X-Message-Number: 11122
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 14:00:47 -0800
From: Kennita Watson <>
Subject: Re Cryonicist seeking utopia
References: <>

Thomas Nord wrote:
> Do You know any town with fresh air and water in US within an hour from a
> large hospital and town, and no disaster risks? Or even better also a warm
> but not hot place as never have ice and snow? Or also near a Cryonics
> perfusion facility? 

My first reaction:  laughter.  My second:  "Does the phrase 
'overconstrained problem' mean anything to you?".  Then I decided 
that he can't be faulted for trying, and that a serious response 
would at least have _some_ chance of progress.  So, I thought a bit
about the inquiry, and how in order to come up witb an answer or 
group of answers I'd need to ask some questions of my own.  I'd  
like to leave guns out of this analysis _altogether_ -- *please* 
have that discussion on some other thread.

My first question:  do you consider acceptability of a location
to be a yes/no question or a rating (say, from 0 to 100)?  

If the answer is yes/no, then the criteria would seem to be fresh 
air, fresh water, in US, near a large hospital, near a large town, 
zero risk of disaster, warm, not hot, zero ice, zero snow, and near
a cryonics perfusion facility.  To determine whether a given place
meets these criteria requires answers to the following questions
(approximately):

1) What qualifies as "fresh" air?
2) What qualifies as "fresh" water?
3) What qualifies as a "large" hospital?
4) What qualifies as "near" the large hospital?
5) What qualifies as a "large" town?
6) What qualifies as "near" the large town?
7) What qualifies as a disaster?
8) What qualifies as "warm"?
9) What qualifies as "not hot"?
10) What qualifies as "near" a cryonics perfusion facility?

plus, assuming that "zero" means "within some acceptable threshold
of zero", 

11) What is an acceptable risk of a disaster (separate for
    each type of disaster or grouped?)?
12) What is acceptable amount of ice and/or snow?

If, instead, the answer is to be in the form of a rating, the 
variables at issue would seem to be freshness of air, freshness of 
water, country, proximity to a large hospital, proximity to a large
town, risk of disaster, temperature, precipitation, and proximity to
a cryonics perfusion facility.

In that case, I would ask what weight is to be given to each 
variable in producing the rating (i.e., how important each of
the criteria is to you).  The rest of the questions would 
correspond to the ones above, but would involve much more
detail.  For example, question 1 might include:  how many parts
per million or billion of particular pollutants, and/or their
aggregate, gives a rating of 1, 2, etc.  The additional country
question might give a value for each country (for example, US 8, 
Canada 7, Luxembourg 6, Yemen 3...).  Question 4 might give a
high value to towns of 100,000 or more, but might deduct for
3,000,000 or more, and towns of 1-50 might get 0 or 1.  0-1 miles
might be needed to qualify for a 10 in nearness to a large
hospital, but 0-5 miles might qualify for a 10 in nearness to
a large town.  The rating for size of a hospital may be based on
number of beds, average number of on-call physicians, investment
in capital equipment, etc.  Less than $100,000/year property damage,
and less than 1 death/year, from <set of disasters> may qualify
for a 10, $100,000 - $250,000 and < 3 deaths/year may qualify for
a 9, etc.  And so on for each variable.

Coming up with such a set of criteria and/or variables would
allow people to come up with a meaningful response to the 
question of where to live that was not entirely subjective.
My "near" is not your "near", and my "large" is not your "large",
but in general I'd expect that my "5 km" is approximately the 
same as your "5 km", and my "population 63,000" is approximately
the same as your "population 63,000".

I certainly don't plan to take the time and energy to do such
an analysis, because I'm perfectly happy where I am.  But 
apparently Thomas Nord isn't perfectly happy where _he_ is, and
I found it an interesting exercise to contemplate how he might
go about finding someplace better when all he has to go on are
reports, and how those who might want to help him could best 
avoid a "How about this?" "No, not good enough." "Well how about
_this_?" "Not good enough." "This?" "No." "This?" "No." ....
merry-go-round.  Such things often come about because people 
think different things are important, and to different degrees.
Therefore, I think it would be useful in that regard for Thomas
to elucidate, for himself if not for the rest of Cryonet, what
is important to him as described by the above questions, and
how important.

Ak -- I've been at this over an hour!  Off to the rest of my day!

Kennita
-- 
Kennita Watson

http://members.home.net/kwatson1/

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