The first part was good. The ending seems to be making way too many assumptions about other people’s motivations.
Consider that in a 2016 survey of Less Wrong users, only 48 of 1,660 or 2.9% of respondents answering the question said that they were “signed up or just finishing up paperwork” for cryonics. [Argument from authority here]. While this is certainly a much higher portion than the essentially 0% of Americans who are signed up for cryonics based on published membership numbers, it is still a tiny percentage when considering that cryonics is the most direct action one can take to increase the probability of living past one’s natural lifespan.
First off, this last sentence is probably wrong. The most direct actions you can take to increase your expected lifespan (beyond obvious things like eating) are to exercise regularly, avoid cars and extreme sports, and possibly make changes to your diet.
This objection is consistent with the fact that 515 or 31% of respondents to the question answered that they “would like to sign up,” but haven’t for various reasons. Beyond that, when asked “Do you think cryonics, as currently practiced by Alcor/Cryonics Institute will work?”, 71% of respondents answered yes or maybe.
I had to look through the survey data, but given that the median respondent said existing cryonics techniques have a 10% chance of working, it’s not surprising that a majority haven’t signed up for it. It’s also very misleading how you group the “would like to” responses. 20% said they would like to but can’t because it’s either not offered where they live or they can’t afford it. The relevant number for your argument is the 11% who said they would like to but haven’t got around to it.
If a reliable and trustworthy source said that for the entire day, a major company or government was giving out $100,000 checks to everyone who showed up at a nearby location, what would be the rational course of action?
This example is exactly backwards for understanding why people don’t agree with you about cryonics. Cryonics is very expensive and unlikely to work (right now), even in ideal scenarios (and I’m pretty sure that 10% median is for “will Alcor’s process work at all”, not, “how likely are you to survive cryonics if you die in a car crash thousands of miles away from their facility”).
Any course of action not involving going down and collecting the $100,000 would likely not be rational.
Ignoring opportunity cost and motivations. If someone wants $100,000 more than whatever else they could be doing with that time, then yes. But as we see above, not everyone agrees that a tiny, tiny chance of living longer is worth (the opportunity cost of) hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And I should point out, I personally think cryonics is very promising and should be getting a lot more research funding than it does (not to mention not being so legally difficult), but I think the probability of it working in common cases like not dying inside Alcor’s facility right now is very low.
The most direct actions you can take to increase your expected lifespan (beyond obvious things like eating) are to exercise regularly, avoid cars and extreme sports, and possibly make changes to your diet.
I said cryonics was the most direct action for increasing one’s lifespan beyond the natural lifespan. The things you list are certainly the most direct actions for increasing your expected lifespan within its natural bounds. They may also indirectly increase your chance of living beyond your natural lifespan by increasing the chance you live to a point where life extension technology becomes available. Admittedly, I may place the chances of life extension technology being developed in the next 40 years lower than many less wrong readers.
With regards to my use of the survey statistics. I debated the best way to present those numbers that would be both clear and concise. For brevity I chose to lump the three “would like to” responses together because it actually made the objection to my core point look stronger. That is why I said “is consistent with”. Additionally, some percentage of “can’t afford” responses are actually respondents not placing a high enough priority on it rather than being literally unable to afford it. All that said, I do agree breaking out all the responses would be clearer.
I had to look through the survey data, but given that the median respondent said existing cryonics techniques have a 10% chance of working, it’s not surprising that a majority haven’t signed up for it.
I think this may be a failure to do the math. I’m not sure what chance I would give cryonics of working, but 10% may be high in my opinion. Still, when considering the value of being effectively immortal in a significantly better future even a 10% chance is highly valuable.
I wrote “Any course of action not involving going down and collecting the $100,000 would likely not be rational.” I’m not ignoring opportunity costs and other motivations here. That is why I said “likely not be rational”. I agree that in cryonics the opportunity costs are much higher than in my hypothetical example. I was attempting to establish the principle that action and belief should generally be in accord. That a large mismatch, as appears to me to be the case with cryonics, should call into question whether people are being rational. I don’t deny that a rational agent could genuinely believe cryonics might work but place a low enough probability on it and have a high enough opportunity cost that they should choose not to sign up.
I’m glad to hear you think cryonics is very promising and should be getting a lot more research funding than it does. I’m hoping that perhaps I will be able to make some improvement in that area.
I find your statement about the probability of cryonics not working in common cases being low interesting. Personally, it seems to me that the level of technology required to revive a cryonics patient preserved under ideal conditions today is so advanced that even patients preserved under less than ideal conditions will be revivable too. By less than ideal conditions I mean a delay of some time before preservation.
I chose actions that will increase your lifespan in general, since that’s strictly better than increasing the chance that if you live long enough for it to matter, you will live longer than your natural lifespan.
Evaluating the expected value of cryonics is hard because it runs into the same problem as Pascal’s Wager, with a huge value in a lowe probability case. I’m not really sure how to handle that.
The reasons I don’t think it’s likely to work right now are:
Current processes may not preserve human sized brains well at all even in ideal conditions (successful cryonics experiments seem to involve animals much smaller than our brains)
Alcor may not do the preservation perfectly
The technology to reconstruct our brains from frozen ones may not be possible or might be so far off that the brain is damaged before it becomes possible
Alternately, you could use whole body preservation, but then the problems in my first point are significantly worse.
