On a related note, Carl Shulman has said that more widespread cryonics would encourage more long-term thinking, specifically about existential risk.
I suspect the sign is positive. I don’t think pushing cryonics is anywhere near the efficiency frontier for disinterested altruism aimed at existential risk. If focused on current people, I think GiveWell donations would save more (save a kid from malaria, and they have a nontrivial chance of living to see a positive singularity/radical life extension to get there, plus GiveWell builds the effective altruism community and its capabilities). There are many, many things with positive expected impact relative to doing nothing, but that doesn’t mean they are anywhere near as good as the best things.
A more plausible moralized case for it would be something like “I want cryopreservation to work for myself, which requires public good contribution of various kinds, so I will cooperate in this many-player iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma.” Instead of stretching to argue that pushing cryonics is really at the frontier, better to admit you want to do it for non-existential risk reasons, and buy it separately.
Thank you for the clarification of your stance. The best counterargument seems to be that brain preservation has the potential to save many more lives than are lost due to malaria, if properly implemented, and yet receives very little if no funding. For example, malaria research received 1.5 billion in funding in 2007, whereas one of the only studies explicitly designed as relevant to cryonics is still struggling to reach its modest goal of $3000 as I write this.
they have a nontrivial chance of living to see a positive singularity/radical life extension to get there
How you do define and estimate this probability?
plus GiveWell builds the effective altruism community and its capabilities
True. But donations to cryonics organizations build the effective brain preservation community and its capabilities, and once again we are back to the question of which has the higher marginal expected utility.
Instead of stretching to argue that pushing cryonics is really at the frontier, better to admit you want to do it for non-existential risk reasons
Fair enough, I’ll defer to your expertise on existential risk.
they have a nontrivial chance of living to see a positive singularity/radical life extension to get there
How you do define and estimate this probability?
Life expectancy figures for young children (with some expectation of further health gains in Africa and other places with malaria victims in coming decades, plus emigration), combined with my own personal estimates of the probability of human-level AI/WBE by different times. I think such development more likely than not this century, and used that estimate in evaluating cryonics (although as we demand that cryonics organizations survive for longer and longer, the likelihood of success goes down). We can largely factor out the risk of such development going badly, since it is needed both for the vast lifespans of the malaria victims and for successful cryonics revivification.
We can save many malaria victims for each cryonics patient at current prices, which are actually less than the cost (due to charitable subsidies). Marginal costs could go down with scale, but there is a lot of evidence that it is difficult to scale up, and costs would need to fall a lot.
People saved from malaria can actively take care of themselves and preserve their own lives (and use life extension medicine if it becomes available and they are able to migrate to rich countries or benefit from local development), while cryonics patients have a substantial risk of not coming through due to organizational failure, flawed cryonics, conceptual error, cryonics bans, religious interference, etc.
Marginal costs could go down with scale, but there is a lot of evidence that it is difficult to scale up, and costs would need to fall a lot.
Would you mind going into details?
Plastination is a route that has been discussed but has had in my understanding zero research devoted to actually understanding whether it would work in humans for preserving personal identity. Ken Hayworth says that it could cost just a few thousand dollars.
Right now it may seem like there is no cheap route for effective brain preservation, but it is also clear that we as a species have not tried very hard to find out. Do you weigh that uncertainty in your calculations?
People saved from malaria can actively take care of themselves and preserve their own lives
One counter to this, which I do not necessarily endorse, is that people saved from malaria may also contribute to the world in negative ways, whereas preserved people are only likely to be revived if future society has good reason to believe that they will be a net positive.
ETA: Then again, I suppose there could also be strife and violence about the status of the preserved individuals, which actually might be worse in EV.
I was referring to the difficulty cryonics organizations have had in recruiting customers, and their slow growth. I was contrasting this to the rapid growth of cost-effectiveness oriented efforts in private charity in aid, and the sophistication and money moved of groups like GiveWell (with increasing billionaire support), Giving What We Can, Life You Can Save, etc.
Right now it may seem like there is no cheap route for effective brain preservation, but it is also clear that we as a species have not tried very hard to find out. Do you weigh that uncertainty in your calculations?
Yes, that’s responsible for much of the EV in my mind.
One counter to this, which I do not necessarily endorse
I first talked about cryonics not being at the frontier of existential risk reduction, and then separately said that I thought GiveWell type donations would do better for preserving current people than cryonics. I don’t think that marginal malaria cures have very large effects on existential risks, and was not making any claim about the sign (I am not very confident either way). I was trying to illustrate that for a variety of disinterested objective functions I was skeptical about cryonics promotion coming out on top, except in terms of the welfare of cryonicists (a motive I can strongly sympathize with).
