When I realized cryo is real (documentation): About a year ago, I went on a date with someone who had signed up for cryo. I remember asking him whether it was expensive, and he told me that his life insurance paid for it. My feeling was “Oh, you can actually do that? I had no idea.”—and it felt weird because it seemed strange to believe that freezing yourself is going to save your life (I didn’t think technology was that far along yet), but I’m OK with entertaining weird ideas, so I was pretty neutral. I thought about whether I should do it, but I wasn’t in a financial position to take on new bills at the time, so I stored that for later.
My guess is he said (or meant to say) “life insurance” rather than “health insurance”. I don’t think there’s health insurance that covers cryonics. The idea that freezing yourself will save your life is indeed a weird one that should be carefully researched before you adopt that position. As you probably realize by now, cryonics involves (an attempt at) vitrification of the brain, which means that unlike normal freezing, ice crystals are (at least in ideal cases) prevented from forming.
Highly concentrated cryoprotectants must currently be used, and this does significant damage which needs to be repaired later. Thus it’s a conditional bet about scientific unknowns—if technology reaches a certain level, having my brain vitrified may turn out to save it well enough that science can restore me to a healthy existence (which may or may not be all digital). Most cryonics advocates do not take the hard line of belief that it definitely will save their life, but that it presents a good enough chance to be worth it given the sum of current scientific knowledge.
In my opinion, the chance of it working must exceed something in the range of 1% to be reasonable and not considered quackery. My reasoning is that the cost is in the $50k range ($28k-$150k) whereas actuaries budget somewhere in the range of $5M towards saving human lives in matters of public safety. Spending $50k on a procedure with .01% chance of working is only for rich egoists and/or people who assign a much higher value to the longevity and self-improvement opportunities of the future. Go too much lower than that and you end up with a “pascal’s wager” kind of scenario, which could conceivably justify all kinds of quackery. In any case I think it is safe to say that if the chance is greater than 1%, it is something that everyone should have access to, and should ideally be covered by medical insurance.
The chance of it working seems to be much higher than that, in the average person’s mind. But then, average people often accept all kinds of weird ideas so that’s probably not the best metric available to us. How scientists (especially those with relevant expertise) feel about it is the major question. I would be curious as to what a survey of scientists with relevant expertise would turn up. What is disturbing to me (and what turned me from a fairly neutral party into something of an activist) is how unimportant the topic seems to be treated by both the scientific community and the nonscientific world. This should be hotly debated, not dismissed out of hand.
I suspect social causes are a dominating one, and I suspect women on average may have a better grasp on the social causes than men on average. So my plea to females (since that’s the point of this thread, coming up with more female-appealing arguments) would be to at least try and understand this from the perspective of advocates and why we are passionately in favor of it. Read Kim Suozzi’s description of her reasoning—it is a logical step to take when you don’t feel you are done living and think science is likely to conquer the problems involved.
As to the creepiness of freezing people, well, while a negative visceral first reaction is understandable, there’s nothing about it that is any creepier than what emergency and surgical medicine already entails, and more science is (usually) a good thing for humanity. We’ve been shipping organs on ice and transplanting them for decades, and we’ve reanimated stopped-heart “dead” patients for even longer.
Another reason might be that it seems like “mad science”. Mad science as seen in fiction is ambitious (which cryonics also is) but it is also cruel and morally indifferent. This is where the chance of it working is important, because if there is a sufficiently good chance of it working, cryonics becomes something that compassionate people are motivated by, not just egoists.
However even if the chances are too low for compassionate motives to come into play much, there does not appear to be any reason to regard it as cruel, since patients are completely unconscious (some of the drugs perfused in the legally dead patient are strong anesthetics) before they are cooled. And it is something patients choose for themselves rather than having it forced upon them.
I don’t know if there’s any way of telling what the real probability of revival is. Do you know of a good source on this?
This should be hotly debated, not dismissed out of hand.
Well I got that part right at least. (:
understand this from the perspective of advocates and why we are passionately in favor of it
It’s true that I don’t know why you’re passionately in favor of it. I know that Eliezer is passionately in favor because he lost his brother. That makes sense to me. Considering my concerns about waking up as a horror, and the fact that I don’t have any family members that are signed up for cryo who will miss a chance at interacting with me in the future if I don’t sign up, that simply doesn’t apply in my case.
Read Kim Suozzi’s description of her reasoning
I don’t know where that is. Do you?
As to the creepiness of freezing people
It’s not creepy to me anymore. It was depicted as creepy in the cartoon, though—there were all these rows of really ugly alien looking bodies and some ominous music was playing and the children were theorizing about what they were and they realized they were dead.
Being frozen isn’t any creepier than being buried. My body has to go somewhere after it dies. Actually, I think this is less creepy—it’s a lot cleaner. No worms or anything.
mad science
I’m probably unusually accepting here. I have had a lot of fun doing things like touring a particle accelerator and hanging out with “mad scientists” in labs. I love it.
