I think you’re probably saving less than 1 life on average by being a donor.
Random guess: you’re saving about .5 lives by donating, vs saving .05 of your own life by cryonauting.
Then there’s not just the organ donation—there’s the money you put towards cryonics that could have been donated towards charity (whether life-extension research, existential risk, or whatever).
If your goal was to maximize your own life no matter what, go for cryonics. Personally, I’m not emotionally entangled with a future life yet. For the time being, (in the event that I die, say, tomorrow) I’d rather donate my organs and life-insurance policy towards something that will do immediate good.
Conversely, that’s 0.5 lives which are extended by a few decades, versus 0.05 lives that might live for centuries. Other than that, I agree with you, but I don’t think organ donation should be a major obstacle if one is genuinely interested in cryonics.
This is the most important question. I would argue that the probability of succesful reincarnation is much lower than 0.05, and thus I go with organ donation. One’s probability calculations are going to change how one answers this question.
Its also worth noting that if one donates oneself to organ donation+scientific research (assuming we go the whole hog, which we might as well if we believe we will not be reaminated), the odds of me helping is definitely much higher than cyronics, and being risk averse is not necessarily a bad thing on a one time bet.
I don’t think (and so far haven’t read an argument claiming) that you personally signing up for cryonics impacts the actual number of lives that get to live forever. It just helps ensure that you get to be one of those lives.
If you’re taking the super-long view, and AREN’T making decisions for (understandably) selfish reasons, then the money you put towards cryonics will do more good if donated towards life extension research, or invested in space travel, or promoting a socioeconomic framework which can better handle the increasingly long lived population.
The extra half-life you also get to save via organ donation doesn’t end up mattering much in the long term, but unless I’m personally emotionally entangled with them, I value currently-alive people dramatically more that not-alive-yet people.
Actually, that statement was probably incorrect. This is an area where my moral framework isn’t well prepared to handle, and my attempts to fix it have all resulted in hypothetical outcomes I’m not happy with. (I’d elaborate, but it’s not really possible to do so without going through the entire function, which I should probably attempt to do soon but won’t right now)
I suspect that saving someone’s life would increase the total population by at least that much for the singularity, so you’re causing even more lives to live for centuries.
Why centuries? I’d expect if they can wake people up from cryonics, they could make them last more than a couple centuries.
If you want to weight lives on the long view, shouldn’t you focus on the people who will most effectively shape the future into accordance with your values?
More or less, yes. Whether you’re donating money/time to individual people or causes/organizations isn’t necessarily relevant. Cryonics helps you to personally reap the benefits of a future where we already “won,” but I don’t think it actually helps achieve that future. (It helps shift cultural norms towards acceptance of cryonics and longevity if you are vocal about it, but I’m not convinced that this is more beneficial to the world than actually donating to life extension research).
It’s still a perfectly legitimate selfish choice (though I’m pledging to donate a percentage of my income to charity, I certainly still spend money on selfish things).
By “immediate good” I didn’t mean “save X lives today”, I meant more along the lines of “immediately help fund research which will enable us to develop the ability to save X*N lives tomorrow.” (Right now I’m thinking I might want to donate to a group that develops experimental education programs, with rigorous attempts to figure out what works and what doesn’t and how it can be replicated in different communities. Improving education seems like the ultimate “high level multiplicative action,” if it’s done effectively. I’m not sure such an organization exists.)
On the subject of organs, if you have a particular person who you think will do a lot of good who can live if and only if they receive an organ donation, I suppose that’s better than donating to some random person, but I don’t think that’s an event you can easily plan for.
Random guess: you’re saving about .5 lives by donating, vs saving .05 of your own life by cryonauting.
Then there’s not just the organ donation—there’s the money you put towards cryonics that could have been donated towards charity (whether life-extension research, existential risk, or whatever).
If your goal was to maximize your own life no matter what, go for cryonics. Personally, I’m not emotionally entangled with a future life yet. For the time being, (in the event that I die, say, tomorrow) I’d rather donate my organs and life-insurance policy towards something that will do immediate good.
Conversely, that’s 0.5 lives which are extended by a few decades, versus 0.05 lives that might live for centuries. Other than that, I agree with you, but I don’t think organ donation should be a major obstacle if one is genuinely interested in cryonics.
This is the most important question. I would argue that the probability of succesful reincarnation is much lower than 0.05, and thus I go with organ donation. One’s probability calculations are going to change how one answers this question.
Its also worth noting that if one donates oneself to organ donation+scientific research (assuming we go the whole hog, which we might as well if we believe we will not be reaminated), the odds of me helping is definitely much higher than cyronics, and being risk averse is not necessarily a bad thing on a one time bet.
I don’t think (and so far haven’t read an argument claiming) that you personally signing up for cryonics impacts the actual number of lives that get to live forever. It just helps ensure that you get to be one of those lives.
If you’re taking the super-long view, and AREN’T making decisions for (understandably) selfish reasons, then the money you put towards cryonics will do more good if donated towards life extension research, or invested in space travel, or promoting a socioeconomic framework which can better handle the increasingly long lived population.
The extra half-life you also get to save via organ donation doesn’t end up mattering much in the long term, but unless I’m personally emotionally entangled with them, I value currently-alive people dramatically more that not-alive-yet people.
Why value currently alive people dramatically more than not-alive-yet people?
Actually, that statement was probably incorrect. This is an area where my moral framework isn’t well prepared to handle, and my attempts to fix it have all resulted in hypothetical outcomes I’m not happy with. (I’d elaborate, but it’s not really possible to do so without going through the entire function, which I should probably attempt to do soon but won’t right now)
I suspect that saving someone’s life would increase the total population by at least that much for the singularity, so you’re causing even more lives to live for centuries.
Why centuries? I’d expect if they can wake people up from cryonics, they could make them last more than a couple centuries.
If you want to weight lives on the long view, shouldn’t you focus on the people who will most effectively shape the future into accordance with your values?
More or less, yes. Whether you’re donating money/time to individual people or causes/organizations isn’t necessarily relevant. Cryonics helps you to personally reap the benefits of a future where we already “won,” but I don’t think it actually helps achieve that future. (It helps shift cultural norms towards acceptance of cryonics and longevity if you are vocal about it, but I’m not convinced that this is more beneficial to the world than actually donating to life extension research).
It’s still a perfectly legitimate selfish choice (though I’m pledging to donate a percentage of my income to charity, I certainly still spend money on selfish things).
By “immediate good” I didn’t mean “save X lives today”, I meant more along the lines of “immediately help fund research which will enable us to develop the ability to save X*N lives tomorrow.” (Right now I’m thinking I might want to donate to a group that develops experimental education programs, with rigorous attempts to figure out what works and what doesn’t and how it can be replicated in different communities. Improving education seems like the ultimate “high level multiplicative action,” if it’s done effectively. I’m not sure such an organization exists.)
On the subject of organs, if you have a particular person who you think will do a lot of good who can live if and only if they receive an organ donation, I suppose that’s better than donating to some random person, but I don’t think that’s an event you can easily plan for.