more general cryonics goals like achieving reversible vitrification
Do people have the impression that signing up for cryonics makes reversible vitrification much more likely? My understanding was that the current vitrification process as used for cryonics is extremely toxic, but that’s fine because the most likely revival process would be scanning. I would expect future brain preservation research to be focused on issues like getting the cryoprotectant through the whole brain as quickly as possible, test scans of cryogenically preserved brains to see what level of detail is being kept currently, and alternative methods like plastination. While reversible vitrification would clearly be valuable for both cryonics and medicine in general, I think if you want more research into it you would need to explicitly fund it and you’re not going to get much of it as a spillover from signing up for the current version.
signing up does probably have a positive effect overall
It’s not just “is the effect positive” but “is the effect in the same range as the current best options”. If you think it’s 1/100th as much good for your money as donating to the best charity then you could count 1% of the spending as altruistic and the rest as self-spending, but I think you need to get up to at least 1/10th before this bookkeeping becomes worth it.
the idea that there might be significant x-risk reduction in people anticipating extended life
This effect is roughly proportional to the number of people signed up, and you could probably convince multiple people to sign up with $80k worth of promotion. Even then, I’m not sure the x-risk reduction benefits here are large, especially compared with simply going around explaining the idea of x-risk.
a utilitarian might join a cryonics organization for the chance to network with a group of relatively wealthy individuals, with the goal of attracting donations to proven causes like AMF.
If you’re going to spend your time networking with wealthy people trying to get them to donate to better causes, is the pool of cryonics subscribers atypically good? How much time do you get to spend with other cryonics enthusiasts? How open to suggestions are they about donations? I would be surprised if this worked well.
a total utilitarian cares about utility for all lives over all time
What kind of utility are you thinking about? I was writing for someone with a vaguely hedonistic view, where death is bad because of the effect it has on those that remain and because it removes the possibility for future joy on the part of the deceased (if you’re not at malthusian limits). A preference utilitarian will see death differently, though, as a massive violation of preferences.
Thanks for the feedback; several things I want to go back and edit now. Is that ok, or are submissions one-time?
Do people have the impression that signing up for cryonics makes reversible vitrification much more likely?
I certainly assign it high probability (although not necessarily that it is the best way to accomplish this specific goal). The only scientists that I’m aware of pursuing the goal of whole organ vitrification are Greg Fahy and Brian Wowk of 21st Century Medicine, who are also cryonicists and whose main source of funding seems to be cryonics. Chana and Aschwin de Wolf are also cryonicists, and do neural cryobiology experiments—a topic that is basically unheard of outside of cryonics.
My understanding was that the current vitrification process as used for cryonics is extremely toxic, but that’s fine because the most likely revival process would be scanning.
I would describe it as somewhat toxic, but not on par with say fixatives. Effective toxicity is dependent on exposure time, so faster cooling is a factor there. In any case, vitrification is something we can expect incremental improvements to result in higher viability in larger organs over time.
I would expect future brain preservation research to be focused on issues like getting the cryoprotectant through the whole brain as quickly as possible, test scans of cryogenically preserved brains to see what level of detail is being kept currently, and alternative methods like plastination.
Yes, scanning is good, but viability assays are arguably better in some respects because something that doesn’t harm viability is less likely to harm things that you can’t detect with current scanning tech.
If you vitrify a small slice of brain tissue, the cryoprotectant can be washed out and the cells will resume functioning. I expect work that improves viability in larger organs and whole brains to involve the discovery of less toxic cryoprotectants and/or delivery of such past cell membranes and the blood brain barrier. Another approach is supercooling, which allows lower concentrations of cryoprotectant because it avoids ice formation below the freezing point.
While reversible vitrification would clearly be valuable for both cryonics and medicine in general, I think if you want more research into it you would need to explicitly fund it and you’re not going to get much of it as a spillover from signing up for the current version.
That seems like a reasonable position, but it could be wrong due to network effects and so forth. I don’t see any kind of public outreach designed to get people to donate money to focused cryonics research, rather I see private networking between wealthy cryonicists as being the major factor in the present environment. That’s something that can be affected indirectly by an individual signing up (by influencing wealthy people in your social network to become interested), I think.
It’s not just “is the effect positive” but “is the effect in the same range as the current best options”. If you think it’s 1/100th as much good for your money as donating to the best charity then you could count 1% of the spending as altruistic and the rest as self-spending, but I think you need to get up to at least 1/10th before this bookkeeping becomes worth it.
Perhaps, but note that the significance of x-risk overall is higher in a world where everyone lives a lot longer. So the percent to which this matters should be affected by your confidence in the soon discovery of life extension (even if you don’t personally experience life extension).
