Perhaps I should clarify my interest. Why isn’t making cryonics affordable for as many people as possible the priority, rather than focusing on marketing to people most similar to oneself? Looks an awful lot like tribalism.
Making it more affordable might have only a marginal impact, if most people are opposed for reasons other than price. I do think there should be some kind of charity raising funds for those who can’t afford it—but I’m not clear on there being much of a demand for such a thing if it existed.
I don’t understand the question. How would a non-engineer like myself go about making it more affordable if not through economies of scale?
ETA: You mean donating money for this purpose? People do give money to the main organizations beyond the required amount. But sbharris wrote here about surprising people refusing free cryo-preservation. So throwing more money at the problem without first understanding this aspect and thinking of a way to address it seems unattractive.
Convincing people who can afford cryonics has a relatively straightforward solution, while decreasing the cost of cryonics is a complex technical and economic challenge. The fastest way to sign people up seems to be to convince the people who can already afford it. That does not mean though that effort should not be applied to the long term goal of lowering the cost though.
All else equal, it’s easier to sell widgets to young people for $X/month each than to middle aged people for $10X/month each or old people for $1000X each.
Someone who wanted to sell widgets equally as much to all people would focus most effort on the first group.
I think it’s like the transplant list phenomenon. Give people a list with 200 people and their survival chances, and they will distribute 100 organs to the 100 with the highest chance to live. Give them two lists of 100, they will instead distribute 50 organs to members of each list. I think I saw that here, but don’t know the link.
On top of that, the more orders for widgets you get, the lower the cost you can make them at.
Perhaps I should clarify my interest. Why isn’t making cryonics affordable for as many people as possible the priority, rather than focusing on marketing to people most similar to oneself? Looks an awful lot like tribalism.
Making it more affordable might have only a marginal impact, if most people are opposed for reasons other than price. I do think there should be some kind of charity raising funds for those who can’t afford it—but I’m not clear on there being much of a demand for such a thing if it existed.
I don’t understand the question. How would a non-engineer like myself go about making it more affordable if not through economies of scale?
ETA: You mean donating money for this purpose? People do give money to the main organizations beyond the required amount. But sbharris wrote here about surprising people refusing free cryo-preservation. So throwing more money at the problem without first understanding this aspect and thinking of a way to address it seems unattractive.
Convincing people who can afford cryonics has a relatively straightforward solution, while decreasing the cost of cryonics is a complex technical and economic challenge. The fastest way to sign people up seems to be to convince the people who can already afford it. That does not mean though that effort should not be applied to the long term goal of lowering the cost though.
The more people are signed up, the more resources will be available to address cost reduction.
Also, it seems like cryonics might work quite well with economies of scale.
The usual link on this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2f5/cryonics_and_scaling_factors/
All else equal, it’s easier to sell widgets to young people for $X/month each than to middle aged people for $10X/month each or old people for $1000X each.
Someone who wanted to sell widgets equally as much to all people would focus most effort on the first group.
I think it’s like the transplant list phenomenon. Give people a list with 200 people and their survival chances, and they will distribute 100 organs to the 100 with the highest chance to live. Give them two lists of 100, they will instead distribute 50 organs to members of each list. I think I saw that here, but don’t know the link.
On top of that, the more orders for widgets you get, the lower the cost you can make them at.