But that doesn’t mean that I think you’re *wrong*.

I can only speak for myself, of course, and I am extremely limited in my capacity to effect change right now…but that capacity will not be limited indefinitely, and I can promise at least that I can (and will) endeavor to ensure that your words aren’t wasted, that their force won’t dissolve into feckless triviality here on these pages.

Thanks, Mike.

I’ll drop you a line privately to catch up, if you like. I’m way behind on personal correspondence, but it’s coming up to near the top on my ‘to do’ list. Aside from the warm personal relationship we enjoyed, I’m glad to hear from you and to see you post here, because you are one of the people I am really proud of, and who I feel are really important to cryonics, because of what you proved is possible. These days, the clinical aspects of cryonics are largely administered by contract medical personnel – physicians, surgeons and technicians who are not cryonicists and who have more (rather than less) established their own culture and their own “procedures.” When I try to tell people both in and out of cryonics about the phenomenal experiences I had with medical professionals in the context of cryonics service providers, I get the strong impression they think I’m fantasizing, romanticizing the past, our outright lying. They can’t imagine such people taking serious risks, sleeping on the floor, staying on call for days at a time with no breaks, and above, all, treating the patients with the same care, respect and concern AFTER they were pronounced as they would have any conventional medical patient, or for that matter, a member of their own family.

Carlotta, I’m sad to say I really didn’t appreciate you, and the others like you, whom I worked with at the time. It took seeing hired medical personnel treat cryonics patients like cadavers, or slabs of meat, walk out in the middle of standbys because they needed to get back to their day job, or just generally approach cryonics as if it were, well, that’s the problem: I can’t even say as if it were a job in a veterinary clinic, because I think most people who work those jobs have a great measure of care and concern for the animals they treat and handle.

I think you’ll find these interesting:

http://cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/Cryonics_Failure_Analysis_Part_1_v3.0.pdf
http://cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/Cryonics_Failure_Analysis_Part_2v5.2.pdf
http://cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/Cryonics_Failure_Analysis_Part_3v5.4.pdf

In particular, I think you’ll find the section of Part 2, starting with slide 147, a real eye opener.

Writing here has been something of an eerie experience for me. I sometimes sit here expecting that at any minute a voice from nowhere will intone, “You are the last one, please turn the lights off when you leave!” There is virtually no one around, or none who choose to speak up, from the time periods I so often draw on here. Even people who were around when cryonics was very different now talk about what was accomplished then as if it was an impossible fluke that can’t be repeated until, perhaps, decades hence, or as something that has literally passed into legend (see Brian Wowk’s remarks): http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/bk6/alcor_vs_cryonics_institute/

So, again, I’m glad to hear from you and I hope you stick around here. — Mike Darwin

I’ve been a bit under the weather here lately, but have been feeling better the last couple of days – so I might start getting some work done around here soon! I miss you both too! But then, I confess I have a daily reminder to think of you, and to thank you for, in the form of Charlie. She is my constant companion and she loves the Sonoran desert and, when I’m working out of doors, she mischievously and surreptitiously carts off my tools and hides them under one of several trees in order to stop my work and make me pay attention to her.

Clue arrived here for a few days, day before yesterday, and that means aside from the much needed pleasure of his company, I blessedly have access to a truck for a few days – today was “go to town and get a replacement hot water heater” for the one that died several months ago. It turned out I was able to parlay a portable swamp cooler and some ceiling fans from the dustbin into enough cash for the water heater; which is good, because Clue doesn’t share my relative indifference to the lack of piped hot water!

I’m reluctant to leave here, even briefly, before I re-skin and repaint the 35 ft. mobile home I salvaged awhile back for use as work shop. And as I’ve been sick as a dog, I expect that work will go slowly. You are, of course, both welcome to come visit any time you like, if you can stand this place or afford the gas to get here and back!

This will sound horrible, but I miss the dustbin terribly. This is the place where the truckloads of salvaged materiel from there are really put to use, and not a working day goes by that I don’t kick myself for not having removed even more from the waste stream than I normally do. EVERYTHING is useful up here. It’s not like in California, where I can say, “Oh well, I need this or that and in a a few days I’ll just pick it out of one of the dustbins.” The people at the shops are much nicer here and will often help you load things, or even bring separated boxes of items out for you, as opposed to menacing you, or calling the police. But then, Flagstaff is a very different place – much more relaxed and tolerant. Of course, the downsides are they are not as profligately wasteful, I can only go every 3 weeks or so not every day, and I have no truck. I did score a wonderful find in the form of a nearly new (and spotless) “Sleep Number” bed, which is heaven! I was very skeptical of any kind of “air mattress” but it is beautifully engineered, a godsend for my back, and I can’t recommend them highly enough. Of course mine was “free.”

Take care and know that you are often in my thoughts. I hope the little ones are doing well and that life continues to reward you with unexpected treasures. – Mike

Some of us are lucky enough to have two families; the one we are born with and the one we choose. I guess for the really lucky amongst us, both are a good match. However, I think that’s not as common as popular culture would have us believe. It’s certainly going to be hard in cases where people consciously decide to abandon life; if for no other reason than that it becomes increasing hard to remain engaged with fading memories and dust.

As to generational transmission of cryonics in cryonicists families? There are two ways to look at it: statistically and individually. Statistically, I can tell you with a pretty high degree of certainty it is likely to be dismal, if for no other reason than that cryonicists don’t tend to reproduce. Individually, a great deal will depend upon the circumstances; no surprise there, huh? But to be serious, the transmission of any belief system, even the transmission of something as basic as good dental and health practices, requires a lot of structured effort – it requires a system of acculturation that is integrated into daily life. Otherwise, it is hit or miss and mostly miss. Even then, it works only about 45-50% of the time.

Another hard, hard core cryonicist and I share a very similar background as Roman Catholics. We had almost the same home life and religious indoctrination and we have broadly similar intellects (he’s much smarter and more disciplined than I). While both of us are atheist cryonicists, we are still very much Roman Catholics. That may seem oxymoronic, but it is nevertheless, quite true. When the Jesuits said “give us a child until he is seven years of age, and then do with him what you will” they weren’t joking. Beyond saying that this so, I cannot explain it here further. Suffice it to say that whilst the church did not succeed in indoctrinating either of us with Christianity, it did succeed, in significant measure, in indoctrinating us with catholicism (small “c”) in much the same way secular Jews are forever Jewish.

Inscribed in your hand on the inside of the front of the card was the following, dated 04/1980: “Dear Michael, I know you didn’t want any celebration of the big 2-5. Too bad. Now you have one, and you can read it when Greg and Jerry work for you, or when California falls into the sea, or when Soma is a $10 billion multinational corporation, or whatever your criteria for success are. Love, Always, Anna

Well, none of those things ever happened, or ever will, but then they weren’t my criteria for success. Certainly, staying alive long enough to read these words back to you, and to thank you sincerely for writing them, were. So, I am indeed a very successful man.

Again, my sincere thanks for your condolences. –Mike