So by asking people to choose among various hypothetical cryonics approaches with different traits, it seems like I should be able to gather some evidence about people’s motivations.
Which people are you thinking of asking? Existing cryo enthusiasts, would-be cryo enthusiasts who haven’t signed up, random citizenry?
I look at your increasing-debt scenario and wince mightily; that approach would leave me worse off than someone who simply immigrates as a refugee from the worst hellhole on the planet. I look at the latter… and wince again; that last clause implies that if insufficient other people enter cryonics near the same time as me, then my odds of being woken up at all decrease significantly, which would defeat the whole point of the exercise. I’m fairly sure that I would rather be alive and monetarily poor than not alive, so I prefer the former… though I can, of course, think of many other scenarios I’d prefer even more. And, of course, I’m about as un-typical a surveyee as you’re likely to find.
(shrug) Whichever people I’m interested in the motivations of. I would expect to get different answers for different subsets of the population. That said, surveying cryo enthusiasts to find out about their motives for rejecting cryonics would be more challenging.
Which people are you thinking of asking? Existing cryo enthusiasts, would-be cryo enthusiasts who haven’t signed up, random citizenry?
I look at your increasing-debt scenario and wince mightily; that approach would leave me worse off than someone who simply immigrates as a refugee from the worst hellhole on the planet. I look at the latter… and wince again; that last clause implies that if insufficient other people enter cryonics near the same time as me, then my odds of being woken up at all decrease significantly, which would defeat the whole point of the exercise. I’m fairly sure that I would rather be alive and monetarily poor than not alive, so I prefer the former… though I can, of course, think of many other scenarios I’d prefer even more. And, of course, I’m about as un-typical a surveyee as you’re likely to find.
(shrug) Whichever people I’m interested in the motivations of. I would expect to get different answers for different subsets of the population. That said, surveying cryo enthusiasts to find out about their motives for rejecting cryonics would be more challenging.