I might as well post this here because I don’t think it’s worth a new thread. Let’s assume for the purposes of this argument that you have a suitably high confidence in cryonic revival at some future time. How much do you weigh the number of deaths as a direct consequence of electricity consumed keeping you frozen, against your irreplaceablity in the future society? I’m assuming that there is a non-trivial amount of electricity involved, and substituting the monetary costs of electricity per Folding@Home user per year, with the amount paid per person per year to purchase cryonics services.
Does this train of thought hold at all? If anyone has the time and knowledge to run some numbers, that would be great...
Retracted after a bit of research; they just add more liquid nitrogen to counteract evaporation, and don’t actually use any electricity. (I honestly didn’t know this.)
Liquid nitrogen is generated using electricity, so you weren’t all that far off.
Liquid nitrogen is basically industrial waste that is left over after a useful industrial process, specially generating liquid oxygen. But you still have to carry it to the cryonics installation in a truck, which uses energy, even if the LN2 is free.
Cryonics storage gets cheaper at scale. The number of patients is proportional to the space, which is the cube of the length, and the boil off rate is proportional to the surface which is the square of the length. So boil off per patient is proportional to 1/number of patients.
Eventually you have to decide what people are worth and do a quantitative argument to figure out what you value more. I think people are incredibly valuable, but I haven’t done the quantitative argument. Assuming that people are worthless is assuming that cryonics is worthless and medical care in general is worthless, so that can’t be right.
I might as well post this here because I don’t think it’s worth a new thread. Let’s assume for the purposes of this argument that you have a suitably high confidence in cryonic revival at some future time. How much do you weigh the number of deaths as a direct consequence of electricity consumed keeping you frozen, against your irreplaceablity in the future society? I’m assuming that there is a non-trivial amount of electricity involved, and substituting the monetary costs of electricity per Folding@Home user per year, with the amount paid per person per year to purchase cryonics services.
Does this train of thought hold at all? If anyone has the time and knowledge to run some numbers, that would be great...
Cryonics storage doesn’t consume even a visible fraction of industrially produced liquid nitrogen. And it won’t for ten-thousands of patients to come.
Retracted after a bit of research; they just add more liquid nitrogen to counteract evaporation, and don’t actually use any electricity. (I honestly didn’t know this.)
Liquid nitrogen is generated using electricity, so you weren’t all that far off.
Liquid nitrogen is basically industrial waste that is left over after a useful industrial process, specially generating liquid oxygen. But you still have to carry it to the cryonics installation in a truck, which uses energy, even if the LN2 is free.
Cryonics storage gets cheaper at scale. The number of patients is proportional to the space, which is the cube of the length, and the boil off rate is proportional to the surface which is the square of the length. So boil off per patient is proportional to 1/number of patients.
Eventually you have to decide what people are worth and do a quantitative argument to figure out what you value more. I think people are incredibly valuable, but I haven’t done the quantitative argument. Assuming that people are worthless is assuming that cryonics is worthless and medical care in general is worthless, so that can’t be right.