I am against cryonics, and here’s why (though I would love to hear a rebuttal):
Cryonics seems inherently, and destructively, to the human race, grossly selfish. Not only is cryonics a huge cost that could be spent elsewhere helping others, nature and evolution thrive on the necessity of refreshing the population of each species. Though it’s speculation, I would assign the probability of evolution continuing to work (and improve) on the human race as pretty high—what gain does the human species have in preserving humans from the 21st century indefinitely, when 23rd century or later humans are better?
Overall, in no way can I think of cryonics benefiting anyone other than the individual’s (I think simply genetic) desire to avoid death (maybe it benefits future anthropologists I guess), and the cost of cryonics, given that, is what turns me off so much. I can understand people indulging themselves every once in a while, but since I tend to think gratuitous selfishness is a bad thing for the human race, I find myself understanding cryonic-phobic people more than cryonics-supporters.
I agree, cryonics is selfish. But no more so than lots of other things people indulge themselves in, like buying a house. It would be hypocritical to single out cryonics specifically, using this criterion as justification. This is not your true rejection.
Cryonics seems inherently, and destructively, to the human race, grossly selfish. Not only is cryonics a huge cost that could be spent elsewhere helping others
It is not very expensive (and could get even cheaper — see Cryonics Wants To Be Big), and many of its supporters see it in a primarily humanitarian sense (advocating that it be easily and cheaply available to everyone, not just being concerned with having it themselves).
Also, as for “spent elsewhere helping others”: there are charities that can reliably save a life for between $200 and $1000. Every time you spend some amount of money on that order or some multiple thereof, do you think about whether what you’re doing is more important than that many children’s lives? Or is it just with medical procedures that have some chance of saving your life? Or is cryonics in particular being singled out for some reason?
nature and evolution thrive on the necessity of refreshing the population of each species. Though it’s speculation, I would assign the probability of evolution continuing to work (and improve) on the human race as pretty high—what gain does the human species have in preserving humans from the 21st century indefinitely, when 23rd century or later humans are better?
If we survive this century without going extinct or experiencing a civilization-level catastrophe, then we will probably overcome evolution (which deals with reproductive fitness in a given environment and has nothing to do with making us “better” as far as our actual values are concerned). We probably will become much better if we make it to the 23rd century, but by technogical means that can be applied just as well to revived 21st-century humans.
Overall, in no way can I think of cryonics benefiting anyone other than the individual’s (I think simply genetic) desire to avoid death
Every time you spend some amount of money on that order or some multiple thereof, do you think about whether what you’re doing is more important than that many children’s lives? Or is it just with medical procedures that have some chance of saving your life? Or is cryonics in particular being singled out for some reason?
Why encourage people to make a mistake in one domain, just because they’re already making the same mistake in many other domains?
It wasn’t completely a rhetorical question. I actually did want to see if jtolds applied that standard consistently; I wasn’t necessarily saying that that’s a bad idea. (Myself, I remain confused about that question. A typical consequentialism would seem to compel me to weigh any cost against that of saving a life, but I’m not sure whether I have to bite that bullet or if I’m doing something wrong.)
Whether or not it’s a given, it’s an assumption behind the particular argument I was responding to.
I disagree with the linked post but it would take some thinking/writing/comments-reading time to explain why. And surely if “shut up and divide” is a reason for egoism it’s also a reason for myopia?
The argument is that there is significant uncertainty, not that we certainly (or even probably) are that selfish. Values can in principle say anything about preferred shape of spacetime, so selfishness at present doesn’t automatically imply not caring about the future.
If due to scope insensitivity we care about living for a billion years only a million times as much as about eating an extra cookie, then if you apply Wei Dai’s “shut up and divide” principle, we should prefer the extra cookie to 500 years of life. (ETA: while this is extreme myopia, it may not be enough myopia to make cryo a bad idea.)
