What I want to do is sign up for neuropreservation and donate any organs and tissues from the neck down, but as far as I can tell that’s not even remotely feasible. Alcor’s procedure involves cooling the whole body to 0C and injecting the cryoprotectant before removing the head (and I can understand why perfusion would be a lot easier while the head is still attached). Also, I think it’s doubtful that the cryonics team and the transplant team would coordinate with each other effectively, even if there were no technical obstacles.
Okay? Do whatever you want to do. If you know your expected value for your cryopreservation and and the expected value you have for the life-saving you could be doing with your organs then it’s simple.
Eleizer’s say so matters only in as much as he may be able to help with the math of translating your preferences into a coherent utility function.
Seems worth mentioning: I think a thorough treatment of what “you” want needs to address extrapolated volition and all the associated issues that raises. To my knowledge, some of those issues remain unsolved, such as whether different simulations of oneself in different environments necessarily converge (seems to me very unlikely, and this looks provable in a simplified model of the situation), and if not, how to “best” harmonize their differing opinions…
similarly, whether a single simulated instance of oneself might itself not converge or not provably converge on one utility function as simulated time goes to infinity (seems quite likely; moreover, provable , in a simplified model) etc., etc. If conclusive work has been done of which I’m unaware, it would be great if someone wants to link to it. It seems unlikely to me that we can satisfactorily answer these questions without at least a detailed model of our own brains linked to reductionist explanations of what it means to “want” something, etc.
I imagine this is the case per case of successful recovery. But a lot of people die such that their organs aren’t recovered. That obviously needs to be factored in.
**On edit- It occurs to me that a lot of the cases where organs aren’t recovered are also cases where cryogenic preservation wouldn’t be possible. So I might be wrong about this. Maybe 3.75 is the right number to use.
Can someone think of cases where preservation is possible but organ recovery isn’t?**
Can someone think of cases where preservation is possible but organ recovery isn’t?
Elderly patient suffering organ failure due to aging. Death by cancer (not of the brain). Potential donor had HIV or othervery dangerous infectious diseases. Severe abdominal trauma.
I’m actually pretty surprised that you haven’t looked this up yourself yet. Is there a point of effectiveness at which you would switch to organ donation over cryopreservation?
ETA: Yes, I’m comparing you to a higher standard of rationality, diligence and altruism than I use for others, including myself.
Probably not, for two reasons. One, Kantian-type reasoning: Someone has to lead the way through the transition, since the ideal would be enough people cryosuspending that they could just integrate the organ donation protocols into it. Two, and more important, there’s a nonzero possibility that someone ends up wanting my brain for something interesting Before It’s Over—that I wouldn’t literally be out of the game.
Or do you mean to say that if your life didn’t possess those useful qualities, then it would be better, for you, to forfeit cryonics, and have your organs donated, for instance ?
And I’m actually asking that question to other people here as well, who have altruistic arguments against cryonics. Is there an utility, a value your life has to have, like if you can contribute to something useful, in order to be cryopreserved ? For then that would be for the greatest good for the greatest number of people ?
A value below which, your life would be best not cryopreserved, and your body, used, for organ donations, or something equally destructive to you, but equally beneficial to other people (and certainly more beneficial than whatever value you could create yourself if you were alive) ?
Personally, I’d rather sign up for cryonics. However, if your goal is to maximize the amount and quality of life lived, a plausible case can be made for either cryonics or organ donation. Organ donation will save some number of lives between 0 and maybe a dozen at best, depending on how you die. These lives will likely be elderly people who aren’t signed up for cryonics. The money that would have gone to pay for your suspension can also be optimally donated to save some more lives; the most commonly tossed around number is 28 third-world lives vs. a high-quality suspension from Alcor. The benefit of cryonics depends on its chance of working, and on how long and happy your post-revival life would be. A detailed analysis is here. It came out that both options are pretty close, i.e. within the massive error bars of each other.
In conclusion, I’d say either preference is “okay.” Go with your conscience.
If memory serves, you’ve said that your plan is to wait until your parents die and then kill yourself. Even if you do that and donate your organs, you should cryopreserve your head for a chance at waking up in a world you’d want to live in or could better help you with that. It’s much worse a strategy than just trying to live to see it, but still better than final death.
