The websites for both are poorly designed and the only thing I could figure out was that maybe under some circumstances CI was cheaper. Not being able to distinguish between relevant features, and feeling it fairly urgent that I stop dithering and start signing up, I blatantly substituted Eliezer’s judgment for my own and went with the one he picked.
feeling it fairly urgent that I stop dithering and start signing up
Why the urgency?
Even assuming that cryonics works as advertised (which is probably a very strong assumption, but I digress), it’s probably a bad idea to sign up before 45 − 50.
You are very unlikely to die younger, and if you do, whatever kills you will probably destroy much of your brain before you can be cryopreserved.
Sure, life insurance prices go up with age, but assuming a normal career you will probably more than compensate with increased income and possibly savings.
By default, one does not sign up at all. I wanted to sign up at all. So I decided to prioritize getting on that. (I don’t claim to be able to follow any relevant math about the value of life insurance at various ages.) I am not arranging my life in such a way that I expect my income to follow a particular trend.
I didn’t say “I did X because I wanted to do X”. I said, “I made an expedited decision about how to do X, because I wanted to do X, and X is notoriously easy to neglect for extended periods of time”. Imagine me deciding to just eat leftovers for lunch because if I mull over the thousand things I could fix I will still be thinking it over—and really really hungry—by dinnertime.
I didn’t sign up for allegiance purposes. I chose a particular service that someone who has reasonably good judgment had already picked, because I didn’t want or have much ability to discriminate between the options. Imagine me staying over at someone’s house and rooting around in the fridge aimlessly, not knowing much about what’s in any of the tupperwares, until someone who knows something about my food preferences invites me to take some of the pasta.
I have savings, and I’m paying my premiums on an annual basis, so I’ll have warning and time to seek sources of income before I’m ever in danger of delinquent insurance payments. I have plenty of friends and family who I expect would loan me a few hundred dollars if I asked them to, which means I should never need more than a span of months over which to job-hunt. At the moment I have income that covers that, but I’m not optimizing for income and hope to be able to avoid starting.
“I made an expedited decision about how to do X, because I wanted to do X, and X is notoriously easy to neglect for extended periods of time”
So, my claim is that, assuming that cryonics works as advertised, the optimal age for signing up is not before 45 − 50. Do you disagree with that claim? Or do you agree but you decided to sign up anyway in order to avoid forgetting about it?
I didn’t sign up for allegiance purposes. I chose a particular service that someone who has reasonably good judgment had already picked, because I didn’t want or have much ability to discriminate between the options.
So you know about cryonics enough to decide that it’s good for you but not enough to decide what service is best for you, hence you just copied the decision of somebody who is not an expert and may well be in a situation different than yours (thus, even if his decision was optimal for him, it might not be optimal for you). And that person just coincidentally happens to be the alpha of your community.
Whatever, this discussion seems to have derailed and I didn’t mean to pick on you, I was just interested in the reasoning behind signing up for cryonics.
By default, one does not sign up at all. I wanted to sign up at all.
“I did X because I wanted to do X” is not a meaningful motive unless X is intrinsically pleasurable.
Misses the point of the statement you quote.
I blatantly substituted Eliezer’s judgment for my own and went with the one he picked.
I suppose this means that you signed up mainly for allegiance signaling purposes rather than considerations on the probability of success.
No, that doesn’t remotely follow. Alicorn could (and likely did) believe that Eliezer is better equipped to or has simply had more motivation to look into things like probability of success.
Alicorn could (and likely did) believe that Eliezer is better equipped to or has simply had more motivation to look into things like probability of success
I can’t exclude that that was her reasoning, but cryonics requires a significant lifelong financial committment, and conditional on the belief that it might actually work with non-negligible probability, the choice of the organization and type of service becomes paramount (for instance, IIUC, CI’s typical service results in even much more ischemia than Alcor’s).
Why would you make such an important decision just by copying what somebody else did, in particular when this person is not an expert?
On the other hand, if you want to signal allegiance and gain status within a community, it makes perfectly sense to emulate the alpha.