The number of deaths in the US is about 2.5 million per year. The cost of cryonics is about $30000 per “patient” with the Cryonics Institute. So if everyone wanted to be frozen, it would cost 75 billion dollars a year, about 0.5% of the US GDP, or 3% of the healthcare spending. This neglects the economies of scales which could greatly reduce the price.
So even with a low probability of success, cryonics seems to be a good choice.
I don’t think comparing total cost of cryonics to the total cost of healthcare is useful.
We need to consider just the cost of those aspects of healthcare which would no longer be required if we have a cryonics-friendly population: life-saving operations with a high-chance of failure, and end-of-life curative care (attempting to extend lifespan but only for a short while) and palliative care (reducing suffering as people near death).
After some brief googling, I was unable to find much information on expenditures specifically for the above categories, but I can at least find an upper bound. According to this chart, nursing home expenses account for 6.1% of US health care expenses, and hospital care accounts for 30.4%. Guessing that most nursing patients are reasonable candidates for cryonics, and that most hospital expenses are for very serious cases (since less urgent problems can be handled at a clinic), that sets an upper bound of healthcare costs which would be cut by cryonics at 36.5% of 2 trillion, 730 billion, of which the estimated cryonics cost is still only about 10%.
So cryonics still seems to come out ahead, provided my stated assumptions bear out fairly well.
I don’t think this quiet answers jtold’s problem though. What about when all these cryogenically frozen people will be unfrozen? What about refreshing each generation / where each generation starts anew so to speak?
When the people are unfrozen, it’s reasonable to think that medical technology will be advanced enough not only to cure them of whatever was about to kill them, but to do so fairly inexpensively. So, there’s a net reduction in resource usage by cryogenically freezing people.
One way for me to support that is by referencing the accelerating rate of technological improvement, but a simpler argument is that if it weren’t yet cheap to cure the frozen people at a given date, there wouldn’t be very much motivation for the people of that time period to unfreeze them.
Plus, even if the cost were the same later on as it is now, there’s certainly benefit in spending more resources to fix the problems that are immediate existential threats (i.e. environmental disaster, global nuclear conflict, some here would say unfriendly AI) and saving those problems which can wait indefinitely for later.
I don’t think jtold’s other reason really makes much sense: he’s concerned about reducing the rate of evolutionary change in humanity, but cryogenics wouldn’t stop new people from being born, just keep the old people around as well. The gene pool will keep on churning.
More importantly, and as other people on this thread have pointed out, why is evolutionary change worth preserving? Medical science is much faster and can arrive at all the same desirable goals, i.e. reducing genetic diseases and enhancing human capabilities. Plus, evolution punishes individuals with suffering in order to achieve its broader goals, while medical science advances both the welfare of each individual and of the species as a whole.
Thank you for all your replies! I guess I should figure out how to turn on email notifications or something.
A few thoughts.
1) Yes, if cost goes down, then this becomes much more palatable, I agree. However, I didn’t mean to strictly imply monetary cost. But yes, overall, a great point. Driving costs down sounds like a reasonable goal.
2) As a few of you pointed out, you’re absolutely right that I should be consistent in my claims about selfishness—if the cost of cryonics is equal to that of buying a house, then either I should not buy a house or my objection is elsewhere. I think this comes back to the problem of not considering monetary cost solely. I don’t object to buying a house as much, even for the same monetary cost, because presumably I am alive and am productively helping society (at least, I would hope so). As far as vacations to the Bahamas go, yeah, I’m not sure I would choose to take said vacation for similar reasons (seems real selfish to me). So perhaps I’m somewhat consistent (ha).
3) True, evolution does not have a human-style “goal” in mind, and perhaps we have beaten evolution in the sense that it no longer will continue to produce productive results, or at least as productive as our technological advancements can achieve. So, that’s definitely a fair point.
