X-Message-Number: 9695 Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 07:37:00 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #9683 - #9693 Hi once more! I liked Bill Dye's ideas of how the future would look. Good and interesting ideas. A survey would also be of very great value in terms of promotion of cryonics. So long as it takes no money from research, it will be valuable. The only things close to surveys on cryonics happened more than 10 years ago, and are probably outmoded. It would also give some more concrete answers to hypotheses about WHY cryonics has grown slowly. I believe that such a survey would also tell us such things as whether or not our level of research had any influence on membership growth (I should reformulate this in a more correct but more convoluted way: how much our level of research had influence on membership growth). As I've said already, I do not think that growth of cryonics is a good reason at all for supporting research. WE should support research for what it will do to increase our odds of revival. I'd even go as far as to say that even if research led to a small decrease in our membership growth it still should be supported strongly. (Clearly if that went too far, we'd have to take some kind of account of it. I doubt that will happen, but hypothetically we might have to continue our research but keep it quiet and only reveal it to selected cryonicists). There are some insights such surveys may produce which will not satisfy anyone. And naturally they are likely to be approximate, only, without decisively settling our questions in the way a physics experiment might. We should all realize these possibilities. Best wishes and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9695