I will not sign up for cryonics
Cryonics is a good idea, and I can afford it. I’ve read plenty of articles from people like Aschwin de Wolf, I’ve read Robert Ettinger’s book, and I’m familiar with today’s trustworthy organizations and their differences, Tomorrow Biostasis, Alcor, and the Cryonics Institute.
At my age, I could afford a cephalosuspention with Alcor for only $30 a month, a very reasonable amount for me in practice, though it’s still quite a lot of money.
I’ve come to the conclusion that none of this would truly help me, and that, one way or another, I’m going to die anyway. What difference does it make whether I die in 60 years or in 10,000? In the end, I’ll still be dead.
I love science fiction, and like every sci‑fi fan, I’d love to live in the kind of world I’ve dreamed about since childhood, but dreams are one thing, and they shouldn’t take up too much space. It’s nice to dream, but it feels unhealthy to devote a significant part of my monthly income to it, especially when smart cryonicists like Dr. Steve Harris have estimated that it only has about a 15% chance of working.
Fifteen percent is better than zero, but deep down, do we all really want to pay $80,000 for a 15% chance at a dream life? I think that deserves some thought.
If one of your loved ones is terminally ill and wants to raise money for cryopreservation, is it really humane to panic and scramble to raise $28,000 for a suspension in Michigan? I don’t think so. The most humane option is to be there for them and accompany them through all the stages of grief.
To the members of Alcor, Tomorrow Biostasis, and the Cryonics Institute. I understand you. But signing up for cryonics and spending enormous sums on it isn’t necessarily the most rational approach.
After all, what is death? It’s total disappearance, no more suffering.
Longevity of 10,000 years makes no sense, since by that time any acute risk period will be over and robust immortality tech will be available, almost certainly to anyone still alive then. And extinction or the extent of permanent disempowerment will be settled before cryonauts get woken up.
The relevant scale is useful matter/energy in galaxy clusters running out, depending on how quickly it’s used up, since after about 1e11 years larger collections of galaxies will no longer be reachable from each other, so after that time you only have the matter/energy that can be found in the galaxy cluster where you settle.
(Distributed backups make even galaxy-scale disasters reliably survivable. Technological maturity makes it so that any aliens have no technological advantages and will have to just split the resources or establish boundaries. And causality-bounding effect of accelerating expansion of the universe to within galaxy clusters makes the issue of aliens thoroughly settled by 1e12 years from now, even as initial colonization/exploration waves would’ve already long clarified the overall density of alien civilizations in the reachable universe.)
Are there alternatives that trade off this that are a better use of the money? In isolation, this proposition is not very specific. A nontrivial chance at 1e34 years of life seems like a good cause.
My guess is 70% of non-extinction, perhaps 50% with permanent disempowerment that’s sufficiently mild that it still permits reconstruction of cryonauts (or even no disempowerment, a pipe dream currently). On top of that, 70% that cryopreservation keeps enough data about the mind (with standby that avoids delays) and then the storage survives (risk of extinction shouldn’t be double-counted with risk of cryostorage destruction; but 20 years before ASI make non-extinction more likely to go well, which is 20 years of risk of cryostorage destruction for mundane reasons). So about 35% to survive cryopreservation with standby, a bit less if arranged more haphazardly, since crucial data might be lost.
All-or-nothing, black-or-white thinking does not serve well for most decisions. Integrals of value-per-time-unit is a much better expected-value methodology.
What difference does it make whether you die this afternoon or in 60 years? If life has value to you, then longer life (at an acceptible quality level) is more valuable.
The difference is 9,940 years of living! Who knows what you might get up to.
Perhaps it’s a difference of opinion, but the value of life is in the living of it, not in how it ends.
Does it make a difference whether you die in 60 years or in 60 days? If it does, at what point do you despair of the value of further years, and why?
My own preferred lifespan is “more”. (Although despite that, I also have no plans to sign up for cryonics.)
Yes.