4) My feeling on death is that your time is your time, but I guess in retrospect I have no more reason to feel that way than anyone has to feel that they should avoid death. Certainly the point that there is no real reason the current life expectancy is what it is is a good one.
So, all, excellent points, well taken. I think I am to the point where my objection to cryonics is only a little above my objection to vacations in the Bahamas. :) Which is to say, still strong—I can understand that others are likely to want to do so, but I doubt I will be encouraging anyone, much less planning trips of my own.
Cryonics seems inherently, and destructively, to the human race, grossly selfish.
Cryonics is a cost, yes, but living is a cost as well. Is spending my money on cryonics more or less selfish than a 2-week vacation in the Bahamas every year for 10 years? In both cases, my money supports an economy, and I get a benefit—a recharge, in the latter, a possible regeneration in the former—that will enhance my contribution to society.
If the next couple centuries of human evolution are anything like the last several dozen, the only way we’ll be “improved” by evolution is the addition of a few more disease immunities. If they’re not it will probably be because (a) we can just directly modify the geonome, and what nature would take millions of years to get around to artifice can do nigh-immediately or (b) some sort of terrible disaster has occured (and even then most of the selective forces will just be for immunities.)
I think it’s hard to dispute that there are more pressing uses of limited resources than cryonics. But this is an argument against frivolties in general. It’s reasonable to say “we should rob the rich and give to the poor, so that more resources are expended on food and basic medicine than smartphones and frozen heads,” if that’s where your values lie, but “cryonics is more objectionable than smartphones” doesn’t follow.
If the next couple centuries of human evolution are anything like the last several dozen, the only way we’ll be “improved” by evolution is the addition of a few more disease immunities.
You seem to be referring to the theory that no significant evolution has occurred in humans in recent history. This theory is increasingly disputed in light of the evidence.
Immunities are awfully significant! If you didn’t have them you’d enjoy a swift death.
Either way, though, it’s not the case that evolution would “continue” “improving” us, just that we’d be different in whatever way we’d be different. We’re not more evolved at later points than earlier points; Azathoth doesn’t care about that kind of directionality.
While I agree with you to some extent, I believe I can play devil’s advocate.
Though it’s speculation, I would assign the probability of evolution continuing to work (and improve) on the human race as pretty high—what gain does the human species have in preserving humans from the 21st century indefinitely, when 23rd century or later humans are better?
Is it clear that progress through evolution is optimal? Evolution is insensible and doesn’t consistently result in linear progress (e.g., we could be wiped out by a virus). In any case, relying on evolution is futile: we seem to be at a new stage of pattern formation where cultural and technical evolution is working at a far greater pace than generational, genetic evolution. Evolution, and any plans that it might have had for us, is falling to the wayside.
the necessity of refreshing the population of each species.
This is not to say that a 70-100 year lifespan is ideal. We spend so much of our productive lifetimes learning, it seems we could be much more productive if the working sector had more productive years before retirement.
Overall, in no way can I think of cryonics benefiting anyone other than the individual’s (I think simply genetic) desire to avoid death
What is the value of the group if the individual doesn’t matter? Death is something hanging over us that causes a lot of misery, fear and anxiety. Death is a very unpleasant consequence for sentient beings—I would argue that it should never have been allowed to happen, this combination of sentience and mortality. Wouldn’t it be good to fix that problem for all sentient beings, now and in the future?
In any case, what I wrote doesn’t make sense, because I could not coherently specify which alternate reality I would be speaking of. (E.g., one in which humans didn’t have technology? Why not?)
But sure, permitting the anthropomorphism, mechanisms have ‘plans’. Evolution evolves things according to certain rules, and the results have patterns. These patterns are ‘plans’ built into the mechanism.
But if you meant to emphasize that evolution doesn’t have plans in the sense of an end result it is trying to achieve through us in particular, there’s no argument from me.
Though it’s speculation, I would assign the probability of evolution continuing to work (and improve) on the human race as pretty high -what gain does the human species have in preserving humans from the 21st century indefinitely, when 23rd century or later humans are better?