“Neuroseparation” is performed by surgical removal of the body below the neck at the level of the sixth cervical vertebra at a temperature near 0ºC. - - The cephalon (head), is then perfused with cryoproectants via the carotid and vertebral arteries prior to deep cooling. For neuropatients cryopreserved before the year 2000, neuroseparation was performed at the end of cryoprotective perfusion via the aorta.
If I understand correctly, at least Alcor’s current procedure for neuropreservation would be compatible with removing organs to be donated.
Thanks, it looks like I misremembered—if they’re now doing perfusion after neuroseparation then it’s much more likely to be compatible with organ donation.
Depending on how his question is interpreted, he was looking for permission / approval.
Specifically, I expect that he’s looking for community validation of the extremely low value he places on his own life.
Which is actually an interesting question, as I (unfortunately) don’t think it’s defensible to tell someone “No, your life is worth more than you personally value it at”.
Some people have times when they are suicidally depressed. I think it’s quite defensible to tell those people that their life is worth more than they personally value it at.
More generally, I don’t see any strong reasons to expect people to be less mistaken about their own life worth than about any other sort of value judgment.
Also, I don’t see any case yet for interpreting CronoDAS as doing anything more than simply asking a community that may have some insight into a given field (rationality), whether his reasoning or conclusions check out.
I think it’s quite defensible to tell those people that their life is worth more than they personally value it at.
Yes, but valuable to whom? To themselves? That seems contradictory. To others? Sure, but what are you going to do about, tell them they can’t do as they please with their life because other people value it more than they do? In some general sense of intrinsic value? That’s going to be difficult to define.
Also, I don’t see any case yet for interpreting CronoDAS as doing anything more than simply asking a community that may have some insight into a given field (rationality), whether his reasoning or conclusions check out.
This is an old comment so I no longer remember clearly, but he made remarks previously that were strongly indicative of my interpretation. I can possibly dig them up if you really wanted.
Is it okay to prefer to be an organ donor instead of signing up for cryonics?
This is the only reason I haven’t signed up.
What I want to do is sign up for neuropreservation and donate any organs and tissues from the neck down, but as far as I can tell that’s not even remotely feasible. Alcor’s procedure involves cooling the whole body to 0C and injecting the cryoprotectant before removing the head (and I can understand why perfusion would be a lot easier while the head is still attached). Also, I think it’s doubtful that the cryonics team and the transplant team would coordinate with each other effectively, even if there were no technical obstacles.
Okay? Do whatever you want to do. If you know your expected value for your cryopreservation and and the expected value you have for the life-saving you could be doing with your organs then it’s simple.
Eleizer’s say so matters only in as much as he may be able to help with the math of translating your preferences into a coherent utility function.
Seems worth mentioning: I think a thorough treatment of what “you” want needs to address extrapolated volition and all the associated issues that raises.
To my knowledge, some of those issues remain unsolved, such as whether different simulations of oneself in different environments necessarily converge (seems to me very unlikely, and this looks provable in a simplified model of the situation), and if not, how to “best” harmonize their differing opinions… similarly, whether a single simulated instance of oneself might itself not converge or not provably converge on one utility function as simulated time goes to infinity (seems quite likely; moreover, provable , in a simplified model) etc., etc.
If conclusive work has been done of which I’m unaware, it would be great if someone wants to link to it.
It seems unlikely to me that we can satisfactorily answer these questions without at least a detailed model of our own brains linked to reductionist explanations of what it means to “want” something, etc.
You’d need reliable statistics on the average number of lives saved per organ donor. If it works out to 0.1 then I wouldn’t accept that reply, no.
A Google search gives some hospitals and organizations claiming an average of 3.75 lives saved per organ donor.
I imagine this is the case per case of successful recovery. But a lot of people die such that their organs aren’t recovered. That obviously needs to be factored in.
**On edit- It occurs to me that a lot of the cases where organs aren’t recovered are also cases where cryogenic preservation wouldn’t be possible. So I might be wrong about this. Maybe 3.75 is the right number to use.
Can someone think of cases where preservation is possible but organ recovery isn’t?**
Elderly patient suffering organ failure due to aging. Death by cancer (not of the brain). Potential donor had HIV or othervery dangerous infectious diseases. Severe abdominal trauma.
