I don’t see what the rush for signing up for cryonics is all about.
My understanding is that while I’m young, accidents are the most common cause of death, and it’s hard to cryopreserve someone after an accident & cryonics works much better if you die in a hospital. So being covered for cryonics isn’t that useful when you’re young.
Once you accept that premise, it seems like you’re better off just putting more money in to your retirement fund or other investments in order to pay for your suspension when you’re older. Putting money in your retirement fund has tax benefits, and you’ll actually make money through the interest you earn rather than losing money to an insurance company. (Insurance companies are only profitable because they take more money in through premiums than they pay out, while the stock market has historically gotten decent returns, at least in the US.) I don’t find Rudi Hoffman’s reasons to fund your suspension through insurance very convincing.
As an added benefit, you can put off the decision of whether you want to go for plastination or not, whether you’re wealthy enough for full-body Alcor as opposed to head-only CI, and maybe other things until you have more information about cryonics technology and how much money you’re going to earn over the course of your career. (Another possibility is that the cost of cryonics will drop drastically and you’ll end up with way more life insurance than you wanted.)
Even if signing up through insurance is marginally better, it seems like a relatively small optimization, and I feel like I’ve got much better things to do at this stage of my life.
(FWIW, an LWer friend of mine who is a finance professional with a history of achieving above-market returns did a fairly thorough analysis of this, factoring in the possibility of an early un-suspended death, and independently came to the same conclusion I did.)
I would like to hear rebuttals of this reasoning, since it is a big contributor to my current cryocrastination and choice-stress.
The other big contributor is the article (written by Rudi himself) which insists that the cost of the procedure will increase significantly in our lifetimes and thus encourages you to fund your insurance as much as possible, rather just up to the current coverage costs.
It’s not a rebuttal, exactly, but mostly this seems like haggling over the price.
If you believe that signing up for cryonics makes sense at 50, then presumably you believe that your probability (Pd50) of dying that year in a cryopreservable way (e.g., in a hospital, not in an accident, whatever), your probability (Pv) of being revived post-mortem if you die in a cryopreservable way, and your estimate of the value (V) of being revived post-mortem are such that (V Pv Pd50) is greater than the differential cost of signing up at 50 vs 51.
It seems clear that Pd50 is higher than Pd20. All this business about accidents aside, you’re simply less likely to die at 20 than you are at 50. Call that factor X. You can look up actuarial tables to get a sense of it; it’s probably smaller than 1000.
You can also look up what you pay for your first year of coverage if you sign up at 20, vs 50. Call that difference Y.
So, the question is, is your estimate of (Pv V X) higher than Y?
If so, then it seems that the value of signing up for a year of coverage at 20 is worth the cost. If not, then it isn’t.
I find the idea of being confident of this equation at 50 but not at 20 to be outright bizarre… it seems to me that the vast uncertainty inherent in estimating V and Pv is such that if I’m confident cryonics is a good bet at 50, a few orders of magnitude one way or the other ought not significantly alter my confidence.
Fair enough. I just have trouble believing that it’s a factor that’s actually large enough to affect the EV calculations people are actually doing, to the extent that people do EV calculations before signing up for cryonics at all.
Most of the time, when I listen to discussions like this I hear, “How much exactly do you want to not die?” To which my unequivocal response is “A WHOLE FUCKING LOT.”
Although, I’ve recently heard that the Young Cryonicist Gathering ends up being worth more as a vacation than you pay for cryonics. So that seems worth considering if the event sounds appealing.
I’d be interested to see rough figures, if possible. I was under the (vague) impression that a life policy could be worth it given how much premiums go up as you age.
But yeah, I’m way more worried about my older friends and family failing to sign up.
1) There are an awful lot of relatively probable accidents that end with me dying in a hospital after a trip to the emergency room. I’d actually really like to see statistics on what percentage of people who die in each age group have their brains squished. 2) If you take FAI seriously, it may be worthwhile to attempt to preserve yourself regardless of what kind of shape you’re in. I’m not certain a superinteligence could repair damage I can’t even begin to imagine how to repair, but I’m not very confident it can’t in many cases either.
I don’t see what the rush for signing up for cryonics is all about.
My understanding is that while I’m young, accidents are the most common cause of death, and it’s hard to cryopreserve someone after an accident & cryonics works much better if you die in a hospital. So being covered for cryonics isn’t that useful when you’re young.
