X-Message-Number: 32363
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:56:03 -0500
From:
Subject: Re: CI growth rate decreasing?
Ben Best wrote:
> There was a growth
> spurt in the 1997-2001 period which
> is probably entirely attributable
> to the fact that CI gained a website
> and people started finding our
> organization through the internet.
...
> Selecting average growth from the
> 1998-2004 period as a predictive base
> is arbitrary, as compared to
> 2001-2007 or 1990-1996.
David Stodolsky wrote:
> My analysis showed that this 'spurt', that is, 23% yearly growth,
> continued thru 2004.
...
> The selection was based upon a statistical test, which rejected the
> hypothesis that growth rates were the same before and after 1998. It
> was later noted that the website went online in that year and that
> this could explain the change.
...
> Using the 1998-2004 rate of 23%/year):
>
> 163 suspendees predicted by 2010.1.1
> 85 suspendees actual by 2010.1.1
> (Ten patients received from the American Cryonics Society in 2004
> are not included. Thus 58 suspendees on 2005.1.1 and 85 suspendees
> on 2010.1.1)
http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=32353
______New_______New
___Patients___Members
1990____0_______07
1991____3_______08
1992____6_______08
1993____0_______07
1994____3_______10
1995____2_______13
1996____5_______05
1997____2_______05
1998____6_______19
1999____2_______41
2000____5_______42
2001____4_______62
2002____5_______63
2003____5_______76
2004____8+10____63
2005____3______100
2006____5_______76
2007____9_______71
2008____6_______61
2009____4_______62
The number of new CI Members in
2001, 2002, and 2004 look similar
enough to me to justifying calling
the 1997-2001 period the "growth spurt"
period -- leaving 2003 as an outlier.
New Members in 2008 and 2009 also
match these figures. Even if your
conclusion of a 23% growth rate
in the 1998-2004 period were a
justified basis for prognostication
of new Member growth, there was
no similar growth rate for new
Patients during the 1998-2004
period -- which does not justify
imposing the growth rate of new
Members onto the projected growth
rate of new patients. In my experience,
the majority of new cryonics patients
at the Cryonics Institute have been
people who have either been signed-up
"post-mortem", or who signed-up within
a year before their deanimation.
Also, why do you insist on
using the term "suspendees" rather
than patients? Even if you do not believe
that they are patients, or that it is not
scientific to call them patients, "suspension"
is (obsolete) non-scientific cryonics jargon.
"Cryopreserved persons", or even "cryonically
preserved persons" would be more scientific
terminology.
Ben Best wrote:
> Membership growth has been roughly
> constant since 2001, with a spurt
> in 2005, which I have attributed
> to a New York Times article (we
> had a huge spurt of growth in the
> weeks of the time of that article.
David Stodolsky wrote:
> This is a fine hypothesis, but without systematic data collection
> making possible a correlation between publicity and growth, it can
> hardly be considered anything more than a post-hoc attempt to
> explain events.
I believe that my observation was systematic
enough to have merit. When there is a growth
spurt of new Members within a span of weeks
and those Members non-systematically mention
how they learned of cryonics, that is evidence
justifying the hypothesis.
David Stodolsky wrote:
> Thus, using the data from 1998 forward gives us the best estimate of
> what growth should be in the Internet Age.
...
> I see no reason that the effect of the website would stop in 2001,
> unless there is a fixed pool of potential sign ups. If there is,
> then it supports the atheist millionaire hypothesis. However,
> drawing a conclusion after examination of the data is not considered
> to be a valid method of hypothesis testing.
Prior to the mid-1990s the percentage of
the population with internet access was very
small. Between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s
the percentage of the population using the
internet went from being a small minority
to a majority in the developed countries.
The growth rate of internet users was
exponential during that period, but could
not continue to be exponential once a
majority of people were already on the internet.
> So, if we combine the results for both membership growth and
> suspendee growth, we can see decreases feeding thru the system. We
> would expect suspendee growth to lag membership growth, since in
> most cases people become members some time before they become
> suspendees. Therefore, the data is consistent with a decreasing
> growth rate at CI. The ALCOR data is problematic, since it has
> proceeded more in spurts (and even a decrease) and therefore can't
> be modeled with these simple curves, or probably at all, given the
> limitations of the data. However, I expect the same factors that
> influence CI growth to effect ALCOR growth.
>
> There is nothing new about these conclusions. There has been talk of
> 'stagnation' for some time and the recent 'teens and 20s' meeting
> was a recognition that there has been a drop in interest.
I think that the word "stagnation" is unnecessarily
negative. The roughly linear growth of Alcor and the
Cryonics Institute is disappointing compared to hopes, but
not "stagnation". I think that comparing Alcor growth
to Cryonics Institute growth is very relevant if we
are concerned with discussing the attractiveness of
the cryonics idea in society and expected growth
of cryonics organizations in general.
Looking at the Alcor data I think you could
use the same sort of analysis about the
Alcor exponential growth in the 1986-1992 period:
http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/membershipstats.html
Drexler's ENGINES OF CREATION was published in
1986. It would not be unreasonable to think
that the advent of the "Drexler/nanotechnology age"
was the explanation for that exponential
period of growth (the Dora Kent case in the
late 1980s also added to the growth, apparently).
On the basis of the dawn of the
"Drexler/nanotechnology age" exponential
growth, Alcor should have had over a thousand
Members not long after the middle of the 1990s.
We are still in the "Drexler/nanotechnology age".
-- Ben Best
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