How do we decide what to direct our attention to?

I've had just about enough of FD's antics in CF for awhile. Here's my problem-- In cryonics as a whole, there are ideas, issues and various angles of consideration. Just as in anything.

So-- what does a threaded forum allow?

It allows anyone to post anything at any time. That's good right? As it turns out-- it's not so good after all. What happens is that a few people come in and dominate the discussions. FD denies dominating-- but the denial of dominating is, in fact, a tactic used to subvert the attentional direction of the readership.

Just like AlcorUnited run by Conaway-- with de facto control by Wowk and SJV-- denies that it's controlled editorially by those guys-- and pretends that it respresents "united" common concerns among cryos-- a front, really-- so too does CF present itself in an "open discussion" manner-- with lots of evidence that it is just that-- but when push comes to shove-- it's not.

So-- what you get is very clever people who see an opportunity to pretend things are open and who direct attention to topcis of the day or week-- creating reality in their mould. This is what's going on at CF--

Now-- I'm not saying that that is not a good thing-- because that's exactly what I do here in this blog. And that's what Plus does in his blog and Maxim does in hers. But the difference is that in a blog-- we all KNOW that that is THAT person's reality-vector-- whereas in a forum-- it has the appearance of various people surfacing under a common and shared understanding-- and it often IS that-- but as I say-- it's not that when the going gets tough.

You cannot rely on Cold Filter for anything other than viewing what might be on the minds of the particular posters who frequent that forum-- and especially FD's mind.... And I'm not saying FD doesn't raise valid points-- but the overall tone and situation in cryonics cannot be soley detected through any one source like CF or especially Cryonet or AU--

And yet there IS a need for an overview. So where do you find it? Well-- I'm not going to pretend that i have the BEST overview here-- but what I will claaim is that I TRY to offer readers an overview of what I'm seeing and sensing in cryonics lately and historically. I'm not making any pretense, however, that this is an open disucssion, just as I tried to make that point in Cryonics Cafe a few years back. Visitors resented overt and obvious steering and control by me-- and generally my own readers hijacked MY forum! That astonishes me to this day.

I'm not claiming that what I say to steer your attention to is the thing to pay attention to-- neccessarily-- but I'm claiming that it IS worth everyone's time to pay attention to what I point to at particular times. For example, this entire summer-- involved the SA Inc. situation-- now you see FD steering attn to Alcor-- but we're not DONE with SA-- Alcor's situation is what it is-- and FD wants to explore that.. fine-- just realize that CF is attentionally steered by FD and when you visit CF-- you visit FD-- Maxim note that please.... I've seen Maxim post to CF when it should be posted to her blog.

More on this later. Occasionally I avoid FD/CF and CN-- and TV etc.... today I'll avoid all of that-- and allow my own mind to surface again-- Interestingly, Jonano was cut out of CF recently but made a few good points on location and livablility of locations near cryonics labs. THAT is interesting.... despite Jonano's history-- the point is a good one. Recognize who hangs out at CF-- MP drops points in there-- hit and run style-- unperson hangs there-- etc.... but it's NOT neccessarily going to give us a good working frame of reference. My alpha index does a far better job at that... as imperfect as it is, it's the future of publishing.

Now-- what I want to look at over the month of August-- are the actual cryonics cases so far in 2007 starting with the de facto case of Marce Johnson. I want an easy reference list of every CI and Alcor or any other case-- installed here-->[+]-- I want case reports that have been put online-- and I want to look at the parameters I'm interested in-- and I won't likely get any help on that-- but that's where I want to go. The latest CI/SA case report is still being written up apparently-- but in addittion to that, we have had several other cases-- under-reported... See "cases" in the alpha list below.

Note that I cleaned up the header here so attention direction to the essential place to find this blog is more straightforward. Directing attention involves NOT direction attention to certain other things too.