The probability of being successfully frozen and then being revived later on is dependent on the following
1)Being successfully frozen upon death (loved ones could interfere, lawyers could interfere, the manner of my death could interfere)
2)The company storing me keeps me in the same (or close to it) condition for however long it takes for revivification technologies to be discovered
3)The revivification technologies are capable of being discovered
4)There is a will to revivify me
These all combine to make the probability of success quite low.
The value of success is obviously high, but it’s difficult to assess how high: just because they can revivify me doesn’t mean my life will then end up being endless (at the very least, violent death might still lead to death in the future)
This is weighted by the costs. These are
1)The obvious financial ones
2)The social ones. I actually probably value this higher than 1. Explaining to my loved ones my decision, having to endure mockery and possibly quite strong reactions
The final point here is about risk aversion. While one could probably set up the utility calculation above to come up positive, I’m not sure that utility calculation is the correct way to determine whether to make such a risk. That is, if a probability of a one shot event is low enough, the expected value isn’t a very useful indicator of my actual returns. That is, if a lottery has a positive gain, it still might not be worth me playing it if the odds are still very much against me making any money from it!
So how would you convince me?
1)Drop the costs, both social and financial. The former is obviously done by making cryonics more mainstream, the latter… well by making cryonics more mainstream, probably
2)Convince me that the probability of all 4 components is higher than I think it is. If the conjoined probability started hitting >5% then I might start thinking about it seriously.
The social ones. I actually probably value this higher than 1. Explaining to my loved ones my decision, having to endure mockery and possibly quite strong reactions
You have to play a Long Game here, something I find increasingly easy to do as I have reached my 50′s. I told my original “loved ones”—my mother, my father (divorced from the former), and my sister—about cryonics a quarter century ago. They all considered it weird, but then whatever problems that might have caused me tend to correct themselves with time. My father died last October, for example, and now his ashes reside in a veterans’ cemetery in Arkansas.
As for other “loved ones,” I have had no candidates for that role so far. (Don’t sign up for cryonics for the dating prospects, in other words.)
(2) was a big deal for me as well, until I got used to it. Now cryonics has become a positive part of my identity that I’m proud to tell others about.
A friendly super-intelligence would easily solve (3) and (4). Keep in mind that most of the probability mass of cryonics working occurs if things turn out really well for the world. Conditional on cryonics working, you almost certainly would get an enormous benefit from greatly extending your life.
Less than 1%. I haven’t thought hard about these numbers, but I would say 1 has a probability of say 50/60%,2 10% (as 2 allows for societal collapse, not just company collapse) 3 10% (being quite generous there) and 4 40% which gives us
0.60.10.1*0.4=0.0024. If I’m more generous to 3, bumping it up to 80% I get 0.0192. I don’t think I could be more generous to 2 though. These numbers are snatched from the air without deep thought, but I don’t think they’re wildly bad or anything.
I don’t think that “risk aversion” is the right phrase. Risk aversion arises when you would get a high marginal utility of wealth in future states in which you are relatively poor. As a result, you want to even out your wealth across different states so you buy insurance. Cryonics is like insurance in that it reduces the harm of bad states so all else being equal the more risk adverse you are, the more willing you should be to buy cryonics.
Risk aversion arises when you would get a high marginal utility of wealth in future states in which you are relatively poor.
Risk aversion can be demonstrated even in trivial cases where you offer people a certain payout of $10 or a 50% chance of getting $20. I don’t think it’s about high marginal utility of wealth in certain future states.
Cryonics is not at all like insurance: insurance is about paying to protect yourself from a small chance that a bad thing will happen. Cryonics is about paying to get a small chance that a good thing will happen. It’s much more akin to a lottery (as Vaniver already pointed out).
Explaining my position would be more appropriate for a full post rather than a response to a response to a response, so for now I will tap out on this issue.
I think this gets into prospect theory territory: psychologically, cryonics is perceived more like a lottery ticket than it is like insurance, in that you pay in the common case to gain wealth in the rare case. To the extent that one is sensitive to losses (rather than having a concave utility function), that makes cryonics seem like a worse idea (and insurance better).
My argument against cyronics:
The probability of being successfully frozen and then being revived later on is dependent on the following
1)Being successfully frozen upon death (loved ones could interfere, lawyers could interfere, the manner of my death could interfere)
2)The company storing me keeps me in the same (or close to it) condition for however long it takes for revivification technologies to be discovered
3)The revivification technologies are capable of being discovered
4)There is a will to revivify me
These all combine to make the probability of success quite low.
