Cryonics scales very well. People who think cryonics is costly, even if you had to come up with the entire lump sum close to the end of your life, are generally ignorant of this fact.
So long as you keep the shape constant, for any given container the surface area is a based on a square law whereas the volume is a cube. For example with a cube shaped object, one side squared times 6 is the surface area whereas one side cubed is the volume. Surface area is where the heat gets entry, so if you have a huge container holding cryogenic goods (humans in this case) it costs much less per unit volume (human) than is the case with a smaller container of equal insulation. A way to understand this is that you only have to insulate the outside—the inside gets free insulation.
But you aren’t stuck using equal insulation. You can use thicker insulation, with a much smaller proportional effect on total surface area as you use bigger sizes. Imagine the difference between a marble sized freezer and a house-sized freezer, when you add a foot of insulation. The outside of the insulation is where it begins collecting heat. But with a gigantic freezer, you might add a meter of insulation without it having a significant proportional impact on surface area, compared to how much surface area it already has.
Another factor to take into account is that liquid nitrogen, the super-cheap coolant used by cryonics facilities around the world, is vastly cheaper (more than a factor of 10) when purchased in huge quantities of several tons. The scaling factors for storage tanks are a big part of the reason for this. CI has used bulk purchasing as a mechanism for getting their prices downto $100 per patient per year for their newer tanks. They are actually storing 3,000 gallons of the stuff and using it slowly over time, which means there is a boiloff rate associated with the 3,000 gallon tank as well.
The conclusion I get from this is that there is a very strong self-interested case as well as altruistic case to be made for megascale cryonics versus small independently run units. People who say they won’t sign up for cost reasons may be reachable at a later date. To deal with such people’s objections, it might be smart to get them to agree with a particular hypothetical price point at which they would feel it is justified. In large enough quantities, it could be concievable that indefinite storage costs are as low as $50 per person, or 50 cents per year.
That is much cheaper than saving a life any other way, but of course there’s still the risk that it might not work. However, given a sufficient chance of it working it could still be morally superior to other life saving strategies that cost more money. It also has inherent ecological advantages over other forms of life-saving in that it temporarily reduces population, giving the environment a chance to recover and green tech more time to take hold so that they can be supported sustainably and comfortably.
This needs to be a top-level post. Even with minimal editing. Please.
(ETA: It’s not so much that we need to have another go at the cryonics debate; but the above is an argument that I can’t recall seeing discussed here previously, that does substantially change the picture, and that illustrates various kinds of reasoning—about scaling properties, about predefining thresholds of acceptability, and about what we don’t know we don’t know—that are very relevant to LW’s overall mission.)
Cryonics scales very well. People who think cryonics is costly, even if you had to come up with the entire lump sum close to the end of your life, are generally ignorant of this fact.
So long as you keep the shape constant, for any given container the surface area is a based on a square law whereas the volume is a cube. For example with a cube shaped object, one side squared times 6 is the surface area whereas one side cubed is the volume. Surface area is where the heat gets entry, so if you have a huge container holding cryogenic goods (humans in this case) it costs much less per unit volume (human) than is the case with a smaller container of equal insulation. A way to understand this is that you only have to insulate the outside—the inside gets free insulation.
But you aren’t stuck using equal insulation. You can use thicker insulation, with a much smaller proportional effect on total surface area as you use bigger sizes. Imagine the difference between a marble sized freezer and a house-sized freezer, when you add a foot of insulation. The outside of the insulation is where it begins collecting heat. But with a gigantic freezer, you might add a meter of insulation without it having a significant proportional impact on surface area, compared to how much surface area it already has.
Another factor to take into account is that liquid nitrogen, the super-cheap coolant used by cryonics facilities around the world, is vastly cheaper (more than a factor of 10) when purchased in huge quantities of several tons. The scaling factors for storage tanks are a big part of the reason for this. CI has used bulk purchasing as a mechanism for getting their prices down to $100 per patient per year for their newer tanks. They are actually storing 3,000 gallons of the stuff and using it slowly over time, which means there is a boiloff rate associated with the 3,000 gallon tank as well.
The conclusion I get from this is that there is a very strong self-interested case as well as altruistic case to be made for megascale cryonics versus small independently run units. People who say they won’t sign up for cost reasons may be reachable at a later date. To deal with such people’s objections, it might be smart to get them to agree with a particular hypothetical price point at which they would feel it is justified. In large enough quantities, it could be concievable that indefinite storage costs are as low as $50 per person, or 50 cents per year.
That is much cheaper than saving a life any other way, but of course there’s still the risk that it might not work. However, given a sufficient chance of it working it could still be morally superior to other life saving strategies that cost more money. It also has inherent ecological advantages over other forms of life-saving in that it temporarily reduces population, giving the environment a chance to recover and green tech more time to take hold so that they can be supported sustainably and comfortably.
This needs to be a top-level post. Even with minimal editing. Please.
(ETA: It’s not so much that we need to have another go at the cryonics debate; but the above is an argument that I can’t recall seeing discussed here previously, that does substantially change the picture, and that illustrates various kinds of reasoning—about scaling properties, about predefining thresholds of acceptability, and about what we don’t know we don’t know—that are very relevant to LW’s overall mission.)
Done.