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 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.