Yes, but keep in mind that many people on LW are fairly young and healthy so signing up for cryonics now isn’t necessarily something that makes sense. And there are a fair number of people here who expect to never die or for all of humanity to be wiped out. (Essentially assigning a high probability to a near singularity.)
Opportunity costs are highest when you are young, on top of the serious risk JoshuaZ that you will, ex post*, not want to engage in cryonics and hence your capital will be inefficiently locked up in life insurance.
* Lots of possible reasons to change one’s mind. Perhaps research will prove, over the coming decades, that cryonics destroys necessary information. Or perhaps there will be a massive loss of patients, leading to a corresponding spike in the storage part of the cryonics Drake equation. Perhaps there will just be a general hope function-style decay of prospects for cryonics as the decades drag on with no improvement or progress.
Another issue might be that rates are too high now: interest rates have been at rock bottom for years now, so what’s the implicit interest rate in life insurance rates? Rock bottom such that when normality returns you forfeit even more returns?
According to the last survey, the number of LessWrongers who are signed up for cryonics is less than the amount of LessWrongers who are theists.
It just seems that the people who advocate cryonics are more vocal than those that do not.
Yes, but keep in mind that many people on LW are fairly young and healthy so signing up for cryonics now isn’t necessarily something that makes sense. And there are a fair number of people here who expect to never die or for all of humanity to be wiped out. (Essentially assigning a high probability to a near singularity.)
The cost of signing up for cryonics is the cost of life insurance. It’s cheaper when you are young.
Opportunity costs are highest when you are young, on top of the serious risk JoshuaZ that you will, ex post*, not want to engage in cryonics and hence your capital will be inefficiently locked up in life insurance.
* Lots of possible reasons to change one’s mind. Perhaps research will prove, over the coming decades, that cryonics destroys necessary information. Or perhaps there will be a massive loss of patients, leading to a corresponding spike in the storage part of the cryonics Drake equation. Perhaps there will just be a general hope function-style decay of prospects for cryonics as the decades drag on with no improvement or progress.
Another issue might be that rates are too high now: interest rates have been at rock bottom for years now, so what’s the implicit interest rate in life insurance rates? Rock bottom such that when normality returns you forfeit even more returns?
I wonder how that would look if weighted for karma or another measure of participation?
Yvain’s looked at this: http://squid314.livejournal.com/349656.html (see also my & unnamed’s comments there).