Getting from “cryonics might interfere with natural selection” to “cryonics is bad” requires crossing a large inferential distance, with plenty of caveats along the way. Evolution has its own ideas about what is better, and they are often things that humanity would consider worse. Genetic engineering might replace evolution entirely.
Overall, in no way can I think of cryonics benefiting anyone other than the individual’s (I think simply genetic) desire to avoid death (maybe it benefits future anthropologists I guess), and the cost of cryonics, given that, is what turns me off so much.
This argument is valid—money spent on cryonics might be better spent on charity. But it isn’t valid at all price points. For example, if cryonics cost only $100, then even the small benefit to future anthropologists would be worth it. And the cost gets cheaper as time passes and technology improves, so eventually it will be cheap enough to be worth it; the only question is, how cheap is cheap enough?
I agree that evolution will continue for the human race, though I think a lot of it will become memetic rather than.
However, it’s hard to tell what’s an improvement and what isn’t.
I admit to concerns about increased no-pause longevity—the same people could stay in charge for a very long time. Institutions are less likely to get refreshed with new ideas.
Cryonics is relatively safe for that problem—people aren’t going to be able to sustain power if they’re gone for decades. (Or at least there’s some interesting science fiction work to be done figuring out how they could.)
My assumption is that revived people will be a smallish part of the population, and will add variety by keeping old points of view from getting lost.
In particular, artists aren’t fungible, and I think it would be an advantage to continue to get new works from the good ones.
“My assumption is that revived people will be a smallish part of the population, and will add variety by keeping old points of view from getting lost.”
This. I can’t help but feel we are all too often swept into crazy herd behavior. And at least currently we seem trending towards fewer languages and more globalized intellectual currents.
What is that saying? The past is a foreign country.
I admit to concerns about increased no-pause longevity—the same people could stay in charge for a very long time. Institutions are less likely to get refreshed with new ideas.
I’m also concerned by this. Particularly troublesome is the observation that moral progress seems to require multiple generations. When we defeat aging, we will have to develop the art of evolving one’s terminal values so that everyone can participate in moral progress.
‘A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.’ — Max Planck
Of course, it is the purpose of this site (in some ways) to make Planck wrong, but there’s a lot of work ahead.
Though it’s speculation, I would assign the probability of evolution continuing to work (and improve) on the human race as pretty high—what gain does the human species have in preserving humans from the 21st century indefinitely, when 23rd century or later humans are better?
Improve humans in what respect? Do you think that high intelligence is positively correlated in modern society with number of offspring? How about moral character? More attractive people are certainly seen as more sexually desirable, but do they have more children?
Evolution doesn’t improve species, it increases their fitness within a particular environment, and it only does so in response to selection pressure. It doesn’t matter how wildly successful a person with an IQ of 220 would be, if people with higher IQs do not have better odds of producing surviving offspring, evolution will not make humans smarter, and the same goes for any other measure you might apply to the worth of a person.
In any case, most of the difference between a person now and several generations from now will not be genetic, unless we start tinkering around with human genomes ourselves. Other adaptation mechanisms, such as memes and technology, change much faster.
I find it strange that no one seems to be arguing what my answer is; I want to be cryopreserved because my primary value is my life. In any situation where A is certain death and B is any probability of life, I choose B. This is why your argument is irrelevant given my utility function.
I concur with your skepticism, but don’t see your evidence.
My skepticism is because a “situation where A is certain death” is almost always certain death with some time delay (could be seconds, could be years, it depends on the case...) and I’d expect that there is at least the possibility of a trade-off between quality of life during that time delay and a sufficiently small odds of surviving. This regularly comes up in experimental chemotherapy decisions Atul Gawande has a good article on some of these cases
Disclaimer: I’m an Alcor member—but I view cryonics as a long shot, and my arrangements for it could restrict my choices in ways that might induce me to change my mind and cancel them under certain circumstances.
