It’s a nice thought, I guess, but I’d rather not die in the first place. And any happiness I might get from that is balanced out by the risks of organ donation: cryonic preservation becomes slightly less likely,
Well I understand that you will be so much more happy if you avoid death for the foreseeable future that cryonics outweighs organ donation. I’m just saying that the happiness from organ donation can’t be zero.
and my death becomes slightly more likely (perverse incentives). If people benefit from my death, they have less of an incentive to make sure I don’t die.
The incentives seem to me so tiny as to be a laughable concern. I presume you’re talking about doctors not treating you as effectively because they want your organs? Do you have this argument further developed elsewhere? It seems to me a doctor’s aversion to letting someone die, fear of malpractice lawsuits and ethics boards are more than sufficient to counter whatever benefit they would get from your organs (which would be what precisely?). Like I would be more worried about the doctors not liking me or thinking I was weird because I wanted to be frozen and not working as hard to save me because of that. (ETA: If you’re right there should be studies saying as much.)
Would you turn down a donated organ if you needed one?
No.
It seems to me legislation to punish defectors in this cooperative action problem would make sense. Organ donors should go to the top of the implant lists if they don’t already. Am I right that appealing to your sense of justice regarding your defection would be a waste of time?
But I’d vote to make post-death organ donation illegal, and I’d encourage people not to donate their organs after they die. (I don’t see a problem with donating a kidney while you’re still alive.)
If your arguments are right I can see how it would be a bad individual choice to be a organ donor (at least if you were signed up for cryonics). But those arguments don’t at all entail that banning post-death organ donation would be the best public policy, especially since very few people will sign up for cryonics in the near future. Do you think that the perverse incentives lead to more deaths than the organs save?
And from a public interest perspective an organ donor is more valuable than a frozen head. It might be in the public interest to have some representatives from our generation in the future but there is a huge economic cost to losing 20 years of work from an experienced and trained employee—a cost which is mediated little by the economic value of a revived cryonics patient who would likely have no marketable skills for his time period. So the social benefit to people signing up for cryonics diminishes rapidly.
Well I understand that you will be so much more happy if you avoid death for the foreseeable future that cryonics outweighs organ donation. I’m just saying that the happiness from organ donation can’t be zero.
The incentives seem to me so tiny as to be a laughable concern. I presume you’re talking about doctors not treating you as effectively because they want your organs? Do you have this argument further developed elsewhere? It seems to me a doctor’s aversion to letting someone die, fear of malpractice lawsuits and ethics boards are more than sufficient to counter whatever benefit they would get from your organs (which would be what precisely?). Like I would be more worried about the doctors not liking me or thinking I was weird because I wanted to be frozen and not working as hard to save me because of that. (ETA: If you’re right there should be studies saying as much.)
It seems to me legislation to punish defectors in this cooperative action problem would make sense. Organ donors should go to the top of the implant lists if they don’t already. Am I right that appealing to your sense of justice regarding your defection would be a waste of time?
If your arguments are right I can see how it would be a bad individual choice to be a organ donor (at least if you were signed up for cryonics). But those arguments don’t at all entail that banning post-death organ donation would be the best public policy, especially since very few people will sign up for cryonics in the near future. Do you think that the perverse incentives lead to more deaths than the organs save?
And from a public interest perspective an organ donor is more valuable than a frozen head. It might be in the public interest to have some representatives from our generation in the future but there is a huge economic cost to losing 20 years of work from an experienced and trained employee—a cost which is mediated little by the economic value of a revived cryonics patient who would likely have no marketable skills for his time period. So the social benefit to people signing up for cryonics diminishes rapidly.