There must exist some X such that (signing up for cryonics plus giving $X to the best charity you can identify) equals the social benefit of becoming an organ donor. If you’re worried about the social cost of not being an organ donor you could pay $X and consider this part of the cost of cryonics. I suspect that X is negative due in part to the fact that the stigma of cryonics is likely decreasing in the number of people who signed up for cryonics and millions of expected lives would be saved if cryonics had no social stigma stuck to it.
At 50% effectiveness, and 8 lives on average (which is about the most generous assumption possible), you’re saving 4 lives. GiveWell lists the cost of a life at around a thousand dollars, so organ donation is probably no better than a $5,000 donation to them. The main advantage of organ donation is that, if you’re not doing cryonics, it’s an effectively free donation :)
Conversely, the $25K cost of cryonics saves at least a couple dozen lives, and that’s for the cheap-end CI preservation without standby. So cryonics will always be a tradeoff between “some change of giving myself extra years” vs “saving numerous other lives, but they’ll die off after a few decades”
There must exist some X such that (signing up for cryonics plus giving $X to the best charity you can identify) equals the social benefit of becoming an organ donor. If you’re worried about the social cost of not being an organ donor you could pay $X and consider this part of the cost of cryonics. I suspect that X is negative due in part to the fact that the stigma of cryonics is likely decreasing in the number of people who signed up for cryonics and millions of expected lives would be saved if cryonics had no social stigma stuck to it.
At 50% effectiveness, and 8 lives on average (which is about the most generous assumption possible), you’re saving 4 lives. GiveWell lists the cost of a life at around a thousand dollars, so organ donation is probably no better than a $5,000 donation to them. The main advantage of organ donation is that, if you’re not doing cryonics, it’s an effectively free donation :)
Conversely, the $25K cost of cryonics saves at least a couple dozen lives, and that’s for the cheap-end CI preservation without standby. So cryonics will always be a tradeoff between “some change of giving myself extra years” vs “saving numerous other lives, but they’ll die off after a few decades”