I didn’t provide evidence because I figured it just needed a bit of imagination. You provided one reason for such cases to come up in real life. Here’s a case which is unlikely to come up in real life, but which makes the point clearly:
A is certain and immediate death, within the next ten seconds. B is a 100% chance of infinite torture (and therefore also infinite life.) I don’t believe Alex would choose B. Or if, like Hopelessly Anonymous, he chooses B originally, he would change his mind after the torture started.
I am against cryonics, and here’s why (though I would love to hear a rebuttal):
Cryonics seems inherently, and destructively, to the human race, grossly selfish. Not only is cryonics a huge cost that could be spent elsewhere helping others, nature and evolution thrive on the necessity of refreshing the population of each species. Though it’s speculation, I would assign the probability of evolution continuing to work (and improve) on the human race as pretty high—what gain does the human species have in preserving humans from the 21st century indefinitely, when 23rd century or later humans are better?
Overall, in no way can I think of cryonics benefiting anyone other than the individual’s (I think simply genetic) desire to avoid death (maybe it benefits future anthropologists I guess), and the cost of cryonics, given that, is what turns me off so much. I can understand people indulging themselves every once in a while, but since I tend to think gratuitous selfishness is a bad thing for the human race, I find myself understanding cryonic-phobic people more than cryonics-supporters.
Is this an invalid view?
I agree, cryonics is selfish. But no more so than lots of other things people indulge themselves in, like buying a house. It would be hypocritical to single out cryonics specifically, using this criterion as justification. This is not your true rejection.
Then you probably don’t understand evolution very well. Evolution doesn’t “improve” things, it makes more of whatever survives and reproduces.
Based on the current trends, I’d say we’ re evolving in the direction of “too dumb to use birth control”.
Fundamentalists are also more fecund than average :-(
It is not very expensive (and could get even cheaper — see Cryonics Wants To Be Big), and many of its supporters see it in a primarily humanitarian sense (advocating that it be easily and cheaply available to everyone, not just being concerned with having it themselves).
Also, as for “spent elsewhere helping others”: there are charities that can reliably save a life for between $200 and $1000. Every time you spend some amount of money on that order or some multiple thereof, do you think about whether what you’re doing is more important than that many children’s lives? Or is it just with medical procedures that have some chance of saving your life? Or is cryonics in particular being singled out for some reason?
If we survive this century without going extinct or experiencing a civilization-level catastrophe, then we will probably overcome evolution (which deals with reproductive fitness in a given environment and has nothing to do with making us “better” as far as our actual values are concerned). We probably will become much better if we make it to the 23rd century, but by technogical means that can be applied just as well to revived 21st-century humans.
Should we not avoid death? Do you avoid death?
Why encourage people to make a mistake in one domain, just because they’re already making the same mistake in many other domains?
It wasn’t completely a rhetorical question. I actually did want to see if jtolds applied that standard consistently; I wasn’t necessarily saying that that’s a bad idea. (Myself, I remain confused about that question. A typical consequentialism would seem to compel me to weigh any cost against that of saving a life, but I’m not sure whether I have to bite that bullet or if I’m doing something wrong.)
It’s not a given that “excessive” egoism is a mistake.
Whether or not it’s a given, it’s an assumption behind the particular argument I was responding to.
I disagree with the linked post but it would take some thinking/writing/comments-reading time to explain why. And surely if “shut up and divide” is a reason for egoism it’s also a reason for myopia?
The argument is that there is significant uncertainty, not that we certainly (or even probably) are that selfish. Values can in principle say anything about preferred shape of spacetime, so selfishness at present doesn’t automatically imply not caring about the future.
If due to scope insensitivity we care about living for a billion years only a million times as much as about eating an extra cookie, then if you apply Wei Dai’s “shut up and divide” principle, we should prefer the extra cookie to 500 years of life. (ETA: while this is extreme myopia, it may not be enough myopia to make cryo a bad idea.)