Once you accept that premise, it seems like you’re better off just putting more money in to your retirement fund or other investments in order to pay for your suspension when you’re older. Putting money in your retirement fund has tax benefits, and you’ll actually make money through the interest you earn rather than losing money to an insurance company. (Insurance companies are only profitable because they take more money in through premiums than they pay out, while the stock market has historically gotten decent returns, at least in the US.) I don’t find Rudi Hoffman’s reasons to fund your suspension through insurance very convincing.
As an added benefit, you can put off the decision of whether you want to go for plastination or not, whether you’re wealthy enough for full-body Alcor as opposed to head-only CI, and maybe other things until you have more information about cryonics technology and how much money you’re going to earn over the course of your career. (Another possibility is that the cost of cryonics will drop drastically and you’ll end up with way more life insurance than you wanted.)
Even if signing up through insurance is marginally better, it seems like a relatively small optimization, and I feel like I’ve got much better things to do at this stage of my life.
(FWIW, an LWer friend of mine who is a finance professional with a history of achieving above-market returns did a fairly thorough analysis of this, factoring in the possibility of an early un-suspended death, and independently came to the same conclusion I did.)
Did you get this the wrong way around? I thought Alcor was more expensive but offered both full-body and head-only, and CI only offered full-body.
I’m not a cryonics expert and assumed that CI, being cheaper, would do head-only. Thanks for the correction.
I would like to hear rebuttals of this reasoning, since it is a big contributor to my current cryocrastination and choice-stress.
The other big contributor is the article (written by Rudi himself) which insists that the cost of the procedure will increase significantly in our lifetimes and thus encourages you to fund your insurance as much as possible, rather just up to the current coverage costs.
It’s not a rebuttal, exactly, but mostly this seems like haggling over the price.
If you believe that signing up for cryonics makes sense at 50, then presumably you believe that your probability (Pd50) of dying that year in a cryopreservable way (e.g., in a hospital, not in an accident, whatever), your probability (Pv) of being revived post-mortem if you die in a cryopreservable way, and your estimate of the value (V) of being revived post-mortem are such that (V Pv Pd50) is greater than the differential cost of signing up at 50 vs 51.
It seems clear that Pd50 is higher than Pd20. All this business about accidents aside, you’re simply less likely to die at 20 than you are at 50. Call that factor X. You can look up actuarial tables to get a sense of it; it’s probably smaller than 1000.
You can also look up what you pay for your first year of coverage if you sign up at 20, vs 50. Call that difference Y.
So, the question is, is your estimate of (Pv V X) higher than Y?
If so, then it seems that the value of signing up for a year of coverage at 20 is worth the cost.
If not, then it isn’t.
I find the idea of being confident of this equation at 50 but not at 20 to be outright bizarre… it seems to me that the vast uncertainty inherent in estimating V and Pv is such that if I’m confident cryonics is a good bet at 50, a few orders of magnitude one way or the other ought not significantly alter my confidence.
For total deaths, sure; for cryopreservable deaths, I have my doubts.
Fair enough.
I just have trouble believing that it’s a factor that’s actually large enough to affect the EV calculations people are actually doing, to the extent that people do EV calculations before signing up for cryonics at all.
Most of the time, when I listen to discussions like this I hear, “How much exactly do you want to not die?” To which my unequivocal response is “A WHOLE FUCKING LOT.”
My impression is there is much lower-hanging fruit than cryonics for young people.
Although, I’ve recently heard that the Young Cryonicist Gathering ends up being worth more as a vacation than you pay for cryonics. So that seems worth considering if the event sounds appealing.
I’d be interested to see rough figures, if possible. I was under the (vague) impression that a life policy could be worth it given how much premiums go up as you age.
But yeah, I’m way more worried about my older friends and family failing to sign up.
1) There are an awful lot of relatively probable accidents that end with me dying in a hospital after a trip to the emergency room. I’d actually really like to see statistics on what percentage of people who die in each age group have their brains squished. 2) If you take FAI seriously, it may be worthwhile to attempt to preserve yourself regardless of what kind of shape you’re in. I’m not certain a superinteligence could repair damage I can’t even begin to imagine how to repair, but I’m not very confident it can’t in many cases either.