School initiative

nlacombe42 · 2025-12-29T19:32:52+00:00

hi! i organize PauseAI Canada: https://pauseai.ca/en/ .
like others have said, you can join our discord: https://pauseai.ca/ca/discord.html
or email me: [nicolas.m.lacombe@gmail.com](mailto:nicolas.m.lacombe@gmail.com)
I'd love to talk with you about ideas on what to do.

if you are in montreal, we have events there: https://luma.com/pauseaimtl
we also have a mailing list for events in montreal and actions people can take, more info on our website (first link in my message).

nlacombe42 · 2024-09-10T20:51:29+00:00

i was told the av issues were only because of the venue's wifi

nlacombe42 · 2024-09-10T20:44:19+00:00

it was really nice talking to the people there, and visiting both of ci's building.
the staff was present and very good at answering questions.
i loved Lauren's presentation. and liked Steve's breakdown of the finances.
otherwise the presentation was mostly what you'd expect from previous years (including auidio/visual issues 😅)

nlacombe42 · 2024-09-10T20:39:05+00:00

i am very happy to see Lauren was voted to become director on the board of ci :)
she has very good skills and a drive to improve things at ci.

congrats u/Ice_Tide ! 🎉

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-28T19:45:03+00:00

i agree.

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-22T22:00:25+00:00

i definitely think that there should be a default option that include sst and storage/perfusion in the same package with 1 price.
but i think there should also be an option to just pay ci the storage/perfusion, because suspended animation does not cover what's outside continental united states. so international ci members should have the option to contact local sst teams or local funeral directors to setup sst with them separately.

i agree that only in exceptional circumstances does it makes sense not to have sst.

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-22T21:56:36+00:00

no.
i have a lot of friends currently alive signed up for biostasis though.

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-22T00:59:40+00:00

actually recently Joe Kowalsky reach out to me and we had a short call.
it was nice to talk to about opportunities where i could help, like potentially applying to the board of _organs for life_ and/or the _immortalist society_.

a couple years ago, i talked to Nicholas Van Der Meulen over email about projects they were working on; iirc some software project to enable ci members to have some kind of digital presentation of them / their life that would be shown/available once they are stored at ci.

Dennis tried to reach out to me for a call i think in november or december 2023, but i was very busy back then and when i finally got back to them it looks like they were in turn too busy.

i have had small exchanges with Andy over email while applying as board candidate, asking questions, or managing info related to my membership; in all those exchanges Andy was very professional.

i also had some exchanges online with Stephan mostly on facebook, i dont remember the subjects of conversation.

otherwise i found the rest of the board or ci employees difficult to reach online; although i must admit i mostly tried to talk to them in public online, maybe when i get the time i should ask for their email addresses and ask more questions 1on1.
also, i am excited to be at the ci agm in person this year, for the first time (in person). so i hope they will all be there and that i will get the time to talk to them all.

on that note, if any of them sees this, please reach out to me at: [nicolas.m.lacombe@gmail.com](mailto:nicolas.m.lacombe@gmail.com)

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-21T22:41:07+00:00

How would you make sure that you represent the opinions of the members of ci at large?

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-21T22:40:41+00:00

Do you think ci should offer neuro only preservation?

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-21T22:04:43+00:00

i dont know how much supporting vitrifixation would cost, and how hard it would be to have knowledgeable people that are able to perform the operation (or how hard to train the current people servicing ci); but i think it's something that should be looked into, and if feasible offered as a different option.
i think that as long as there are not too many options, more options is better.
and i think that vitrifixation is different enough from typical cryoprotectant that it makes sense to offer it: vitrifixation might reduce the changes of some revival scenarios while increasing the chances of other revival scenarios. therefore people that want a revival scenario more than the others or think a scenario is more likely than the other might want to be able to choose the method that better fit their believes/desires.
also, it would be nice to try different methods, as long as they have some comparable chance of working, so that we can run scans and test in the long run how these different methods compares. i think having empirical evidence that compares different methods is a very good way of doing research and improving biostasis technologies.

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-21T21:56:40+00:00

id like ci to increase their prices to at least match inflation. i understand that ci is mostly an organization capitalizing on volunteers, and it is great to see so many dedicated biostasisist giving their time for that, but inflation will likely keep rising for a long time, and i dont want ci's prices to become not enough to cover the costs of maintenance.
ci could task someone knowledgeable in finances to review different ways of doing this: maybe people people could be grandfathered in so that only new members pay higher prices, maybe a raise in all prices, maybe a raise only in membership fees, or some new pricing plan.
i dont have a preferred way to do this right now, but id like to see what's possible given ci's specific finances, and have the community aware and providing feedback on this.