ETA: I did not include plastination under the banner of cryonics (since it isn’t cryonics, in terms of temperature, organizational structure, or technology). It looks more promising from a state of relative ignorance.
Plastination is a route that has been discussed but has had in my understanding zero research devoted to actually understanding whether it would work in humans for preserving personal identity. Ken Hayworth says that it could cost just a few thousand dollars.
I suspect the sign is positive. I don’t think pushing cryonics is anywhere near the efficiency frontier for disinterested altruism aimed at existential risk. If focused on current people, I think GiveWell donations would save more (save a kid from malaria, and they have a nontrivial chance of living to see a positive singularity/radical life extension to get there, plus GiveWell builds the effective altruism community and its capabilities). There are many, many things with positive expected impact relative to doing nothing, but that doesn’t mean they are anywhere near as good as the best things.
A more plausible moralized case for it would be something like “I want cryopreservation to work for myself, which requires public good contribution of various kinds, so I will cooperate in this many-player iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma.” Instead of stretching to argue that pushing cryonics is really at the frontier, better to admit you want to do it for non-existential risk reasons, and buy it separately.
Thank you for the clarification of your stance. The best counterargument seems to be that brain preservation has the potential to save many more lives than are lost due to malaria, if properly implemented, and yet receives very little if no funding. For example, malaria research received 1.5 billion in funding in 2007, whereas one of the only studies explicitly designed as relevant to cryonics is still struggling to reach its modest goal of $3000 as I write this.
How you do define and estimate this probability?
True. But donations to cryonics organizations build the effective brain preservation community and its capabilities, and once again we are back to the question of which has the higher marginal expected utility.
Fair enough, I’ll defer to your expertise on existential risk.
Life expectancy figures for young children (with some expectation of further health gains in Africa and other places with malaria victims in coming decades, plus emigration), combined with my own personal estimates of the probability of human-level AI/WBE by different times. I think such development more likely than not this century, and used that estimate in evaluating cryonics (although as we demand that cryonics organizations survive for longer and longer, the likelihood of success goes down). We can largely factor out the risk of such development going badly, since it is needed both for the vast lifespans of the malaria victims and for successful cryonics revivification.
We can save many malaria victims for each cryonics patient at current prices, which are actually less than the cost (due to charitable subsidies). Marginal costs could go down with scale, but there is a lot of evidence that it is difficult to scale up, and costs would need to fall a lot.
People saved from malaria can actively take care of themselves and preserve their own lives (and use life extension medicine if it becomes available and they are able to migrate to rich countries or benefit from local development), while cryonics patients have a substantial risk of not coming through due to organizational failure, flawed cryonics, conceptual error, cryonics bans, religious interference, etc.
Would you mind going into details?
Plastination is a route that has been discussed but has had in my understanding zero research devoted to actually understanding whether it would work in humans for preserving personal identity. Ken Hayworth says that it could cost just a few thousand dollars.
Right now it may seem like there is no cheap route for effective brain preservation, but it is also clear that we as a species have not tried very hard to find out. Do you weigh that uncertainty in your calculations?
One counter to this, which I do not necessarily endorse, is that people saved from malaria may also contribute to the world in negative ways, whereas preserved people are only likely to be revived if future society has good reason to believe that they will be a net positive.
ETA: Then again, I suppose there could also be strife and violence about the status of the preserved individuals, which actually might be worse in EV.
I was referring to the difficulty cryonics organizations have had in recruiting customers, and their slow growth. I was contrasting this to the rapid growth of cost-effectiveness oriented efforts in private charity in aid, and the sophistication and money moved of groups like GiveWell (with increasing billionaire support), Giving What We Can, Life You Can Save, etc.
Yes, that’s responsible for much of the EV in my mind.
I first talked about cryonics not being at the frontier of existential risk reduction, and then separately said that I thought GiveWell type donations would do better for preserving current people than cryonics. I don’t think that marginal malaria cures have very large effects on existential risks, and was not making any claim about the sign (I am not very confident either way). I was trying to illustrate that for a variety of disinterested objective functions I was skeptical about cryonics promotion coming out on top, except in terms of the welfare of cryonicists (a motive I can strongly sympathize with).
ETA: I did not include plastination under the banner of cryonics (since it isn’t cryonics, in terms of temperature, organizational structure, or technology). It looks more promising from a state of relative ignorance.
For those interested, my notes on plastination: http://www.gwern.net/plastination
(Also, Darwin has provided me a lot of material on plastination I have lazily failed to get around to incorporating.)