X-Message-Number: 9783
From: 
Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 00:01:43 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Ettinger on my resignation

In Message #9734, Bob Ettinger wrote concerning me:

> I remember speaking to him when he was a student at Wayne State
> U. in Detroit in the sixties. I wasn't able to offer him much
> except encouragement, but he was a self-starter and didn't even
> need my encouragement.

Actually, from 1959-1963 I was a student at the University of
Michigan (Hail to the victors valiant!), not Wayne. Then I moved
to California to begin graduate studies at UC Berkeley. On my own
I became very interested in trying to achieve physical
immortality. I was thus quite excited to read an article
"Intimations of Immortality" by Fred Pohl in the September 1964
Playboy. (Yes mom, I only buy it for the articles!) The article
had a section on a forthcoming book by one Robert Ettinger who
proposed freezing the newly dead for later revival. I was quite
excited by this, and hounded the local bookstores until they got
me a copy of his book. At the end of 1964 I flew back to Michigan
and arranged a meeting with Ettinger. I soon became the Berkeley
Coordinator of the Life Extension Society, and have been active
in cryonics ever since.

Interestingly, Saul Kent was also stimulated by the same Fred
Pohl article as I was. I think Saul and I are tied for second
place (after Bob) for longest active involvement in cryonics.

In Message #9735, Bob Ettinger wrote:

> Art has done brilliantly in helping to manage TT investments.
> However, he notes that his investment model (for a certain
> group of stocks), while forecasting a mean return of 105%/year,
> had a standard deviation of 97%. This means that there was
> roughly a 5% chance of losing your ENTIRE INVESTMENT in
> one year (two standard deviations from the mean). With average
> luck, you would be wiped out every 20 years or so. Hardly
> advisable. 

Bob largely retracted this claim in his #9736, but I will comment
further anyway. His calculation was based on the assumption that
stock prices are normally distributed.  But they are NOT; to much
better approximation, the natural logarithms (logs) of stock
prices are normally distributed.  A better way to describe my
model is the log of my recommended portfolio had a projected
yearly growth rate of 62% with standard deviation 45%. (I didn't
want to use logarithms in my letter to shareholders).  The log of
the actual portfolio adopted by the Board started with expected
growth rate of 27% and standard deviation 41%. That is, the log
of my recommended portfolio was expected to grow 2.3 times as
fast, with only slightly more risk, than the actual portfolio.
The choice should have been a no-brainer.

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