E (should go between A and B given your chronological ordering scheme): You die in such a way that high-quality vitrification/plastination is possible. (This variable gets overlooked way too frequently in these calculations).
Ah, good call. For a young and healthy person like me, that’s a significant factor, since the likely causes of untimely death would probably be unexpected and/or violent. (Anyone have an idea about how to estimate this one properly?)
(Anyone have an idea about how to estimate this one properly?)
Get some base rate cause-of-death statistics for people in your age group and geography. Exclude those deaths for which you are certain you are exempt (or just discount them appropriately according to your beliefs that you might die of them, but that’s a lot of work and the uncertainty is already so large that this won’t affect much of anything).
The hard work is finding good comprehensive stats on this. The WHO databases could be good fallback if you don’t have anything better / more specific. For Canada, these proved quite useful to get a general picture.
I did some research for myself, and came to the conclusion that E is (probably) low enough until some age group that I shouldn’t bother with cryonics until then. For my specifics, the rough base rates for sudden or destructive death are above 50%, while it’s down to something like 15% at 45-54.
The actual math for deciding that I used ended up having a few more factors, but overall what I’ve got is “don’t sign up for cryonics until 40+ unless some other evidence comes up (or the price goes down)”.
Well, yeah, it wasn’t just a factor of less than two. Discounting rates, decrease of marginal u / $, P(B) probably increasing over time, and a few other things came into account.
Not to mention the sheer increase in natural mortality rates - %-of-deaths gives you a ratio by which to cut down odds of success, but deaths-per-population is what counts in calculating expected utility of signing up for cryonics at a given time. These rates climb very sharply past 40, especially for the causes of death that cryonics can actually help with.
Overall though, I must admit (after taking another look at it) that my math is/was full of potential holes to poke at. I may be going over it more carefully at some point in the near future, or I may just end up signing up for cryonics to save myself the trouble and never have to think about it this much again (barring new evidence or other events, of course).
I did some research for myself, and came to the conclusion that E is (probably) low enough until some age group that I shouldn’t bother with cryonics until then.
On the other hand, while E increases with age, so does the cost of life insurance. On the third hand, so does your income and your net worth.
E (should go between A and B given your chronological ordering scheme): You die in such a way that high-quality vitrification/plastination is possible. (This variable gets overlooked way too frequently in these calculations).
Ah, good call. For a young and healthy person like me, that’s a significant factor, since the likely causes of untimely death would probably be unexpected and/or violent. (Anyone have an idea about how to estimate this one properly?)
Get some base rate cause-of-death statistics for people in your age group and geography. Exclude those deaths for which you are certain you are exempt (or just discount them appropriately according to your beliefs that you might die of them, but that’s a lot of work and the uncertainty is already so large that this won’t affect much of anything).
The hard work is finding good comprehensive stats on this. The WHO databases could be good fallback if you don’t have anything better / more specific. For Canada, these proved quite useful to get a general picture.
I did some research for myself, and came to the conclusion that E is (probably) low enough until some age group that I shouldn’t bother with cryonics until then. For my specifics, the rough base rates for sudden or destructive death are above 50%, while it’s down to something like 15% at 45-54.
The actual math for deciding that I used ended up having a few more factors, but overall what I’ve got is “don’t sign up for cryonics until 40+ unless some other evidence comes up (or the price goes down)”.
I’m surprised your math came out close enough for a factor of less-than-two to make a difference.
Well, yeah, it wasn’t just a factor of less than two. Discounting rates, decrease of marginal u / $, P(B) probably increasing over time, and a few other things came into account.
Not to mention the sheer increase in natural mortality rates - %-of-deaths gives you a ratio by which to cut down odds of success, but deaths-per-population is what counts in calculating expected utility of signing up for cryonics at a given time. These rates climb very sharply past 40, especially for the causes of death that cryonics can actually help with.
Overall though, I must admit (after taking another look at it) that my math is/was full of potential holes to poke at. I may be going over it more carefully at some point in the near future, or I may just end up signing up for cryonics to save myself the trouble and never have to think about it this much again (barring new evidence or other events, of course).
On the other hand, while E increases with age, so does the cost of life insurance. On the third hand, so does your income and your net worth.
And on the fourth hand, anti-agathics becoming available while you’re still alive would bring E back down.