I don’t really see any commentary on the underlying assumptions here made about the badness of being dead. In summary for a physicalist, being dead has no value: it is a null state. Null states cannot be compared with non-null states, so being dead is not worse than being alive.
To put that another way, I cannot be worse off by being dead because there won’t be an I at that point. An argument can be made that I have no personal interest in my being dead—only other living people have a stake in that. That doesn’t change the fact that I want to live. There is an I here that wants this, and wants it indefinitely. But once I’m gone, its not a problem for me.
So I tend to favor arguments related to organ-donation since future living people are unlikely to get more benefit from me than current living people in need of organ transplants.
Also, there is a real but small chance that cryo-preservation could lead to a sort of hell—what if I’m only thawed to be a permanent exhibit in a zoo or to be experimented upon or subjected to conversations with classical-language enthusiasts.
So there is a non-zero chance of being consigned to hell if I’m cryo-preserved; whereas once I’m dead its a null state and can be considered an even-break if you really must try and attach a value to it.
It’s counterintuitive to say that being dead is basically null value. If I’m choosing between two courses of action, and one difference is that one of them will involve me dying, that’s a strong factor in making me prefer the other option.
I can think of possible explanations for this that preserve the claim that being dead has value zero, but I’m not seeing a way that would do so only in non-cryonics cases.
Notice the subtle difference in language though. You are talking about dying. Dying is pretty obviously a bad thing. Its only once you are dead that you are in a null state.
Cryo-preservation does not prevent you from dying. You still go through the dying process, and I doubt you are very much comforted by the small chance that you could be revived at some point.
I don’t really see any commentary on the underlying assumptions here made about the badness of being dead. In summary for a physicalist, being dead has no value: it is a null state. Null states cannot be compared with non-null states, so being dead is not worse than being alive.
To put that another way, I cannot be worse off by being dead because there won’t be an I at that point. An argument can be made that I have no personal interest in my being dead—only other living people have a stake in that. That doesn’t change the fact that I want to live. There is an I here that wants this, and wants it indefinitely. But once I’m gone, its not a problem for me.
So I tend to favor arguments related to organ-donation since future living people are unlikely to get more benefit from me than current living people in need of organ transplants.
Also, there is a real but small chance that cryo-preservation could lead to a sort of hell—what if I’m only thawed to be a permanent exhibit in a zoo or to be experimented upon or subjected to conversations with classical-language enthusiasts.
So there is a non-zero chance of being consigned to hell if I’m cryo-preserved; whereas once I’m dead its a null state and can be considered an even-break if you really must try and attach a value to it.
It’s counterintuitive to say that being dead is basically null value. If I’m choosing between two courses of action, and one difference is that one of them will involve me dying, that’s a strong factor in making me prefer the other option.
I can think of possible explanations for this that preserve the claim that being dead has value zero, but I’m not seeing a way that would do so only in non-cryonics cases.
Notice the subtle difference in language though. You are talking about dying. Dying is pretty obviously a bad thing. Its only once you are dead that you are in a null state.
Cryo-preservation does not prevent you from dying. You still go through the dying process, and I doubt you are very much comforted by the small chance that you could be revived at some point.