I just made a small calculation :
The number of deaths in the US is about 2.5 million per year.
The cost of cryonics is about $30000 per “patient” with the Cryonics Institute.
So if everyone wanted to be frozen, it would cost 75 billion dollars a year, about 0.5% of the US GDP, or 3% of the healthcare spending.
This neglects the economies of scales which could greatly reduce the price.
So even with a low probability of success, cryonics seems to be a good choice.
I don’t think comparing total cost of cryonics to the total cost of healthcare is useful.
We need to consider just the cost of those aspects of healthcare which would no longer be required if we have a cryonics-friendly population: life-saving operations with a high-chance of failure, and end-of-life curative care (attempting to extend lifespan but only for a short while) and palliative care (reducing suffering as people near death).
After some brief googling, I was unable to find much information on expenditures specifically for the above categories, but I can at least find an upper bound. According to this chart, nursing home expenses account for 6.1% of US health care expenses, and hospital care accounts for 30.4%. Guessing that most nursing patients are reasonable candidates for cryonics, and that most hospital expenses are for very serious cases (since less urgent problems can be handled at a clinic), that sets an upper bound of healthcare costs which would be cut by cryonics at 36.5% of 2 trillion, 730 billion, of which the estimated cryonics cost is still only about 10%.
So cryonics still seems to come out ahead, provided my stated assumptions bear out fairly well.
I don’t think this quiet answers jtold’s problem though. What about when all these cryogenically frozen people will be unfrozen? What about refreshing each generation / where each generation starts anew so to speak?
When the people are unfrozen, it’s reasonable to think that medical technology will be advanced enough not only to cure them of whatever was about to kill them, but to do so fairly inexpensively. So, there’s a net reduction in resource usage by cryogenically freezing people.
One way for me to support that is by referencing the accelerating rate of technological improvement, but a simpler argument is that if it weren’t yet cheap to cure the frozen people at a given date, there wouldn’t be very much motivation for the people of that time period to unfreeze them.
Plus, even if the cost were the same later on as it is now, there’s certainly benefit in spending more resources to fix the problems that are immediate existential threats (i.e. environmental disaster, global nuclear conflict, some here would say unfriendly AI) and saving those problems which can wait indefinitely for later.
I don’t think jtold’s other reason really makes much sense: he’s concerned about reducing the rate of evolutionary change in humanity, but cryogenics wouldn’t stop new people from being born, just keep the old people around as well. The gene pool will keep on churning.
More importantly, and as other people on this thread have pointed out, why is evolutionary change worth preserving? Medical science is much faster and can arrive at all the same desirable goals, i.e. reducing genetic diseases and enhancing human capabilities. Plus, evolution punishes individuals with suffering in order to achieve its broader goals, while medical science advances both the welfare of each individual and of the species as a whole.
Thank you for all your replies! I guess I should figure out how to turn on email notifications or something.
A few thoughts.
1) Yes, if cost goes down, then this becomes much more palatable, I agree. However, I didn’t mean to strictly imply monetary cost. But yes, overall, a great point. Driving costs down sounds like a reasonable goal.
2) As a few of you pointed out, you’re absolutely right that I should be consistent in my claims about selfishness—if the cost of cryonics is equal to that of buying a house, then either I should not buy a house or my objection is elsewhere. I think this comes back to the problem of not considering monetary cost solely. I don’t object to buying a house as much, even for the same monetary cost, because presumably I am alive and am productively helping society (at least, I would hope so). As far as vacations to the Bahamas go, yeah, I’m not sure I would choose to take said vacation for similar reasons (seems real selfish to me). So perhaps I’m somewhat consistent (ha).
3) True, evolution does not have a human-style “goal” in mind, and perhaps we have beaten evolution in the sense that it no longer will continue to produce productive results, or at least as productive as our technological advancements can achieve. So, that’s definitely a fair point.
