7 replies to this topic

[John Schloendorn]

Hey guys,
I think this bit is certainly overdue… I started to bring it in shape for a formal report, but unfortunately I don’t have time to develop it further. It's all in there, and it's a nice text, but I apologize if the level of presentation is sometimes not quite journal quality. If anyone wants to use these data or parts of the text in a formal essay on fundraising in general or whatever, please go ahead and I can also sent you the raw data and advice if you like. It’s all interspersed with random participant quotes. Here.

In brief: Participants indicated roughly $120,000 over the course of the 10 years that the IBG is supposed to run on the mouse. In comparison to the $3 Billion that it is supposed to take, that is negligibly low. Other means of funding than charitable donation from the immortalist community must be found. Personal commitment is faring much better than money. We have approximately one full fledged life-science research group ready to go, backed by the most extensive IT support any life-science group ever had [thumb]. This is only one order of magnitude less than the requirements, and multiple students are likely to complete their degrees in time.

Also I would like to take the opportunity to invite you to a discussion of a related survey I just published over at JET, volume 14, "Negative data from the psychological frontline". Although the title is apt, I give it a bit of a rant and would like to invite you to join in here.

Attached Files

•  IBGS_results.doc   150.5KB   173 downloads

[Mark Hamalainen]

I've been an immortalist for at least 7 years, and I didn't notice the survey, so I don't think the low turnout is reason for much pessimism. Up until recently I had ignored the online community as not being relevant to my goals, and restricted myself to following the scientific literature. The potential for cooperation on research projects led me to ImmInst.

[John Schloendorn]

Glad to hear imminst is improving. I believe that many "closet immortalists" (I hope you don't mind the term ;-) do not catch this as fast as you did. As I report in the "negative data" paper, we can detect immortalists in more or less random population samples. That means there's got to be millions out there. We should tailor our advertisment for this most promising target group. I.e. rather than trying to persuade the opposition, we should seek out our potential allies and show them what we have to offer.
This style would go more like "Want to work on extending life spans? We have all the info you need, come to imminst!" rather than the "Hey guys, please believe us that life-extension is good, and by the way, come to imminst." we're saying all too often at present.

[jwb1234567890]

Glad to hear imminst is improving. I believe that many "closet immortalists" (I hope you don't mind the term ;-) do not catch this as fast as you did. As I report in the "negative data" paper, we can detect immortalists in more or less random population samples. That means there's got to be millions out there. We should tailor our advertisment for this most promising target group. I.e. rather than trying to persuade the opposition, we should seek out our potential allies and show them what we have to offer.
This style would go more like "Want to work on extending life spans? We have all the info you need, come to imminst!" rather than the "Hey guys, please believe us that life-extension is good, and by the way, come to imminst." we're saying all too often at present.

I think immortalism in the medium term will be a minority activity, even when people are living to 200 they will probably still see themselves as mortal and human and not care so much about living forever.

On the other hand if you take general health concerns you have pretty much all of the population. And considering that aging research is the number one most likely type of research to improve general health there is huge potential to link the two. So the key to getting more money into this area of research is cementing the link in people's minds.

Also transhumanism to me sounds like an elitist cult.

So marketing wise... it should be more like 'got 10 pounds to spend on staying healthy? don't want to get cancer, heart disease, osteo, lose mobility why not spend it on some research to make sure that you keep healthy'. I'd like to see less of living forever and more of the fighting the underlying causes of cancer, heart disease, osteo.... support the mouse.

An aside:
On http://www.jetpress....chloendorn.html
Figure1: Frequency distribution of combined immortality score (i-score) among all test subjects.
the image does not display.

[John Schloendorn]

Yes for an aging research fundraiser, that's cool. (This is just not what imminst is) Aging research funders also do things like "help the poor, suffering aged" with huge success, so those of us working in that sector sure have someone to imitate.
The link between rejuvenation and health could definitely use strengthening. I do not see how, given that the majority of people engages in their usual yuck reaction as soon as you mention rejuvenation. Youre right, much rejuvenation research can be (and is being) sold as plain health research without any trouble.
Sorry about the image, you can use the pdf version, it's fine there. I'll bug JET about it. Thanks for the feedback!

[caliban]

Sorry, John I applaud your initiative, but I have to be more than a bit critical

I too was not aware of ImmInst participating in this survey, which is a bit surprising as I visit this place twice daily and a director on top of it. Blame it on who you'd like, but I suspect that the banging on about insufficient participation could benefit from some self evaluation regarding marketing.

The conclusions as relating to ImmInst are seriously flawed if based on basic membership (visitors) data because the "growth" in these figures is delineated by a steady erosion on the other side that is not represented in your analysis. If ImmInst gets 70 basic members per month, it "looses" an estimated 50 who sign up but move on, rarely if ever coming back to visit. Of course we don't force deletion on these accounts. Any inference from this data to financial commitments would be invalid as it does not take account of the fluid nature of online participation. Furthermore, you question yourself whether immortalists equate to online blabbermouths, but I don't see how this survey can test that question.

But anyway, if the real question was to evaluate whether
"charitable donation from the immortalist community is a negligible factor in funding large immortalist projects"

Then why did you waste anybody's time with this? Considering the costs of any biomedical research (for this was what you were aiming at, ignoring that "Immortalists" are of very different persuasions as to they utility of that approach today) it is well established that any one patient charity is not able to fund large research programs.

Maybe this is overly harsh and I'll come to a more measured assessment upon further reflection.

[John Schloendorn]

John I applaud your initiative, but I have to be more than a bit critical

No worries, criticisim is more productive than applause.

I too was not aware of ImmInst participating in this survey

Well, given that it was on the front page during all of January I'm not so sure how a director would manage not to be aware, but anyways thanks for pointing it out. The survey sure did not reach everyone who would know of an IBG project if it were being launched. This thing cannot have the ambition to be more than a crude guess. And like criticism, underestimates are more productive.

Any inference from this data to financial commitments would be invalid as it does not take account of the fluid nature of online participation

Yes, I agree, that is a very valid criticism. It is possible that the pool of "active members" follows very different kinetics than "all members". Unfortunately, I am not aware of any data suitable to estimate the number of active member over time. For the main conclusion, this attempted quantification is not really necessary and I should have dropped it or used better data, if this were a formal marketing research report.
Imminst leaders seem to have a tendency of taking this passage as hidden criticism of their ability to expand the membership. That is not at all so. It is a criticism of individual charitable donation as a means to fund the IBG, that's all. "Alternative means of funding **must** be found", and that's what imminst's members are good for. We have investors, business people, law people ready to get going on this, or already going at full force and it's all thanks to your leadership!!

you question yourself whether immortalists equate to online blabbermouths

Not sure from where you get that impression. Probably not from my conclusion that deems it worthwhile to "attract them [potential immortalists] to the community’s emerging infrastructure" or see my above post.

it is well established that any one patient charity is not able to fund large research programs.

I have data here saying that charitable donations by private individuals in the US alone is in the order of $100 Billion per year (Reis, 1998), including a large fraction that went to medical research charities. So it certainly seems to me worth investigating and discussing.

Reis GR. (1998) Charitable Giving Increased 7.5 Percent in 1997. Fund Raising Management 29(5): 3.

[Da55id]

John said: "given that it was on the front page during all of January I'm not so sure how a director would manage not to be aware"

I think the front page of Imminst is ignored by frequent visitors - they just go in through the "active topics" selection without reading the front page at all. I do this. I only saw the survey because I like to read your forum contributions :-)

This is why www.mprize.com puts more and more news / editorial on the front page.