The odds of success are, at a minimum, <5%… Don’t try.
One does not necessarily follow from the other. Don’t expect too much (I would put the odds around 1% myself) but it might still be worth a few hours or days of your time.
A new gambling house sets up in Reno. The owner undertakes to bet with everyone about whether or not he, the owner, will do his laundry tomorrow. Bets are made today and close at 6 PM. (Perhaps gambling houses already operate this way?) Do we, then, expect a rush of clients? The problem with this bet is that he, the owner, has some control over whether or not he does his laundry. Not only are the dice loaded, but he gets to pick, after all bets are laid, which loaded die to use. Computing probabilities only makes sense when the events bet upon are known to be random.
So the cryonicist, Donaldson argues, needs to think more like the owner of the casino in this example instead of like a passive gambler.
This odds-based thinking also tends to encourage passivity, a fault which I find in typical “skeptical” evaluations of the idea. The usual skeptic says something like, “Cryonics can’t or won’t work,” period; whereas the skeptic who likes solving problems looks at the situation and thinks more along the lines of, “Hmm, cryonics can’t or won’t work—if you do it that way.” Then he might try to think of ways to improve the statement of the problem so that it looks more solvable.
One does not necessarily follow from the other. Don’t expect too much (I would put the odds around 1% myself) but it might still be worth a few hours or days of your time.
These odds depend a great deal on the behavior of cryonicists in the here and now, instead of depending completely on the haphazard. Refer to:
RESPONSIBILITY, PROBABILITY, AND DURABILITY, by Thomas Donaldson http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/probability.html
Specifically Donaldson writes:
So the cryonicist, Donaldson argues, needs to think more like the owner of the casino in this example instead of like a passive gambler.
This odds-based thinking also tends to encourage passivity, a fault which I find in typical “skeptical” evaluations of the idea. The usual skeptic says something like, “Cryonics can’t or won’t work,” period; whereas the skeptic who likes solving problems looks at the situation and thinks more along the lines of, “Hmm, cryonics can’t or won’t work—if you do it that way.” Then he might try to think of ways to improve the statement of the problem so that it looks more solvable.
I read gwern and faul_sname as talking about the odds of convincing a relative to sign up, not the odds of revival.
Yes. Unfortunately, freezing is the only option as of right now, and it seems to require that a lot of things go right.