I don’t know how I got this way but I’m thinking it has to do with realizing that the “mad scientists” come up with awesome stuff sometimes.
When I realized cryo is real (documentation): About a year ago, I went on a date with someone who had signed up for cryo. I remember asking him whether it was expensive, and he told me that his life insurance paid for it. My feeling was “Oh, you can actually do that? I had no idea.”—and it felt weird because it seemed strange to believe that freezing yourself is going to save your life (I didn’t think technology was that far along yet), but I’m OK with entertaining weird ideas, so I was pretty neutral. I thought about whether I should do it, but I wasn’t in a financial position to take on new bills at the time, so I stored that for later.
My guess is he said (or meant to say) “life insurance” rather than “health insurance”. I don’t think there’s health insurance that covers cryonics. The idea that freezing yourself will save your life is indeed a weird one that should be carefully researched before you adopt that position. As you probably realize by now, cryonics involves (an attempt at) vitrification of the brain, which means that unlike normal freezing, ice crystals are (at least in ideal cases) prevented from forming.
Highly concentrated cryoprotectants must currently be used, and this does significant damage which needs to be repaired later. Thus it’s a conditional bet about scientific unknowns—if technology reaches a certain level, having my brain vitrified may turn out to save it well enough that science can restore me to a healthy existence (which may or may not be all digital). Most cryonics advocates do not take the hard line of belief that it definitely will save their life, but that it presents a good enough chance to be worth it given the sum of current scientific knowledge.
In my opinion, the chance of it working must exceed something in the range of 1% to be reasonable and not considered quackery. My reasoning is that the cost is in the $50k range ($28k-$150k) whereas actuaries budget somewhere in the range of $5M towards saving human lives in matters of public safety. Spending $50k on a procedure with .01% chance of working is only for rich egoists and/or people who assign a much higher value to the longevity and self-improvement opportunities of the future. Go too much lower than that and you end up with a “pascal’s wager” kind of scenario, which could conceivably justify all kinds of quackery. In any case I think it is safe to say that if the chance is greater than 1%, it is something that everyone should have access to, and should ideally be covered by medical insurance.
The chance of it working seems to be much higher than that, in the average person’s mind. But then, average people often accept all kinds of weird ideas so that’s probably not the best metric available to us. How scientists (especially those with relevant expertise) feel about it is the major question. I would be curious as to what a survey of scientists with relevant expertise would turn up. What is disturbing to me (and what turned me from a fairly neutral party into something of an activist) is how unimportant the topic seems to be treated by both the scientific community and the nonscientific world. This should be hotly debated, not dismissed out of hand.
I suspect social causes are a dominating one, and I suspect women on average may have a better grasp on the social causes than men on average. So my plea to females (since that’s the point of this thread, coming up with more female-appealing arguments) would be to at least try and understand this from the perspective of advocates and why we are passionately in favor of it. Read Kim Suozzi’s description of her reasoning—it is a logical step to take when you don’t feel you are done living and think science is likely to conquer the problems involved.
As to the creepiness of freezing people, well, while a negative visceral first reaction is understandable, there’s nothing about it that is any creepier than what emergency and surgical medicine already entails, and more science is (usually) a good thing for humanity. We’ve been shipping organs on ice and transplanting them for decades, and we’ve reanimated stopped-heart “dead” patients for even longer.
Another reason might be that it seems like “mad science”. Mad science as seen in fiction is ambitious (which cryonics also is) but it is also cruel and morally indifferent. This is where the chance of it working is important, because if there is a sufficiently good chance of it working, cryonics becomes something that compassionate people are motivated by, not just egoists.
However even if the chances are too low for compassionate motives to come into play much, there does not appear to be any reason to regard it as cruel, since patients are completely unconscious (some of the drugs perfused in the legally dead patient are strong anesthetics) before they are cooled. And it is something patients choose for themselves rather than having it forced upon them.
Yes, he said life insurance. Typo, sorry.
I don’t know if there’s any way of telling what the real probability of revival is. Do you know of a good source on this?
Well I got that part right at least. (:
It’s true that I don’t know why you’re passionately in favor of it. I know that Eliezer is passionately in favor because he lost his brother. That makes sense to me. Considering my concerns about waking up as a horror, and the fact that I don’t have any family members that are signed up for cryo who will miss a chance at interacting with me in the future if I don’t sign up, that simply doesn’t apply in my case.
I don’t know where that is. Do you?
It’s not creepy to me anymore. It was depicted as creepy in the cartoon, though—there were all these rows of really ugly alien looking bodies and some ominous music was playing and the children were theorizing about what they were and they realized they were dead.
Being frozen isn’t any creepier than being buried. My body has to go somewhere after it dies. Actually, I think this is less creepy—it’s a lot cleaner. No worms or anything.
I’m probably unusually accepting here. I have had a lot of fun doing things like touring a particle accelerator and hanging out with “mad scientists” in labs. I love it.
I don’t know how I got this way but I’m thinking it has to do with realizing that the “mad scientists” come up with awesome stuff sometimes.