What kind of utility are you thinking about? I was writing for someone with a vaguely hedonistic view, where death is bad because of the effect it has on those that remain and because it removes the possibility for future joy on the part of the deceased (if you’re not at malthusian limits). A preference utilitarian will see death differently, though, as a massive violation of preferences.
I’m thinking that some kind of preference-based utility could still be considered as a total over time—the more sentient beings whose preferences are met over time, the more utility there is.
I’ve made some edits. There’s a more general point I want to make about how if you think there are lots of potential small benefits to cryonics you probably do better altruistically to pick the one you think is most important (xrisk reduction, medical benefits of vitrification tech, convincing wealthy people to donate to the AMF) and just work on that, but I’m not happy with my phrasing yet,
Makes sense. I should like to expand that some.
Do people have the impression that signing up for cryonics makes reversible vitrification much more likely? My understanding was that the current vitrification process as used for cryonics is extremely toxic, but that’s fine because the most likely revival process would be scanning. I would expect future brain preservation research to be focused on issues like getting the cryoprotectant through the whole brain as quickly as possible, test scans of cryogenically preserved brains to see what level of detail is being kept currently, and alternative methods like plastination. While reversible vitrification would clearly be valuable for both cryonics and medicine in general, I think if you want more research into it you would need to explicitly fund it and you’re not going to get much of it as a spillover from signing up for the current version.
It’s not just “is the effect positive” but “is the effect in the same range as the current best options”. If you think it’s 1/100th as much good for your money as donating to the best charity then you could count 1% of the spending as altruistic and the rest as self-spending, but I think you need to get up to at least 1/10th before this bookkeeping becomes worth it.
This effect is roughly proportional to the number of people signed up, and you could probably convince multiple people to sign up with $80k worth of promotion. Even then, I’m not sure the x-risk reduction benefits here are large, especially compared with simply going around explaining the idea of x-risk.
If you’re going to spend your time networking with wealthy people trying to get them to donate to better causes, is the pool of cryonics subscribers atypically good? How much time do you get to spend with other cryonics enthusiasts? How open to suggestions are they about donations? I would be surprised if this worked well.
What kind of utility are you thinking about? I was writing for someone with a vaguely hedonistic view, where death is bad because of the effect it has on those that remain and because it removes the possibility for future joy on the part of the deceased (if you’re not at malthusian limits). A preference utilitarian will see death differently, though, as a massive violation of preferences.
Thanks for the feedback; several things I want to go back and edit now. Is that ok, or are submissions one-time?
Feel free to make edits.
I certainly assign it high probability (although not necessarily that it is the best way to accomplish this specific goal). The only scientists that I’m aware of pursuing the goal of whole organ vitrification are Greg Fahy and Brian Wowk of 21st Century Medicine, who are also cryonicists and whose main source of funding seems to be cryonics. Chana and Aschwin de Wolf are also cryonicists, and do neural cryobiology experiments—a topic that is basically unheard of outside of cryonics.
I would describe it as somewhat toxic, but not on par with say fixatives. Effective toxicity is dependent on exposure time, so faster cooling is a factor there. In any case, vitrification is something we can expect incremental improvements to result in higher viability in larger organs over time.
Yes, scanning is good, but viability assays are arguably better in some respects because something that doesn’t harm viability is less likely to harm things that you can’t detect with current scanning tech.
If you vitrify a small slice of brain tissue, the cryoprotectant can be washed out and the cells will resume functioning. I expect work that improves viability in larger organs and whole brains to involve the discovery of less toxic cryoprotectants and/or delivery of such past cell membranes and the blood brain barrier. Another approach is supercooling, which allows lower concentrations of cryoprotectant because it avoids ice formation below the freezing point.
That seems like a reasonable position, but it could be wrong due to network effects and so forth. I don’t see any kind of public outreach designed to get people to donate money to focused cryonics research, rather I see private networking between wealthy cryonicists as being the major factor in the present environment. That’s something that can be affected indirectly by an individual signing up (by influencing wealthy people in your social network to become interested), I think.
Perhaps, but note that the significance of x-risk overall is higher in a world where everyone lives a lot longer. So the percent to which this matters should be affected by your confidence in the soon discovery of life extension (even if you don’t personally experience life extension).
I’m thinking that some kind of preference-based utility could still be considered as a total over time—the more sentient beings whose preferences are met over time, the more utility there is.
I’ve made some edits. There’s a more general point I want to make about how if you think there are lots of potential small benefits to cryonics you probably do better altruistically to pick the one you think is most important (xrisk reduction, medical benefits of vitrification tech, convincing wealthy people to donate to the AMF) and just work on that, but I’m not happy with my phrasing yet,