In non ideal conditions, your brain is dead and breaking down, and losing information permanently. A sufficiently powerful AI might be able to make reasonable guesses, but it’s not clear how much the person they create would really be you after extensive damage.
And this last one brings up my first point again: if I want to not die, it’s much more effective to drive safely (or not drive), get adequate medical care, exercise, etc. than to focus in the small chance of surviving after my body is already dying.
The first part was good. The ending seems to be making way too many assumptions about other people’s motivations.
First off, this last sentence is probably wrong. The most direct actions you can take to increase your expected lifespan (beyond obvious things like eating) are to exercise regularly, avoid cars and extreme sports, and possibly make changes to your diet.
I had to look through the survey data, but given that the median respondent said existing cryonics techniques have a 10% chance of working, it’s not surprising that a majority haven’t signed up for it. It’s also very misleading how you group the “would like to” responses. 20% said they would like to but can’t because it’s either not offered where they live or they can’t afford it. The relevant number for your argument is the 11% who said they would like to but haven’t got around to it.
This example is exactly backwards for understanding why people don’t agree with you about cryonics. Cryonics is very expensive and unlikely to work (right now), even in ideal scenarios (and I’m pretty sure that 10% median is for “will Alcor’s process work at all”, not, “how likely are you to survive cryonics if you die in a car crash thousands of miles away from their facility”).
Ignoring opportunity cost and motivations. If someone wants $100,000 more than whatever else they could be doing with that time, then yes. But as we see above, not everyone agrees that a tiny, tiny chance of living longer is worth (the opportunity cost of) hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And I should point out, I personally think cryonics is very promising and should be getting a lot more research funding than it does (not to mention not being so legally difficult), but I think the probability of it working in common cases like not dying inside Alcor’s facility right now is very low.
I said cryonics was the most direct action for increasing one’s lifespan beyond the natural lifespan. The things you list are certainly the most direct actions for increasing your expected lifespan within its natural bounds. They may also indirectly increase your chance of living beyond your natural lifespan by increasing the chance you live to a point where life extension technology becomes available. Admittedly, I may place the chances of life extension technology being developed in the next 40 years lower than many less wrong readers.
With regards to my use of the survey statistics. I debated the best way to present those numbers that would be both clear and concise. For brevity I chose to lump the three “would like to” responses together because it actually made the objection to my core point look stronger. That is why I said “is consistent with”. Additionally, some percentage of “can’t afford” responses are actually respondents not placing a high enough priority on it rather than being literally unable to afford it. All that said, I do agree breaking out all the responses would be clearer.
I think this may be a failure to do the math. I’m not sure what chance I would give cryonics of working, but 10% may be high in my opinion. Still, when considering the value of being effectively immortal in a significantly better future even a 10% chance is highly valuable.
I wrote “Any course of action not involving going down and collecting the $100,000 would likely not be rational.” I’m not ignoring opportunity costs and other motivations here. That is why I said “likely not be rational”. I agree that in cryonics the opportunity costs are much higher than in my hypothetical example. I was attempting to establish the principle that action and belief should generally be in accord. That a large mismatch, as appears to me to be the case with cryonics, should call into question whether people are being rational. I don’t deny that a rational agent could genuinely believe cryonics might work but place a low enough probability on it and have a high enough opportunity cost that they should choose not to sign up.
I’m glad to hear you think cryonics is very promising and should be getting a lot more research funding than it does. I’m hoping that perhaps I will be able to make some improvement in that area.
I find your statement about the probability of cryonics not working in common cases being low interesting. Personally, it seems to me that the level of technology required to revive a cryonics patient preserved under ideal conditions today is so advanced that even patients preserved under less than ideal conditions will be revivable too. By less than ideal conditions I mean a delay of some time before preservation.
I chose actions that will increase your lifespan in general, since that’s strictly better than increasing the chance that if you live long enough for it to matter, you will live longer than your natural lifespan.
Evaluating the expected value of cryonics is hard because it runs into the same problem as Pascal’s Wager, with a huge value in a lowe probability case. I’m not really sure how to handle that.
The reasons I don’t think it’s likely to work right now are:
Current processes may not preserve human sized brains well at all even in ideal conditions (successful cryonics experiments seem to involve animals much smaller than our brains)
Alcor may not do the preservation perfectly
The technology to reconstruct our brains from frozen ones may not be possible or might be so far off that the brain is damaged before it becomes possible
Alternately, you could use whole body preservation, but then the problems in my first point are significantly worse.
In non ideal conditions, your brain is dead and breaking down, and losing information permanently. A sufficiently powerful AI might be able to make reasonable guesses, but it’s not clear how much the person they create would really be you after extensive damage.
The leading causes of death for people aged 15-34 are injury, suicide, and homicide. All of those have a might chance of involving trauma to the head, which makes things much worse. For example, someone who dies in a car crash is probably not going to get much value from cryonics. https://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc-charts/leading_causes_of_death_age_group_2014_1050w760h.gif
And this last one brings up my first point again: if I want to not die, it’s much more effective to drive safely (or not drive), get adequate medical care, exercise, etc. than to focus in the small chance of surviving after my body is already dying.