Cryonics is free
I’ve been wanting to write a nice post for a few months, but should probably just write a one sooner instead. This is a top-level post not because it’s a long text, but because it’s important text.
Anyways. Cryonics is pretty much money-free now (ie. subsidized technically)—one of the most affordable ways to dispose of your body post-mortem.
Don’t die because you didn’t double-check whether the argument you came up against cryonics in 5 seconds checks out.
In the west coast in the USA, from Oregon Brain Preservation, as of around May 2024 I think:
Our research program is open to individuals in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. This is the same brain preservation procedure, with the goal of future revival if this ever becomes feasible and humane. The difference is that we will also remove two small biopsy samples, which will be transferred to our partner non-profit organization, Apex Neuroscience, to measure the preservation quality and contribute to neuroscience research. Although there are no guarantees, we do not expect these biopsies to significantly affect memories or personality. There is no cost for brain preservation if this option is chosen. There are no additional fees for transportation or for cremation of the body. Our current exclusion criteria for this program are more than 3 days after legal death without refrigeration, more than 14 days after legal death with refrigeration, or direct evidence of brain liquefaction. An additional non-required option is consent for DNA profiling, to further help research into the causes of brain disorders. To sign up for the program, please complete the appropriate above paperwork (Self Preservation or Next of Kin) and the form below.
Source: https://www.oregoncryo.com/services.html
In Germany it’s been around for longer, but most people don’t seem to know about it—Cryonics Germany offers free brain preservation:
Cryonics Germany operates a cryonics storage facility for neuro patients. The facility offers all technical requirements for suspension and permanent stor[a]ge in Germany. Only the brain is preserved. This is based on the premise that the brain contains the personality, knowledge, experience and emotions of the patient, and that the body can be cloned or replaced in the future. The brain is perfused with cryoprotective vitrification solutions, cooled and stored at a biopreservation foundation at liquid nitrogen temperature. For humanitarian reasons those services are currently offered for free and only a contract with the biopreservation foundation is required to declare the last will.
The advantages of that neuro storage are:
low costs, as only a small volume has to be stored and cooled
at present cryonics storage is for free, in total not more than a usual funeral
the body will be buried as usual according to individual wishes.
The neuro facility represents the first cryonics storage facility in Western Europe.
Source: https://cryonics-germany.org/en
I think both of those organizations can help coordinate remote cases with local thanatologists as well.
This trips my too-good-to-be-true alarms, but has my provisional attention anyway. The main reasons I’m not signed up for cryonics are cost, inconvenience, and s-risks. Eliminating cost (and cost-related inconveniences) could move me...but I want to know how this institution differs such that they can offer such storage at low or no cost, where others don’t or can’t.
Against s-risk concern: Hostile low-quality resurrection is almost inevitable (think about AI scammers who clone voices), so better to have high-quality resurrection by non-hostile agent who may also ensure that resurrected you have higher measure than your low-quality copies.
Why is hostile low-quality resurrection almost inevitable? If you want to clone someone into an em, why not pick a living human?
Frozen people have potential brain damage and an outdated understanding of the world.
Low-quality resurrections are already proliferating by bad actors. Two examples are voice cloning by scammers and recommendation systems by social networks. Also AI generated revenge porn in South Korea.
The main question is what level of similarity is enough for me to ensure personal identity. The bad variant here would be if only identity token is enough, that is, a short string of data that identifies me and includes my name, profession, location and a few kilobytes of some other properties. This is the list of things I remember in the morning when I am trying to recognize who am I. In that case producing low quality, but identically important copies will be easy.
[epistemic status: low confidence. I’ve noodled on this subject more than once recently (courtesy of Planecrash), but not all that seriously]
The idea of resurrectors optimizing the measure of resurrect-ees isn’t one I’d considered, but I’m not sure it helps. I think the Future is much more likely to be dominated by unfriendly agents than friendly ones. Friendly ones seem more likely to try to revive cryo patients, but it’s still not obvious to me that rolling those dice is a good idea. Allowing permadeath amounts to giving up a low probability of a very good outcome to eliminate a high(...er) probability of a very bad outcome.