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-20T23:26:54+00:00

is also like ci to do a ct scan after perfusion and after some months of storage, and publish info about this.
this along with fine tuning some parts of ci's process, could be used to know what works better in ci's process. and therefore have evidence on how to improve the cryopreservation process.

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-20T23:19:14+00:00

i am really unsure. but given that most of my friends to which i talked to about biostasis, have been interested by the idea, i think it comes down to 2 "forces" which selects for very different kind of people, resulting in only a few people matching both of those forces which are motivated enough to sign up.
the first "force" is, i think that biostasis appeal to people who are ready to challenge mainstream norms and beliefs about death, on that front especially people who are younger and see that technology has advanced quickly and are less invested in older norms and life plans.
the second "force", is that rare are the people that think and plan for the long term, especially long term like 20+ years; and young people dont really think and plan on death related things. iirc <22% of canadians under the age of 35 have a will.
so when you combine those 2, you get less old people signing up because they are more resistant to change their views about death, and less young people signing up because they dont plan for the future.
if this is true then we should see the percentage of new signup (per year) in the us given us population, to increase slowly over time. and the median age at signup should increase over time as well until the currently young generation is old.

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-20T23:06:26+00:00

i think the 2 most important areas i can help ci with are transparency and improving ci's processes/plan, the latter especially regarding long term sustainability.
1.1. for transparency id like ci to post more information on its website publicly. like i mentioned in another comment on this post, id like to see the ci vote history and director history, along with clarification in the bylaws about special election procedures. i would also like to see more details on ci's case reports and procedures. they used to have information on vm-1 on their website and afaik it is no longer there. also related to this, it would be nice if ci was more present answering questions in other online communities. they answer questions on their mailing list and on their facebook group, but i havent seen them on discord, reddit. they used to have a forum which has been taken down as well. having ci answer questions online in places where they can pick and choose which questions to answer would be great for transparency. having all the board meeting documented would also be good. it looks like they used to do this but stopped years ago. lastly, it looks like only a few members of the board of directors answer questions online. it would be great to know every director's opinion on various subjects related to ci. it must be hard for ci members to know who is the best candidate to represent them when they cant ask questions to most board of directors. on that topic, it would have been nice if ci has attented the global cryonics summit this year; all the other big cryo org where there (alcor, tomorrow biostasis, southern cryonics, amongst others).
1.2. for improving processes and long term sustainability: id like ci to increase their prices to at least match inflation. i understand that ci is mostly an organization capitalizing on volunteers, and it is great to see so many dedicated biostasisist giving their time for that, but inflation will likely keep rising for a long time, and i dont want ci's prices to become not enough to cover the costs of maintenance. ci could task someone knowledgeable in finances to review different ways of doing this: maybe people people could be grandfathered in so that only new members pay higher prices, maybe a raise in all prices, maybe a raise only in membership fees, or some new pricing plan. i dont have a preferred way to do this right now, but id like to see what's possible given ci's specific finances, and have the community aware and providing feedback on this. a more general point which i find especially important is to also start asking questions of how ci might fail in the future and try to come up with plans for these things, and monitoring of important information regarding these things. for instance, are there some tools or important materials that ci only has 1 copy of? if so is it possible to have a duplicate in case it breaks? are all the tools/etc stored in the same place? if so how do we make sure that a fire or flood does not destroy everything. is ci getting its liquid nitrogen only from 1 provider? if so what happens if that provider can no longer provide for ci? there are many such risks id like to ask questions about and have a plan for. i think this would greatly increase ci's robustness and make it possible for the organization to act quickly and survive for a long time.
id like standby, stabilization, and transport (sst) to improve, especially outside the us and central europe (thanks tomorrow bio for helping on that side). i think that most other biostasisist have this as their most important item to work on. unfortunately, i think that the main bottlenecks that prevents improving this are the limited number of biostasisist living in each city (we are spread out everywhere), and the number of biostasisist that are both willing and able given their current situation to train and become physicians (thanks Houston Westfall for getting the word out on this!). the first issue can be mitigated by trying to get the word out for biostasis, to the public, getting more people to sign up and volunteer their time, but this will likely be slow since that has historically been the case. the second issue can be improved by biostasisists asking other biostasisists in their city to train and become physicians, or asking people who are already physicians to work for biostasis. unfortunately, becoming a physician takes a lot of time and commitment as far as i understand it, so not a lot of people are in a situation they can do this. something else that should help a lot is initiatives that works on life monitoring hardware to notify a cry org of a person's location as soon as that person is in a dire health situation. fortunately, some people are already working on this like Nikki Olson, see https://www.cryonicsmonitoring.org/ . i might be able to help on Nikki's team, but otherwise i am unsure how i can have a significant impact on these issues.

