“Carl, why say that about cryonics funding in particular rather than money spent on going to the movies? Also, anything to do with Africa has to be extremely carefully targeted or it ends up being worse than useless—actively harmful—this should always be mentioned in the same sentence, since Africa has been actively harmed by most aid money spent there.”
Agreed, that’s why I linked to GiveWell, an organization that evaluates charities for their demonstrated effectiveness, but it’s worth being explicit about it here for those who don’t check out the linked site.
“Sufficient popularity of cryonics, if the world lasts that long, would benefit a very large number of people. African aid couldn’t compete, only existential risk mitigation could.”
I would say the following:
If you expect a Singularity to occur by 2050, and have a pot of money to spend on ensuring that current people make it, the best 3rd world health initiatives will be more effective per individual you pay to help directly than paying for cryonics. Even if you expect a later Singularity, you can invest the money in a fund to be spent the cheapest triage opportunities involve malaria and the likethen there are cheaper triage methods available.
Once the cheap infectious-disease triage opportunities are exhausted, cryonics can be scaled to a much larger total population.
If cryonics were to become acceptable and desired, people would pay for their own, so there may be more chance for individual adoption of the practice by OB readers to meaningfully boost cryonics growth than to trigger a growth in effective philanthropy.
Existential-risk mitigation is clearly much better than either.
“I’m willing to accept such a reply from people who (a) don’t go to the movies and (b) spend a large fraction of their disposable income on existential risk mitigation, but not otherwise.”
What if they agree with Derek Parfit that altruism towards our future selves and altruism to others are on a par with each other? Movies are a present temptation, but cryonics does not force itself on them, so they’re not motivated to favor their frozen selves over others who might make up the future population?
“Carl, why say that about cryonics funding in particular rather than money spent on going to the movies? Also, anything to do with Africa has to be extremely carefully targeted or it ends up being worse than useless—actively harmful—this should always be mentioned in the same sentence, since Africa has been actively harmed by most aid money spent there.”
Agreed, that’s why I linked to GiveWell, an organization that evaluates charities for their demonstrated effectiveness, but it’s worth being explicit about it here for those who don’t check out the linked site.
“Sufficient popularity of cryonics, if the world lasts that long, would benefit a very large number of people. African aid couldn’t compete, only existential risk mitigation could.”
I would say the following:
If you expect a Singularity to occur by 2050, and have a pot of money to spend on ensuring that current people make it, the best 3rd world health initiatives will be more effective per individual you pay to help directly than paying for cryonics. Even if you expect a later Singularity, you can invest the money in a fund to be spent the cheapest triage opportunities involve malaria and the likethen there are cheaper triage methods available.
Once the cheap infectious-disease triage opportunities are exhausted, cryonics can be scaled to a much larger total population.
If cryonics were to become acceptable and desired, people would pay for their own, so there may be more chance for individual adoption of the practice by OB readers to meaningfully boost cryonics growth than to trigger a growth in effective philanthropy.
Existential-risk mitigation is clearly much better than either.
“I’m willing to accept such a reply from people who (a) don’t go to the movies and (b) spend a large fraction of their disposable income on existential risk mitigation, but not otherwise.”
What if they agree with Derek Parfit that altruism towards our future selves and altruism to others are on a par with each other? Movies are a present temptation, but cryonics does not force itself on them, so they’re not motivated to favor their frozen selves over others who might make up the future population?