I’ve yet to be convinced by the arguments for cryonics either. Given my age and health there’s a < 1% chance that I will die in the next 20 years. There are numerous reasons why cryonics could fail and I estimate the chances of it succeeding at < 10%. The events that would make it more likely to succeed will also tend to make my survival without cryonics more likely. Overall I don’t find the cost/benefit very compelling. The weirdness of it (contra the theme of Eliezer’s post) is a factor as well.
Well, life insurance by necessity does not give fair odds but I take your point.
Not telling anybody doesn’t solve the weirdness factor. I’d feel weird wearing a tin foil hat to prevent the government controlling my mind even if I only did it in secret.
Life insurance companies need to make a profit, but there’s a large gain from trade when you swap the life insurance proceeds for a cryonic suspension(1). The net return on the whole transaction is not necessarily negative.
(1) Though technically, the gain from trade isn’t just from trading money for cryonics, since money has no intrinsic value, just opportunity costs. The gain-from-trade comes from the three steps of (a) working some hours to get money, (b) trade small amounts of money in most Everett branches for large amounts of money in Everett branches where you die, which involves paying some overhead (c) trade life insurance proceeds for many hours in those branches. The gains emerge in steps (a) and (c).
The reason I’m not currently persuaded that cryonics is worth it for me is that it is one of quite a large number of things I could do that have a very low probability of a very large benefit. With cryonics there’s a high level of uncertainty around both the probability of success and the magnitude of the benefit. I don’t have the time or resources to sign up for all such things, nor do I currently have the inclination to devote the resources to investigating all of them thoroughly enough to narrow the uncertainty. Cryonics is hovering around the level where additional research may seem worthwhile whereas, say, buddhism is not. It hasn’t quite crossed the threshold yet however.
Say you survive the next 20 years and say your probability to die in the 20 years hence be < 10%. Would you sign up for cryonics then? If not, what is that probability of death which will make you sign up for cryonics?
PS: How did you come up with the probability of < 1% about your own death?
I’ve yet to be convinced by the arguments for cryonics either. Given my age and health there’s a < 1% chance that I will die in the next 20 years. There are numerous reasons why cryonics could fail and I estimate the chances of it succeeding at < 10%. The events that would make it more likely to succeed will also tend to make my survival without cryonics more likely. Overall I don’t find the cost/benefit very compelling. The weirdness of it (contra the theme of Eliezer’s post) is a factor as well.
But with life insurance you only pay that <1% worth, so it balances out.
If the weirdness is a negative factor, then just don’t tell anybody.
Well, life insurance by necessity does not give fair odds but I take your point.
Not telling anybody doesn’t solve the weirdness factor. I’d feel weird wearing a tin foil hat to prevent the government controlling my mind even if I only did it in secret.
If you know that the weirdness feeling is due to bad reasons, then tell it to go to hell :p
In a world full of crazies the right answer is going to feel weird, so you might as well get used to the feeling.
Life insurance companies need to make a profit, but there’s a large gain from trade when you swap the life insurance proceeds for a cryonic suspension(1). The net return on the whole transaction is not necessarily negative.
(1) Though technically, the gain from trade isn’t just from trading money for cryonics, since money has no intrinsic value, just opportunity costs. The gain-from-trade comes from the three steps of (a) working some hours to get money, (b) trade small amounts of money in most Everett branches for large amounts of money in Everett branches where you die, which involves paying some overhead (c) trade life insurance proceeds for many hours in those branches. The gains emerge in steps (a) and (c).
The reason I’m not currently persuaded that cryonics is worth it for me is that it is one of quite a large number of things I could do that have a very low probability of a very large benefit. With cryonics there’s a high level of uncertainty around both the probability of success and the magnitude of the benefit. I don’t have the time or resources to sign up for all such things, nor do I currently have the inclination to devote the resources to investigating all of them thoroughly enough to narrow the uncertainty. Cryonics is hovering around the level where additional research may seem worthwhile whereas, say, buddhism is not. It hasn’t quite crossed the threshold yet however.
Say you survive the next 20 years and say your probability to die in the 20 years hence be < 10%. Would you sign up for cryonics then? If not, what is that probability of death which will make you sign up for cryonics?
PS: How did you come up with the probability of < 1% about your own death?
http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/129_death_and_death_rates_by_age.html