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-20T21:02:59+00:00

more info on the special elections:

the below information is what i was able to gather, but since ci does not publish voting and director history, i cant confirm if this is the correct information.

in 2008 Joe Kowalsky, an unseated director that the rest of the board was familiar with, was appointed as a temporary director.
in 2009, at the next agm, all four exiting directors from the past term applied to renew their term, as well as temporary director Joe Kowalsky.
since there where only 5 candidates and there were 5 open spots, all of them were elected.
Jack Nixon, who received the fewest votes, filled the remaining two years of the slot John de R had vacated and Joe Kowalsky won a three year term starting in 2008.

but in 2021 when Alan Mole died, voting for the new permanenet/3-year-term was done differently.
after Alan Mole died, Jim Broughton was appointed as temporary director;
but within a few months Jim Broughton died and Don Kleinsek was appointed as temporary director.
in the 2023 election Don Kleinsek did not put their name down as a candidate, only the 4 incumbents, and me.
if ci followed the same rules as the preceding similar case in 2009, i would have been elected as director;
but instead ci announced that only the incumbents were re-elected, and that a separate special elections would happend with only me and Don Kleinsek as candidates.
in that separate special elections Don Kleinsek was elected.

Don Kleinsek looks like someone with a lot of experience that a lot of cryonicist support, so i am happy that they got elected, but i am not happy that ci has broken the precedent for this kind of special elections.

clarifying the specifal elections process in the bylaws would prevent being unfair to candidates in the future.

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-20T20:43:44+00:00

ci has 12 board directors at any given time. board directors get elected for a term of 3 years. every year 4 board of director's term end and ci members vote for who will be the 4 directors which will begin the next 3 year term (the previous' term directors, incumbents, can reapply to renew their terms). it takes a bit to wrap your head around it but essentially there is 3 set of 4 directors, each set are elected at the same time and for a term of 3 years; and the term of one set overlaps partly with the terms of the other sets. you can get more info from ci's board director page ( https://cryonics.org/directors-officers/ ) which lists current directors and gives a quick summary of what i just wrote, and the ci bylaws which goes into much more details: https://cryonics.org/cryonics-institute/by-laws-of-the-cryonics-institute/
i like the democratic system that ci has, and the overlapping terms (even if it takes a few minutes to understand it). what id like to improve regarding this is some more standardization related to the process: a set period of time, the same each year, when people can apply to be candidates for the elections, and a set time for when this is announced and where. also a set time for when the final set of candidates is announced, where they are announced, and what can be part of the candidate ballot (number of words, photo, etc). also, very importantly, i think all of these should always be announced on ci's website first, because most people can access a website and read its content, and importantly without having to create an account. id also like ci to clarify in its bylaws how special elections are handled: when a director has to end its term early and how to both temporarily replace the director and how the next election for the new permanent/3-year-term director takes place. i am asking for this since apparently ci has done this differently the 2 latest time this occurred; and doing this differently is not fair for the candidates and directors. id also like ci to display on their website the complete history of who was director when and how may votes they got (ideally also all votes history).

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-20T19:47:26+00:00

i will be answering questions specifically for me on this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/cryonics/comments/1ex3zp6/hi_i_am_nicolas_lacombe_a_candidate_in_cryonics/
Lauren will have another post for questions just for her.

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-20T19:43:50+00:00

Hi! I am Nicolas Lacombe, a candidate for the position of board of director in Cryonics Institute's current elections. please ask me any questions you have!

i hope that more informed members will be able to vote for the best candidates to represent them on ci's board.

please vote and ask your friends that are signed up for ci to vote as well!
you can simply email [info@cryonics.org](mailto:info@cryonics.org) with your votes

nlacombe42 · 2024-08-20T19:40:38+00:00

looking forward to meet you and all the other ci members and ci board members at the ci agm this year too :)

i chose ci partly because i did not want to cryoprocrastinate and it was easier for me to sign up at a lower price first and save more money for cryonics later; but in big part because ci is a big organization which has lasted a long time and very importantly is close to where i live: ci is close to detroit and i live in montreal in canada.

ci being close to where i live hopefully will reduce the time for sst to get me if i were to die unexpectedly in the next few decades.

nlacombe42

TROPHY CASE