This is most certainly the case. It is unnatural to travel in a metal tube at 40,000 feet above the ground. However, this does make a wonderful pithy comeback to someone who says radical life extension and cryonics are “unnatural”.

I had heard about his ocean city-state concept. I also heard he had made money in the stock market during the 80′s. I think Life-boat is one of these dreamy things that are common to the SF/space community. I pay it no attention for this reason. I think the same about IEET and just about every other transhumanist/singulatarian organization as well. There’s a reason why I’m not a part of these milieus any more.

Yes, I think organizational screw-ups are the most significant existential threats we face over the next 100 years. We’ve had no nuclear war or global warming, but we’ve had Bob Nelson and the Chatsworth disaster, which was in summer of 1979 (not 1976 as mentioned previously).

How does he do it? Simple. Eric was very earnest and vey bright. He’s a quick study and he has a knack for identifying BIG IDEAS that meet some of the most fundamental needs in dissatisfied, anxious and frustrated people. He knows how to spot a dream folks are yearning to have turned into reality. Intimidated and fearful of the madness of nation-states – well, Eric has an ocean colony for you. Afarid of terminal downsides to the “Singularity,” well he has an answr for you there, too. I’ve often thought that had Eric come into cryonics earlier, before some semblance of a sound reality was extant, he would have picked that as his vehicle. I’ve seen a lot of con men and nutters in cryonics over the years, but no one with Eric’s style – until recently, when I met David Styles. The most material difference is that Eric was very, very clever and he never lied aboutthe little stuff. The only lies Eric told were the ones you discovered at the end, after the money was gone. Clever boy, Eric Klein.

I suppose I should say “clever man,” now. But somehow I just can’t bring myself to. I should also point out that as far as I know from the little I’ve seen, there is no fraud in Lifeboat, per se. I don’t see any specific promises; no bunkers with nanofiltrastion systems, no facilities to start salting away human knowkledge or other survival critical information. It seems to be doomsday a think tank and I think that’s likely legal. Like I said, very clever boy, that Eric Klein. Oh yes, one more thing, the success of people like this is also to a great extent dependent upon their remarkable ability to identify people who will be uniquely susceptible to their message. That is a very rare gift. If you can do that, you are well over 50% of the way there. Boyish sincerity and wunderkind intelligence are also plenty effective – in many situatins much more so than alpha male tactics. There were a million blue haired ladies who made Liberace and Wayne Newton rich. So, even creepy pseudo-boyishness can work. You’ve just gotta know your market, or, should I say, “marks?”– Mike Darwin

But I have not flown in decades. But I could see how you could develop a fear of flying.

Ocassionally I have a dream where I am falling or about to fall. There is some primitive, atavistic “don’t fall!” alarm system that we humans have that operates autonomously, out of conscious control. I suppose we inherited it from our tree dwelling ancestors.

Back in Klien’s seasteading days, one time Mark Voelker and I talked about him, and Voelker said that Klien must think of himself as John Galt. I responded with, “The face without pain or fear or guilt,” and we both burst out laughing at the absurdity of the idea. How do these nerdy guys pull off these scams, when they lack the usual characteristics associated with “charisma” and alpha-maleness? L. Ron Hubbard seemed to fit that profile as well, from what I’ve read about him.

I guess it shouldn’t be surprising then that businesses continue to die at a good rate such that by the 100 year mark, virtually none are left. It’s a complex undertaking interacting in fantastically sophisticated ways with the world around it. Sooner or later you are going to screw up and fold. That’s certainly the message from the for-profit sector.

In the non-profit sector, longevity is closely correlated with the ability of the institution to persuade its members that the institution is absolutely essential to their personal immortality AND to the stability and wellbeing of the entire social-political structure. This relaxes the normal market constraints on bad behavior for such institutions because if you mishandle money, molest children, or launch an Inquisition or two; some fraction of the members will always step up to the plate and cover the resulting losses. The membership has a proprietary stake in the enterprise. By contrast, if you run a hobby store, a restaurant or grocery store if you molest children, serve tainted food, or just run your business incompetently, you’re out of business. There are other venues who can serve the same need and your customers have no proprietary interest in your undertaking. All you need do to fail is to cause dissatisfaction greater than the inconvenience of going elsewhere will be if you are shuttered.

I read this while I was in London: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/loosemore20110308. I kept thinking to myself, “No, sorry, but no wild conspiracy theories are required here. All you need to know is that Eric Klein defrauded his friends and colleagues out of substantial sums of money when he was a much younger man, and was forced to make restitution. The Lifeboat Foundation operates in a way consistent with an enterprise whose function is to make a comfortable living for its operator in exchange for fantasies. It’s entertainment, sort of pay-as-you science fiction with a potential real world twist. In that respect, it isn’t much different than any of the countless science-future-apocalypse books and movies that are churned out every year. Certainly, it offers a lot more sophisticated science (some of it quite credible). As long as you don’t expect the Lifeboat Foundation to actually do anything physical or concrete, and as long as you understand that it pays Eric Klein money, well, then you understand everything. “
– Mike Darwin

Global warming is a fraud, peak oil is unlikely, and even a global WWII style conflict is unlikely in the future. What is certain is that existing institutions such as Alcor have internal issues that create problems and that con artists and flakes will involve themselves in cryonics (and other activities). We have already seen this in the form of Robert Nelson and Avi Ben Abraham. The former nearly proved fatal (no pun intended) to cryonics. Financial scandals are everywhere. Everything from Enron to the sub-prime mortgage mess. Need I say anything about the exploding debt of the U.S. government? Europe and Japan are in even worse shape than us.

I think the threat of external “existential” threats have been overhyped. But the dangers from internal problems in any organization have and are completely ignored on a regular basis. The patients who thawed out at Chatsworth were not wiped out by a global war or a nuclear meltdown. Instead, they were wiped out by an unscrupulous con-man. These are the real threats we face over the next 100 years.