Probably other stuff, too.
Sounds slightly suspicious. QALYs?
I’m actually pretty surprised that you haven’t looked this up yourself yet. Is there a point of effectiveness at which you would switch to organ donation over cryopreservation?
ETA: Yes, I’m comparing you to a higher standard of rationality, diligence and altruism than I use for others, including myself.
Probably not, for two reasons. One, Kantian-type reasoning: Someone has to lead the way through the transition, since the ideal would be enough people cryosuspending that they could just integrate the organ donation protocols into it. Two, and more important, there’s a nonzero possibility that someone ends up wanting my brain for something interesting Before It’s Over—that I wouldn’t literally be out of the game.
Do you also, simply, desire to live ?
Or do you mean to say that if your life didn’t possess those useful qualities, then it would be better, for you, to forfeit cryonics, and have your organs donated, for instance ?
And I’m actually asking that question to other people here as well, who have altruistic arguments against cryonics. Is there an utility, a value your life has to have, like if you can contribute to something useful, in order to be cryopreserved ? For then that would be for the greatest good for the greatest number of people ?
A value below which, your life would be best not cryopreserved, and your body, used, for organ donations, or something equally destructive to you, but equally beneficial to other people (and certainly more beneficial than whatever value you could create yourself if you were alive) ?
This seems to assume that the probability that someone will be eventually successfully revived given that they have signed up for cryonics is >10%.
Personally, I’d rather sign up for cryonics. However, if your goal is to maximize the amount and quality of life lived, a plausible case can be made for either cryonics or organ donation. Organ donation will save some number of lives between 0 and maybe a dozen at best, depending on how you die. These lives will likely be elderly people who aren’t signed up for cryonics. The money that would have gone to pay for your suspension can also be optimally donated to save some more lives; the most commonly tossed around number is 28 third-world lives vs. a high-quality suspension from Alcor. The benefit of cryonics depends on its chance of working, and on how long and happy your post-revival life would be. A detailed analysis is here. It came out that both options are pretty close, i.e. within the massive error bars of each other.
In conclusion, I’d say either preference is “okay.” Go with your conscience.
If memory serves, you’ve said that your plan is to wait until your parents die and then kill yourself. Even if you do that and donate your organs, you should cryopreserve your head for a chance at waking up in a world you’d want to live in or could better help you with that. It’s much worse a strategy than just trying to live to see it, but still better than final death.
Are you sure you can undergo neuropreservation while donating your organs (in light of simpleton’s comment)? Has it been done?
I don’t know of such cases. From http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/neuropreservationfaq.html
If I understand correctly, at least Alcor’s current procedure for neuropreservation would be compatible with removing organs to be donated.
Thanks, it looks like I misremembered—if they’re now doing perfusion after neuroseparation then it’s much more likely to be compatible with organ donation.
I’ve sent Alcor a question about this.
Do you have any particular reason to care what lifestyle choices people here consider ‘okay’?
Do you have any particular reason to suggest that every attempt to ask anyone else for advice makes the requester a conformist?
Not at all, which is precisely why I haven’t done that.
CronoDAS wasn’t asking for advice. Depending on how his question is interpreted, he was looking for permission / approval.
Specifically, I expect that he’s looking for community validation of the extremely low value he places on his own life.
Which is actually an interesting question, as I (unfortunately) don’t think it’s defensible to tell someone “No, your life is worth more than you personally value it at”.
Some people have times when they are suicidally depressed. I think it’s quite defensible to tell those people that their life is worth more than they personally value it at.
More generally, I don’t see any strong reasons to expect people to be less mistaken about their own life worth than about any other sort of value judgment.
Also, I don’t see any case yet for interpreting CronoDAS as doing anything more than simply asking a community that may have some insight into a given field (rationality), whether his reasoning or conclusions check out.
Yes, but valuable to whom? To themselves? That seems contradictory. To others? Sure, but what are you going to do about, tell them they can’t do as they please with their life because other people value it more than they do? In some general sense of intrinsic value? That’s going to be difficult to define.
This is an old comment so I no longer remember clearly, but he made remarks previously that were strongly indicative of my interpretation. I can possibly dig them up if you really wanted.