It is, at the very least, interesting that people signed up for cryonics tend to give lower estimates for probability of future revival than the general population, and this may give useful insight for both the state of the field (“If you haven’t looked into it, the odds are probably worse than you think.”), and variance in human decision making (“How much do you value increased personal longevity, really?”), and how the field should strive to educate and market and grow.
It could also be interesting and potentially insightful to see how those numbers have changed over time. Even if the numbers themselves are roughly meaningless, any trends in them may reflect advancement of the field, or better marketing, or change in the population signing up or considering doing so. If I had strong reason to think that there were encouraging trends in odds of revival, as well as cost and public acceptance, that would increase my odds of signing up. After all, under most non-catastrophic-future scenarios, and barring personal disasters likely to prevent preservation anyway, I’m much more likely to die in the 2050s-2080s than before that, and be preserved with that decade’s technologies, which means compounding positive trends vs. static odds can make a massive difference to me. OTOH, if we’re not seeing such improvement yet but there’s reason to think we will, then waiting a few years could greatly reduce my costs (relative to early adopters) without dramatically increasing my odds of dying before signing up.
(If we’re really lucky and sane in the coming decades there’s a small chance preservation of some sort will be considered standard healthcare practice by the time I die, but I don’t put much weight on that.)
It is, at the very least, interesting that people signed up for cryonics tend to give lower estimates for probability of future revival than the general population, and this may give useful insight for both the state of the field (“If you haven’t looked into it, the odds are probably worse than you think.”), and variance in human decision making (“How much do you value increased personal longevity, really?”), and how the field should strive to educate and market and grow.
It could also be interesting and potentially insightful to see how those numbers have changed over time. Even if the numbers themselves are roughly meaningless, any trends in them may reflect advancement of the field, or better marketing, or change in the population signing up or considering doing so. If I had strong reason to think that there were encouraging trends in odds of revival, as well as cost and public acceptance, that would increase my odds of signing up. After all, under most non-catastrophic-future scenarios, and barring personal disasters likely to prevent preservation anyway, I’m much more likely to die in the 2050s-2080s than before that, and be preserved with that decade’s technologies, which means compounding positive trends vs. static odds can make a massive difference to me. OTOH, if we’re not seeing such improvement yet but there’s reason to think we will, then waiting a few years could greatly reduce my costs (relative to early adopters) without dramatically increasing my odds of dying before signing up.
(If we’re really lucky and sane in the coming decades there’s a small chance preservation of some sort will be considered standard healthcare practice by the time I die, but I don’t put much weight on that.)