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


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