4) My feeling on death is that your time is your time, but I guess in retrospect I have no more reason to feel that way than anyone has to feel that they should avoid death. Certainly the point that there is no real reason the current life expectancy is what it is is a good one.
So, all, excellent points, well taken. I think I am to the point where my objection to cryonics is only a little above my objection to vacations in the Bahamas. :) Which is to say, still strong—I can understand that others are likely to want to do so, but I doubt I will be encouraging anyone, much less planning trips of my own.
Cryonics is a cost, yes, but living is a cost as well. Is spending my money on cryonics more or less selfish than a 2-week vacation in the Bahamas every year for 10 years? In both cases, my money supports an economy, and I get a benefit—a recharge, in the latter, a possible regeneration in the former—that will enhance my contribution to society.
If the next couple centuries of human evolution are anything like the last several dozen, the only way we’ll be “improved” by evolution is the addition of a few more disease immunities. If they’re not it will probably be because (a) we can just directly modify the geonome, and what nature would take millions of years to get around to artifice can do nigh-immediately or (b) some sort of terrible disaster has occured (and even then most of the selective forces will just be for immunities.)
I think it’s hard to dispute that there are more pressing uses of limited resources than cryonics. But this is an argument against frivolties in general. It’s reasonable to say “we should rob the rich and give to the poor, so that more resources are expended on food and basic medicine than smartphones and frozen heads,” if that’s where your values lie, but “cryonics is more objectionable than smartphones” doesn’t follow.
You seem to be referring to the theory that no significant evolution has occurred in humans in recent history. This theory is increasingly disputed in light of the evidence.
Immunities are awfully significant! If you didn’t have them you’d enjoy a swift death.
Either way, though, it’s not the case that evolution would “continue” “improving” us, just that we’d be different in whatever way we’d be different. We’re not more evolved at later points than earlier points; Azathoth doesn’t care about that kind of directionality.
While I agree with you to some extent, I believe I can play devil’s advocate.
Is it clear that progress through evolution is optimal? Evolution is insensible and doesn’t consistently result in linear progress (e.g., we could be wiped out by a virus). In any case, relying on evolution is futile: we seem to be at a new stage of pattern formation where cultural and technical evolution is working at a far greater pace than generational, genetic evolution. Evolution, and any plans that it might have had for us, is falling to the wayside.
This is not to say that a 70-100 year lifespan is ideal. We spend so much of our productive lifetimes learning, it seems we could be much more productive if the working sector had more productive years before retirement.
What is the value of the group if the individual doesn’t matter? Death is something hanging over us that causes a lot of misery, fear and anxiety. Death is a very unpleasant consequence for sentient beings—I would argue that it should never have been allowed to happen, this combination of sentience and mortality. Wouldn’t it be good to fix that problem for all sentient beings, now and in the future?
There are no authoritative plans for what Homo Sapiens “should be” in thousands of years!
In any case, what I wrote doesn’t make sense, because I could not coherently specify which alternate reality I would be speaking of. (E.g., one in which humans didn’t have technology? Why not?)
But sure, permitting the anthropomorphism, mechanisms have ‘plans’. Evolution evolves things according to certain rules, and the results have patterns. These patterns are ‘plans’ built into the mechanism.
But if you meant to emphasize that evolution doesn’t have plans in the sense of an end result it is trying to achieve through us in particular, there’s no argument from me.
Getting from “cryonics might interfere with natural selection” to “cryonics is bad” requires crossing a large inferential distance, with plenty of caveats along the way. Evolution has its own ideas about what is better, and they are often things that humanity would consider worse. Genetic engineering might replace evolution entirely.
This argument is valid—money spent on cryonics might be better spent on charity. But it isn’t valid at all price points. For example, if cryonics cost only $100, then even the small benefit to future anthropologists would be worth it. And the cost gets cheaper as time passes and technology improves, so eventually it will be cheap enough to be worth it; the only question is, how cheap is cheap enough?