Adding quantum measure doesn’t change that much, I don’t think; hypothetical friendly agents can try to optimize my measure, but if they’re a tiny fraction of my Future then it won’t make much difference.
Adding the infinite MUH is more complicated; it implies that permadeath is probably impossible (which is frightening enough on its own), and it’s not clear to me what cryo does in that case. Suppose my signing up for cryo is 5% likely to “work”, and independently suppose that humanity is 1% likely to solve the aging problem before anyone I care about dies; does signing up under those conditions shift my long-run measure away from futures where I and my loved ones simply got the cure and survived, and towards futures where I’m preserved alone and go senile first? I’m not sure, but if I take MUH as given then that’s the sort of choice I’m making.
I think low-quality resurrections by bad agents are almost inevitable – voice cloning by scammers is happening now. But such low-quality resurrections will lack almost all my childhood memories and all fine details. But from pain-view (can I say it?) it will be almost like me, as in the moment of pain fine-grained childhood memories are not important.
Friendly AIs may literally till light cones with my copies to reach measure domination, so even if they are 0.01 per cent of total AIs, they can still succeed (they may need to use some acausal trade between themselves to do it better as I described here).
i don’t think killing yourself before entering the cryotank vs after is qualitatively different, but the latter maintains option value (in that specific regard re MUH) 🤷♂️
I mean, it’s not a big secret, there’s a wealthy person behind it. And there’s 2 potential motivations for it:
1) altruistic/mission-driven
2) helps improve the service to have more cases, which can benefit themselves as well.
But also, Oregon Brain Preservation cost cost by:
1) doing brain-only (Alcor doesn’t extract the brain for its neuro cases)
2) using chemical preservation which doesn’t require LN2 (this represents a significant portion of the cost)
3) not including the cost of stand-by, which is also a significant portion (ie. staying at your bedside in advance until you die)
4) collaborating with local funeral homes (instead of having a fully in-house team that can be deployed anywhere)
5) only offering the service locally (no flights)
I visited Oregon Brain Preservation, talked with Jordan Spark and exchanged emails, and been following them for many years, and Jordan seems really solid IMO.
Cryonics Germany people seem very caring and seem to understand well how to work with a thanatologist. I also had email exchanges with them, but not as much.
🤷♂️
Concerns about personal s-risks makes sense.
I don’t understand the s-risk consideration.
Suppose Alice lives naturally for 100 years and is cremated. And suppose Bob lives naturally for 40 years then has his brain frozen for 60 years, and then has his brain cremated. The odds that Bob gets tortured by a spiteful AI should be pretty much exactly the same as for Alice. Basically, its the odds that spiteful AIs appear before 2034.
Right, but you might prefer
living now >
not living, no chance of revival or torture >
not living, chance of revival later and chance of torture
if you’re alive, you can kill yourself when s-risks increases beyond your comfort point. if you’re preserved, then you rely on other people to execute on those wishes
It’s not obvious to me that those are the same, though they might be. Either way, it’s not what I was thinking of. I was considering the Bob-1 you describe vs. a Bob-2 that lives the same 40 years and doesn’t have his brain frozen. It seems to me that Bob-1 (40L + 60F) is taking on a greater s-risk than Bob-2 (40L+0F).
(Of course, Bob-1 is simultaneously buying a shot at revival, which is the whole point after all. Tradeoffs are tradeoffs.)
Can I really trust an organization to preserve my brain that can’t manage a working SSL certificate?
I mean, you can trust it to preserve your brain more than you can trust a crematorium to preserve your brain.
And if you do chemical preservation, the operational complexity of maintain a brain in storage is fairly simple. LN2 isn’t that complex either, but does have higher risks.
That said, I would generally suggest using Tomorrow Biostasis in Europe if you can afford it.
In this recent podcast interview, Jordan Sparks, the founder and executive director of Oregon Brain Preservation (OBP), gives more information about the low-cost services OBP provides https://londonfuturists.buzzsprout.com/2028982/episodes/15517037-the-low-cost-future-of-preserving-brains-with-jordan-sparks
Kriorus in its best years used to allow post-mortem payment. That is, most of its clients were signed after death by the relatives. So it was technically free for the person who was cryopreserved.