The value of success is obviously high, but it’s difficult to assess how high: just because they can revivify me doesn’t mean my life will then end up being endless (at the very least, violent death might still lead to death in the future)
This is weighted by the costs. These are
1)The obvious financial ones
2)The social ones. I actually probably value this higher than 1. Explaining to my loved ones my decision, having to endure mockery and possibly quite strong reactions
The final point here is about risk aversion. While one could probably set up the utility calculation above to come up positive, I’m not sure that utility calculation is the correct way to determine whether to make such a risk. That is, if a probability of a one shot event is low enough, the expected value isn’t a very useful indicator of my actual returns. That is, if a lottery has a positive gain, it still might not be worth me playing it if the odds are still very much against me making any money from it!
So how would you convince me?
1)Drop the costs, both social and financial. The former is obviously done by making cryonics more mainstream, the latter… well by making cryonics more mainstream, probably
2)Convince me that the probability of all 4 components is higher than I think it is. If the conjoined probability started hitting >5% then I might start thinking about it seriously.
You have to play a Long Game here, something I find increasingly easy to do as I have reached my 50′s. I told my original “loved ones”—my mother, my father (divorced from the former), and my sister—about cryonics a quarter century ago. They all considered it weird, but then whatever problems that might have caused me tend to correct themselves with time. My father died last October, for example, and now his ashes reside in a veterans’ cemetery in Arkansas.
As for other “loved ones,” I have had no candidates for that role so far. (Don’t sign up for cryonics for the dating prospects, in other words.)
(2) was a big deal for me as well, until I got used to it. Now cryonics has become a positive part of my identity that I’m proud to tell others about.
A friendly super-intelligence would easily solve (3) and (4). Keep in mind that most of the probability mass of cryonics working occurs if things turn out really well for the world. Conditional on cryonics working, you almost certainly would get an enormous benefit from greatly extending your life.
Assuming that (3) is practically solvable. Super-intelligence is not omnipotence.
Depending on the definition of “friendly”.
Could you provide a probability value for “quite low”?
Less than 1%. I haven’t thought hard about these numbers, but I would say 1 has a probability of say 50/60%,2 10% (as 2 allows for societal collapse, not just company collapse) 3 10% (being quite generous there) and 4 40% which gives us 0.60.10.1*0.4=0.0024. If I’m more generous to 3, bumping it up to 80% I get 0.0192. I don’t think I could be more generous to 2 though. These numbers are snatched from the air without deep thought, but I don’t think they’re wildly bad or anything.
thakil, I have a deal for you:
I offer you an extra .5% probability of your getting to spend a million years in utopia. How much are you willing to pay?
A fairly small amount. Again, risk aversion says to me that a 1 in 1000 chance isn’t worth much if I can only make that bet once.
I don’t think that “risk aversion” is the right phrase. Risk aversion arises when you would get a high marginal utility of wealth in future states in which you are relatively poor. As a result, you want to even out your wealth across different states so you buy insurance. Cryonics is like insurance in that it reduces the harm of bad states so all else being equal the more risk adverse you are, the more willing you should be to buy cryonics.
Risk aversion generally occur when your subjective utility with respect to some quantity X is monotonically but sublinearly increasing.
In most economic analysis X is generally considered to be money, but it can be really anything else, including years spent in utopia.
Risk aversion can be demonstrated even in trivial cases where you offer people a certain payout of $10 or a 50% chance of getting $20. I don’t think it’s about high marginal utility of wealth in certain future states.
Cryonics is not at all like insurance: insurance is about paying to protect yourself from a small chance that a bad thing will happen. Cryonics is about paying to get a small chance that a good thing will happen. It’s much more akin to a lottery (as Vaniver already pointed out).
Risk aversion generally occur when your subjective utility with respect to some quantity X is monotonically but sublinearly increasing.
In most economic analysis X is generally considered to be money, but it can be really anything else, including years spent in utopia.
Explaining my position would be more appropriate for a full post rather than a response to a response to a response, so for now I will tap out on this issue.
I think this gets into prospect theory territory: psychologically, cryonics is perceived more like a lottery ticket than it is like insurance, in that you pay in the common case to gain wealth in the rare case. To the extent that one is sensitive to losses (rather than having a concave utility function), that makes cryonics seem like a worse idea (and insurance better).
Please demonstrate that your offer is credible :-P
See my book for why a singularity is likely near and the implications of this for cryonics.