“I did X because I wanted to do X” is not a meaningful motive unless X is intrinsically pleasurable.
I disagree. Sure, “I did X because I wanted to do X” is incomplete as an explanation, if you don’t also add what makes you want to do X (intrinsic pleasure, a sense of duty/morals, a promise of better financial prospects or better health, etc.) Alicorn’s statement is comparable to “by default, one does not exercise (true for most people), and I wanted to be fitter and healthier, so I pre-committed by signing up for a weekly yoga class.” Would you agree that it was a meaningful statement if she had said “I wanted to have the benefits of having signed up”?
“I did X because I wanted to do X” is not a meaningful motive unless X is intrinsically pleasurable.
Unless you mean pleasurable in a broader sense than equal, that’s not necessarily the case. People can have other terminal values besides pleasure. (But I agree that being signed up for cryonics is unlikely to be one.)
Sure you do, otherwise, how do you expect to pay the premiums?
I think she means that P(she will able to afford the premiums|she signs up now) is close to 1 and P(she will able to afford the premiums|she signs up in her late forties) isn’t, not that the former is literally 1.
You are very unlikely to die younger, and if you do, whatever kills you will probably destroy much of your brain before you can be cryopreserved.
Source? Sure, the leading cause of death below about 35 seems to be car accidents (and traumatic injuries in general), but looking at http://www.theegglestongroup.com/writing/deathstats/deathstats_2007_all_by_age.php, that’s still only about 41% violent accidents, furthermore, from thesesources it looks like only about 1⁄3 of deaths by traumatic injury are due to traumatic brain injury, so—bumping that up to 1⁄2, since an injury can involve TBI without that being the “cause of death”—we have about a 20.5% chance of brain trauma given death by injury. Add 27% for homocide (~13%) and suicide (~14%), after which I assume you’re unlikely to cryonically preserved soon enough, and you’ve got about a 50% chance of cryonics being applicable if you do die.
Surely some people would find that sufficient reason to sign up, unless I’ve missed something? (This pseudo-survey of figures was hacked together quickly very late at night when I wondered about the statistics of it.)
“In the western world, the most common cause of death after trauma is severe brain injury.”
Moreover, other than direct traumatic injury, the brain can be also damaged by ischemia: 4-6 minutes of cardiac arrest are typically enough to cause irreversible brain injury, and more than one hour will pretty much destroy the brain tissue.
According to that article:
“In modern day civilian trauma centres, thoracic injury directly accounts for 20-25% of deaths due to trauma; thoracic injury or its complications are a contributing factor in a further 25% of trauma deaths [24].”
“Aortic injuries cause or contribute to 15% of MVA fatalities[25]. Most patients with blunt aortic injury die before they reach hospital, and the vast majority will have major coexisting thoracic and extrathoracic injuries[26].”
I’m not a doctor, but if I understand correctly, this means that most victims of fatal accidents, even those without traumatic brain injury, will reach the hospital already in cardiac arrest or with some condition that will progress to cardiac arrest within few hours.
I suppose that in order to arrange prompt cryopreservation you need at least 1 − 2 days of warning.
So, according to your stats, I would say that in the age group you consider, about 70% of deaths wouldn’t allow prompt cryopreservation. Factor in the fact that you are unlikely to die in that age group anyway, and you cryonics at that age is probably not worth the cost, even assuming that it works as advertised.
Of course, this ultimately depends on how much you value your life versus your money: I suppose that manypeople have a knee-jerk reaction and say that they value their life an essentially infinite amount of money, but their actual preferences revealed by their spending behavior will probably be different.
Also, if you are very young, it’s likely that anti-agathics will be invented during your natural lifespan, and you’ll achieve negligible senescence without ever being vitrified and reanimated in the first place.
Sure, life insurance prices go up with age, but assuming a normal career you will probably more than compensate with increased income and possibly savings.
You know, ‘normal’ careers are becoming rarer and rarer these days. There are lots of people in late twenties or thirties today who haven’t found a stable job yet. (My mother is in her forties and she still hasn’t...)
