for a two-year waiver of dues. If the new member is a student or family member, the existing member is eligible for a waiver of six months of dues.
Who do you know who could do with some encouraging to sign up? Please, give it some thought, then help yourself and help the organization by helping to stimulate membership growth.
Max More
President