That’s not really true. Sure, it’s out reach of most of humanity, so in that sense you’re right. But for the average middle-class person in the developed world—which is the majority of people who’ll ever read your comment—this is not true. A basic life insurance policy is easily within their means.
We are talking about a cost on the order of magnitude of $100k to preserve your body—about as much as the average American manages to save for retirement. A dozen times the cost of a standard funeral. Enough to save dozens of lives. You may not be able to be reanimated, and there may be large future costs of reanimation as well as curing whatever fatal diseases you may have.
The benefit, hopefully, is “enjoy long life in a high-tech future.” That may well be worth the expense to you. But if we are just optimizing utils in the world, we might focus on shorter-term goals. Even if we hypothesize that life in that future world is amazing, we could commission a eugenically-optimized baby in the future world rather than preserving our own flawed selves at great cost. The desire that the future beneficiary be me rather than someone else is not coming from a strictly Utilitarian place.
But for the average middle-class person in the developed world—which is the majority of people who’ll ever read your comment
Make that ‘in the US and a very few other countries’. I live in Israel, am middle class and can see myself becoming quite wealthy in the future, but—no cryonics for me.
That’s not really true. Sure, it’s out reach of most of humanity, so in that sense you’re right. But for the average middle-class person in the developed world—which is the majority of people who’ll ever read your comment—this is not true. A basic life insurance policy is easily within their means.
We are talking about a cost on the order of magnitude of $100k to preserve your body—about as much as the average American manages to save for retirement. A dozen times the cost of a standard funeral. Enough to save dozens of lives. You may not be able to be reanimated, and there may be large future costs of reanimation as well as curing whatever fatal diseases you may have.
The benefit, hopefully, is “enjoy long life in a high-tech future.” That may well be worth the expense to you. But if we are just optimizing utils in the world, we might focus on shorter-term goals. Even if we hypothesize that life in that future world is amazing, we could commission a eugenically-optimized baby in the future world rather than preserving our own flawed selves at great cost. The desire that the future beneficiary be me rather than someone else is not coming from a strictly Utilitarian place.
You’re pretty close to an optimized cryonics sales-pitch for Objectivists.
Make that ‘in the US and a very few other countries’. I live in Israel, am middle class and can see myself becoming quite wealthy in the future, but—no cryonics for me.