IIRC, when people asked him why he had chosen CI whereas Robin Hanson had chosen Alcor, he said he didn’t have that much money but Hanson did, so of course he would pick the cheap option and Hanson the high-end one.
The websites for both are poorly designed and the only thing I could figure out was that maybe under some circumstances CI was cheaper. Not being able to distinguish between relevant features, and feeling it fairly urgent that I stop dithering and start signing up, I blatantly substituted Eliezer’s judgment for my own and went with the one he picked.
Eliezer’s judgement was that he had to get signed up to convince people to do the same. And he didn’t have much money.
Why the urgency?
Even assuming that cryonics works as advertised (which is probably a very strong assumption, but I digress), it’s probably a bad idea to sign up before 45 − 50. You are very unlikely to die younger, and if you do, whatever kills you will probably destroy much of your brain before you can be cryopreserved.
Sure, life insurance prices go up with age, but assuming a normal career you will probably more than compensate with increased income and possibly savings.
By default, one does not sign up at all. I wanted to sign up at all. So I decided to prioritize getting on that. (I don’t claim to be able to follow any relevant math about the value of life insurance at various ages.) I am not arranging my life in such a way that I expect my income to follow a particular trend.
“I did X because I wanted to do X” is not a meaningful motive unless X is intrinsically pleasurable.
I suppose this means that you signed up mainly for allegiance signaling purposes rather than considerations on the probability of success.
Sure you do, otherwise, how do you expect to pay the premiums?
I didn’t say “I did X because I wanted to do X”. I said, “I made an expedited decision about how to do X, because I wanted to do X, and X is notoriously easy to neglect for extended periods of time”. Imagine me deciding to just eat leftovers for lunch because if I mull over the thousand things I could fix I will still be thinking it over—and really really hungry—by dinnertime.
I didn’t sign up for allegiance purposes. I chose a particular service that someone who has reasonably good judgment had already picked, because I didn’t want or have much ability to discriminate between the options. Imagine me staying over at someone’s house and rooting around in the fridge aimlessly, not knowing much about what’s in any of the tupperwares, until someone who knows something about my food preferences invites me to take some of the pasta.
I have savings, and I’m paying my premiums on an annual basis, so I’ll have warning and time to seek sources of income before I’m ever in danger of delinquent insurance payments. I have plenty of friends and family who I expect would loan me a few hundred dollars if I asked them to, which means I should never need more than a span of months over which to job-hunt. At the moment I have income that covers that, but I’m not optimizing for income and hope to be able to avoid starting.
So, my claim is that, assuming that cryonics works as advertised, the optimal age for signing up is not before 45 − 50. Do you disagree with that claim? Or do you agree but you decided to sign up anyway in order to avoid forgetting about it?
So you know about cryonics enough to decide that it’s good for you but not enough to decide what service is best for you, hence you just copied the decision of somebody who is not an expert and may well be in a situation different than yours (thus, even if his decision was optimal for him, it might not be optimal for you). And that person just coincidentally happens to be the alpha of your community. Whatever, this discussion seems to have derailed and I didn’t mean to pick on you, I was just interested in the reasoning behind signing up for cryonics.
Arguing with you is really tiresome. I’m going to stop.
Unless you happen to die before the age of 45??
Did you read my first post in this thread?
Oops. I guess I should have. (ETA: now a relevant reply to that comment.)
Misses the point of the statement you quote.
No, that doesn’t remotely follow. Alicorn could (and likely did) believe that Eliezer is better equipped to or has simply had more motivation to look into things like probability of success.
Please explain.
I can’t exclude that that was her reasoning, but cryonics requires a significant lifelong financial committment, and conditional on the belief that it might actually work with non-negligible probability, the choice of the organization and type of service becomes paramount (for instance, IIUC, CI’s typical service results in even much more ischemia than Alcor’s). Why would you make such an important decision just by copying what somebody else did, in particular when this person is not an expert?
On the other hand, if you want to signal allegiance and gain status within a community, it makes perfectly sense to emulate the alpha.
