Revitalization is not a guarantee of a very long life—after one is revived the human race could go extinct.
Extinction is not something that just happens on a rainy day. It requires everyone to die before a new generation is there to take over in a basic sense. Either buy a big scale event or by such massive changes in the environment that we all get replaced. The chance for that to happen soon after the technique for revival is available and used is slim.
The whole ‘humanity might go extinct’ argument look rather FAR to me. People have children and expect them to grow up and have kids on their own while talking abstractly about peak oil, and wondering if humanity might make 2100.
In the long run there are all kinds of problems like the sun making earth uninhabitable, but if you get revived way before that you have many years to enjoy and time to find a way out.
Which all is a long winded way to ask for an elaboration on that point.
I made the point that you quote because I was anticipating an argument of the type “but cryopreservation has really high expected value because if it works the person frozen can live for many billions of years!” I agree with what you say.
Switch the ‘b’ for a ‘m’, or lets just say its a thousand years. There is no save way to distinguish these.
It would suck to get revived and then die from natural causes a few years later, but considering the effort needed to get awoken in the first place that does not seem likely.
You probably saw Aubrey deGreys lecture on the repeated application of enhancements.
Heck what if it only doubles the lifespan instead of multiplying it by insanely high numbers? If you could place everyone who is currently alive (including those suffering terminal illness) in a situation where they live exactly twice as long as a healthy person today, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t that have the same or greater moral utility as saving the lives of everyone on earth from a massive meteorite strike or some such? (Assuming a few dozen breeding humans survive so it’s not an extinction event.)
Cryonics could potentially accomplish this, with (according to Robin) a 5% chance. But only if it is adopted globally and soon (i.e. before such a time as they would be saved anyway, or are dead already).
One possible approach you can take for maximized altruism is simply to support global cryonics without signing up for the small-scale kind. Personally I see signing up myself as a way to lead by example (though I haven’t done it yet). Cryonics is in its “early adopter” stage. The sooner it rolls out for mass production, the sooner its real benefits can be realized.
There’s a difference between increasing the lifespans of people and increasing the numbers. The difference between someone living forever and someone living 20 years can be made up for by having an extra kid every 20 years. The bottleneck is how many people the world can support, not how many are born.
Also, saving the lives of everyone on Earth implies allowing them to have kids, and their kids to have kids. It’s saving the total number of people the Earth will support, not just the ones alive at the moment.
Either number is arbitrary. There is no particular reason for a life to end at some specific point. And many problems can be solved.
You can even specify: ‘Only revive me if life expectancy goes over n years’
Extinction is not something that just happens on a rainy day. It requires everyone to die before a new generation is there to take over in a basic sense. Either buy a big scale event or by such massive changes in the environment that we all get replaced. The chance for that to happen soon after the technique for revival is available and used is slim. The whole ‘humanity might go extinct’ argument look rather FAR to me. People have children and expect them to grow up and have kids on their own while talking abstractly about peak oil, and wondering if humanity might make 2100. In the long run there are all kinds of problems like the sun making earth uninhabitable, but if you get revived way before that you have many years to enjoy and time to find a way out.
Which all is a long winded way to ask for an elaboration on that point.
I made the point that you quote because I was anticipating an argument of the type “but cryopreservation has really high expected value because if it works the person frozen can live for many billions of years!” I agree with what you say.
Switch the ‘b’ for a ‘m’, or lets just say its a thousand years. There is no save way to distinguish these. It would suck to get revived and then die from natural causes a few years later, but considering the effort needed to get awoken in the first place that does not seem likely. You probably saw Aubrey deGreys lecture on the repeated application of enhancements.
Heck what if it only doubles the lifespan instead of multiplying it by insanely high numbers? If you could place everyone who is currently alive (including those suffering terminal illness) in a situation where they live exactly twice as long as a healthy person today, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t that have the same or greater moral utility as saving the lives of everyone on earth from a massive meteorite strike or some such? (Assuming a few dozen breeding humans survive so it’s not an extinction event.)
Cryonics could potentially accomplish this, with (according to Robin) a 5% chance. But only if it is adopted globally and soon (i.e. before such a time as they would be saved anyway, or are dead already).
One possible approach you can take for maximized altruism is simply to support global cryonics without signing up for the small-scale kind. Personally I see signing up myself as a way to lead by example (though I haven’t done it yet). Cryonics is in its “early adopter” stage. The sooner it rolls out for mass production, the sooner its real benefits can be realized.
There’s a difference between increasing the lifespans of people and increasing the numbers. The difference between someone living forever and someone living 20 years can be made up for by having an extra kid every 20 years. The bottleneck is how many people the world can support, not how many are born.
Also, saving the lives of everyone on Earth implies allowing them to have kids, and their kids to have kids. It’s saving the total number of people the Earth will support, not just the ones alive at the moment.
Either number is arbitrary. There is no particular reason for a life to end at some specific point. And many problems can be solved. You can even specify: ‘Only revive me if life expectancy goes over n years’