X-Message-Number: 6112 Date: 22 Apr 1996 06:48:55 U From: "Norton, Brook" <> Subject: Improving your own odds of survival Thomas Donaldson writes, in regards to Mr Sharman's attempt to quantify the odds of survival: >And as a general point about such survival, it's quite wrong to sit and >work out probabilities: the arithmetic isn't at issue, what is at issue >is the fact that we are doing something to influence our own fate. And >that can make such simple calculations quite wrong. I've done some work to help quantify one's odds of survival. You input into a spreadsheet stuff like, odds of earthquake = 2% in 20 yr period, odds of affordable nanotechnology in 100 yrs = 5%, etc., etc. Some of the inputs like "odds of cryonics facility going bankrupt" can be affected by you before you deanimate. Mr Donaldson's concern is that, since you can affect the odds yourself, then you can't use a this type of statistical method to quantify the odds. However, there is really no problem here, if you just take your own efforts into account when you estimate the odds. Just rephrase the estimate like: "odds of cryonics facility going bankrupt (considering that I will be working to prevent bankruptcy)". Granted, there is a large margin of uncertainty in estimating the odds of various pertinent future events, but you can nevertheless create a framework (spreadsheet or other program) to correctly quantify the odds based on your own best estimates. Brook Norton Aerodynamics, McDonnell Douglas Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=6112