I disagree. Sure, “I did X because I wanted to do X” is incomplete as an explanation, if you don’t also add what makes you want to do X (intrinsic pleasure, a sense of duty/morals, a promise of better financial prospects or better health, etc.) Alicorn’s statement is comparable to “by default, one does not exercise (true for most people), and I wanted to be fitter and healthier, so I pre-committed by signing up for a weekly yoga class.” Would you agree that it was a meaningful statement if she had said “I wanted to have the benefits of having signed up”?
Sure. But she didn’t contend by point that signing up early has benefits.
Unless you mean pleasurable in a broader sense than equal, that’s not necessarily the case. People can have other terminal values besides pleasure. (But I agree that being signed up for cryonics is unlikely to be one.)
I think she means that P(she will able to afford the premiums|she signs up now) is close to 1 and P(she will able to afford the premiums|she signs up in her late forties) isn’t, not that the former is literally 1.
I meant it in a broad sense.
Then you might want to use a different term than “pleasurable”. I’d go with Fun (capital F), but “desirable” or “valuable” would also be OK.
Source? Sure, the leading cause of death below about 35 seems to be car accidents (and traumatic injuries in general), but looking at http://www.theegglestongroup.com/writing/deathstats/deathstats_2007_all_by_age.php, that’s still only about 41% violent accidents, furthermore, from these sources it looks like only about 1⁄3 of deaths by traumatic injury are due to traumatic brain injury, so—bumping that up to 1⁄2, since an injury can involve TBI without that being the “cause of death”—we have about a 20.5% chance of brain trauma given death by injury. Add 27% for homocide (~13%) and suicide (~14%), after which I assume you’re unlikely to cryonically preserved soon enough, and you’ve got about a 50% chance of cryonics being applicable if you do die.
Surely some people would find that sufficient reason to sign up, unless I’ve missed something? (This pseudo-survey of figures was hacked together quickly very late at night when I wondered about the statistics of it.)
Patterns-Of-Injury-MVAS:
“In the western world, the most common cause of death after trauma is severe brain injury.”
Moreover, other than direct traumatic injury, the brain can be also damaged by ischemia: 4-6 minutes of cardiac arrest are typically enough to cause irreversible brain injury, and more than one hour will pretty much destroy the brain tissue.
According to that article:
“In modern day civilian trauma centres, thoracic injury directly accounts for 20-25% of deaths due to trauma; thoracic injury or its complications are a contributing factor in a further 25% of trauma deaths [24].”
“Aortic injuries cause or contribute to 15% of MVA fatalities[25]. Most patients with blunt aortic injury die before they reach hospital, and the vast majority will have major coexisting thoracic and extrathoracic injuries[26].”
I’m not a doctor, but if I understand correctly, this means that most victims of fatal accidents, even those without traumatic brain injury, will reach the hospital already in cardiac arrest or with some condition that will progress to cardiac arrest within few hours. I suppose that in order to arrange prompt cryopreservation you need at least 1 − 2 days of warning.
So, according to your stats, I would say that in the age group you consider, about 70% of deaths wouldn’t allow prompt cryopreservation. Factor in the fact that you are unlikely to die in that age group anyway, and you cryonics at that age is probably not worth the cost, even assuming that it works as advertised.
Of course, this ultimately depends on how much you value your life versus your money: I suppose that manypeople have a knee-jerk reaction and say that they value their life an essentially infinite amount of money, but their actual preferences revealed by their spending behavior will probably be different.
Also, if you are very young, it’s likely that anti-agathics will be invented during your natural lifespan, and you’ll achieve negligible senescence without ever being vitrified and reanimated in the first place.
You know, ‘normal’ careers are becoming rarer and rarer these days. There are lots of people in late twenties or thirties today who haven’t found a stable job yet. (My mother is in her forties and she still hasn’t...)
In that case paying premiums would be quite difficult
I dunno, how much cheaper are they if one buys life insurance when in their 20s? IIRC they are very cheap for First World standards.
IIRC, when people asked him why he had chosen CI whereas Robin Hanson had chosen Alcor, he said he didn’t have that much money but Hanson did, so of course he would pick the cheap option and Hanson the high-end one.
Well, that works out. I don’t have much money either.