Would you rather wake up with hundreds of years of debt or wake up to be the most wealthy man in the world? If the later, put money in a savings account, drawing compound interest, payable to yourself. If the former, do nothing.
An aside: H. G. Wells wrote ‘The Sleeper Awakes’ in 1910 (serialized in 1898 and 1899). In it a man falls into a drugged sleep for 200 years. A bank account established by his friends and family draws compound interest, a committee is established to guide his wealth, the committee gets wealthy and gains global political power, and the rest you can read for yourself. A quick search of LW finds no previous mention of ‘The Sleeper Awakes.’
This topic of compound interest has been discussed on OB extensively; search for ‘compound interest’ and ‘perpetuities’. There are serious reasons why the strategy is highly unlikely to work in the real world; Hanson covers some on OB and I cover some more in http://www.gwern.net/The%20Narrowing%20Circle
It’s a bit more complicated than that; there’s a common-law concept, usually called the rule against perpetuities, to prevent exactly that sort of permanent interest-gathering account. There are ways to try to get around that rule, such as setting up a very specialized trust; but even making the attempt requires a bit more than just opening a bank account.
That said, if a cryonicist is up to making the effort, it’s at least potentially worth the effort.
I have my doubts about this. You’re optimizing for a very narrow gap between societies with insufficient revivification tech and societies that are either too post-scarcity or Singularified or have undergone enough cultural or political drift that the money is worthless. And both the slow and fast routes to revivification seem like they would involve a LOT of that.
Would you rather wake up with hundreds of years of debt or wake up to be the most wealthy man in the world? If the later, put money in a savings account, drawing compound interest, payable to yourself. If the former, do nothing.
An aside: H. G. Wells wrote ‘The Sleeper Awakes’ in 1910 (serialized in 1898 and 1899). In it a man falls into a drugged sleep for 200 years. A bank account established by his friends and family draws compound interest, a committee is established to guide his wealth, the committee gets wealthy and gains global political power, and the rest you can read for yourself. A quick search of LW finds no previous mention of ‘The Sleeper Awakes.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleeper_Awakes
This topic of compound interest has been discussed on OB extensively; search for ‘compound interest’ and ‘perpetuities’. There are serious reasons why the strategy is highly unlikely to work in the real world; Hanson covers some on OB and I cover some more in http://www.gwern.net/The%20Narrowing%20Circle
It’s a bit more complicated than that; there’s a common-law concept, usually called the rule against perpetuities, to prevent exactly that sort of permanent interest-gathering account. There are ways to try to get around that rule, such as setting up a very specialized trust; but even making the attempt requires a bit more than just opening a bank account.
That said, if a cryonicist is up to making the effort, it’s at least potentially worth the effort.
I have my doubts about this. You’re optimizing for a very narrow gap between societies with insufficient revivification tech and societies that are either too post-scarcity or Singularified or have undergone enough cultural or political drift that the money is worthless. And both the slow and fast routes to revivification seem like they would involve a LOT of that.