Because the expected value of increasing the chance of living in posthuman eutopia until at least the end of the stelliferous era is still extremely valuable, would be my best guess.
How could this possibly be relevant? Stars are very likely extremely wasteful anyway and worth disassembling, and at 100T years all reachable galaxy clusters will be colonized, with enough time to disassemble all stars in the reachable universe much earlier than that.
I was being conservative (hence the “at least” :-), and agree that we’d want to disassemble stars. But maybe reachable technology can’t become so advanced to allow that kind of stellar engineering3%, so we’re stuck with living in space habitats orbiting suns. I think the median scenario for an advanced civilization extends far longer than the stelliferous era.
(My point is more that there will probably be no natural “end of stelliferous era” at all, because the last stars that are not part of some nature reserve will be disassembled much earlier than that, and the nature reserve stars could well be maintained for much longer.)
From a straight expected value case, it can still be an easy call—cryonics has a nonzero chance of working, and p(doom) is less than 100%, and cryonics doesn’t cost much (for his class of worker).
A low-cost, low-chance wager with an insanely high payoff (more life) is an easy lottery ticket to justify.
It probably does indicate that he puts an extremely low weight on Basilisk-like futures, where he gets resurrected just to be tortured forever. I agree that this is orders of magnitude less probable than other cryonics-works scenarios.
It’s sort of a riff on pascal’s wager. If he’s right about p(doom), not freezing himself means he loses nothing, and freezing himself means he also loses nothing. If he’s wrong, not freezing himself means he loses everything, freezing himself means he gains indefinite life extension. The only real cost he faces is the money he could have given to someone else upon death. Seems like a personal value decision.
If Eliezer’s p(doom) is so high, why is he signed up for cryonics?
Because the expected value of increasing the chance of living in posthuman eutopia until at least the end of the stelliferous era is still extremely valuable, would be my best guess.
How could this possibly be relevant? Stars are very likely extremely wasteful anyway and worth disassembling, and at 100T years all reachable galaxy clusters will be colonized, with enough time to disassemble all stars in the reachable universe much earlier than that.
I was being conservative (hence the “at least” :-), and agree that we’d want to disassemble stars. But maybe reachable technology can’t become so advanced to allow that kind of stellar engineering3%, so we’re stuck with living in space habitats orbiting suns. I think the median scenario for an advanced civilization extends far longer than the stelliferous era.
(My point is more that there will probably be no natural “end of stelliferous era” at all, because the last stars that are not part of some nature reserve will be disassembled much earlier than that, and the nature reserve stars could well be maintained for much longer.)
Was his p(doom) so high back then when he signed up?
From a straight expected value case, it can still be an easy call—cryonics has a nonzero chance of working, and p(doom) is less than 100%, and cryonics doesn’t cost much (for his class of worker).
A low-cost, low-chance wager with an insanely high payoff (more life) is an easy lottery ticket to justify.
It probably does indicate that he puts an extremely low weight on Basilisk-like futures, where he gets resurrected just to be tortured forever. I agree that this is orders of magnitude less probable than other cryonics-works scenarios.
It’s sort of a riff on pascal’s wager. If he’s right about p(doom), not freezing himself means he loses nothing, and freezing himself means he also loses nothing. If he’s wrong, not freezing himself means he loses everything, freezing himself means he gains indefinite life extension. The only real cost he faces is the money he could have given to someone else upon death. Seems like a personal value decision.