I agree that evolution will continue for the human race, though I think a lot of it will become memetic rather than.
However, it’s hard to tell what’s an improvement and what isn’t.
I admit to concerns about increased no-pause longevity—the same people could stay in charge for a very long time. Institutions are less likely to get refreshed with new ideas.
Cryonics is relatively safe for that problem—people aren’t going to be able to sustain power if they’re gone for decades. (Or at least there’s some interesting science fiction work to be done figuring out how they could.)
My assumption is that revived people will be a smallish part of the population, and will add variety by keeping old points of view from getting lost.
In particular, artists aren’t fungible, and I think it would be an advantage to continue to get new works from the good ones.
“My assumption is that revived people will be a smallish part of the population, and will add variety by keeping old points of view from getting lost.”
This. I can’t help but feel we are all too often swept into crazy herd behavior. And at least currently we seem trending towards fewer languages and more globalized intellectual currents.
What is that saying? The past is a foreign country.
—L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between
—Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything (commenting on the effect of time-travel)
—yours truly
Voted up for pithiness—“The past is a foreign country”, I will definitely remember that.
It’s very useful to have one-liners for important concepts like this, helps to keep the meme propogation going.
I’m also concerned by this. Particularly troublesome is the observation that moral progress seems to require multiple generations. When we defeat aging, we will have to develop the art of evolving one’s terminal values so that everyone can participate in moral progress.
‘A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.’ — Max Planck
Of course, it is the purpose of this site (in some ways) to make Planck wrong, but there’s a lot of work ahead.
Improve humans in what respect? Do you think that high intelligence is positively correlated in modern society with number of offspring? How about moral character? More attractive people are certainly seen as more sexually desirable, but do they have more children?
Evolution doesn’t improve species, it increases their fitness within a particular environment, and it only does so in response to selection pressure. It doesn’t matter how wildly successful a person with an IQ of 220 would be, if people with higher IQs do not have better odds of producing surviving offspring, evolution will not make humans smarter, and the same goes for any other measure you might apply to the worth of a person.
In any case, most of the difference between a person now and several generations from now will not be genetic, unless we start tinkering around with human genomes ourselves. Other adaptation mechanisms, such as memes and technology, change much faster.
We can do gene therapy to update the 21st century humans to 23rd century humans.
I find it strange that no one seems to be arguing what my answer is; I want to be cryopreserved because my primary value is my life. In any situation where A is certain death and B is any probability of life, I choose B. This is why your argument is irrelevant given my utility function.
Would you be willing to kill $LARGE_NUMBER other people to save your own life, then?
“In any situation where A is certain death and B is any probability of life, I choose B.”
No, you don’t.
I concur with your skepticism, but don’t see your evidence.
My skepticism is because a “situation where A is certain death” is almost always certain death with some time delay (could be seconds, could be years, it depends on the case...) and I’d expect that there is at least the possibility of a trade-off between quality of life during that time delay and a sufficiently small odds of surviving. This regularly comes up in experimental chemotherapy decisions Atul Gawande has a good article on some of these cases
Disclaimer: I’m an Alcor member—but I view cryonics as a long shot, and my arrangements for it could restrict my choices in ways that might induce me to change my mind and cancel them under certain circumstances.
I didn’t provide evidence because I figured it just needed a bit of imagination. You provided one reason for such cases to come up in real life. Here’s a case which is unlikely to come up in real life, but which makes the point clearly:
A is certain and immediate death, within the next ten seconds. B is a 100% chance of infinite torture (and therefore also infinite life.) I don’t believe Alex would choose B. Or if, like Hopelessly Anonymous, he chooses B originally, he would change his mind after the torture started.
I suppose that the people who deride cryonics as ‘selfish’ do so because they think that every cryonicist is like you.