1) Calculate how many lives you can save with your organs. Pre-commit to donate enough money to save as many lives, on top of what you would normally want to donate.
2) Since you are under 18, I can see your problem. Your chances of dying where cryonics would be an option (read: not in an accident) are so tiny, it’s probably OK to wait. But you can always take out a loan (maybe?) or borrow from someone.
3) Do you want to take that chance? I also believe that the Singularity will happen within my lifetime, but I am totally willing to pay ~$80 a month to increase the chance of my brain existing when it happens (even if it’s only 1%).
I’m afraid 1. just doesn’t work, at all—if you can save more lives by being an organ donor, and you think this is the right thing to do, this is an entirely separate question from how many lives you can save by giving money to VillageReach, and I don’t see how the answer to one can have a bearing on the other.
If you save thousands of lives by giving away money during your lifetime, then on the day you die, the relevant question is still: can I save more lives at the margin by being cryogenically preserved or by donating my organs? Unless you think of saving lives as some sort of competition, rather than as intrinsically a good thing to do, the answer to this question is completely unaffected by how much money you gave away when you were alive.
Edit I now realise the suggestion is to give away extra money when you die, but this just has exactly the same problem. You don’t get extra money by freezing your body.
NB—I’m not saying I really believe the objection is valid, I’m just saying that your proposed solution really doesn’t work.
Another thing to think about here: if you save lives by donating your organs, the organs will probably go to elderly people who are not signed up for cryonics, and will probably die in the next few decades regardless. So you will have saved a few decades of infirmity. On the other hand, if you are revived from cryopreservation, you will probably be revived to immortal, healthy life. So, if the Singularity/some other form of immortality does not happen until more than a few decades after your death, you can save more years, with greater average quality of life, by cryopreserving yourself.
ETA: Also, if the people your organs go to are signed up for cryonics, then getting your organs still wouldn’t make that much difference to the total number of years they live.
1) Calculate how many lives you can save with your organs. Pre-commit to donate enough money to save as many lives, on top of what you would normally want to donate.
Doesn’t sound like a good fix to me. Isn’t the donated money necessarily taking away from some other (presumably also life-saving or otherwise valued) endeavor? Instead I’d point out that it’s possible to have it both ways: freeze the brain and donate the rest. Not much demand for brain-donors, compared to kidneys or corneas.
1) Statistics on this are almost impossible to find, with lots of websites declaring that you can save 100 lives without any substantiation. If there are any studies of average lives saved per donor, I haven’t been able to find them. Saving 100 people another way would be prohibitively expensive, but I’m not convinced those numbers are right.
2) This is my biggest hang-up. It’s hard to get a loan without a steady job, and most people I know won’t loan me money for something they think is crazy. At least for the next 30 years, my chances of dying where cryonics would be an option are pretty small. When does it stop being OK to wait?
3) Now that you point it out, this is more a excuse-to-stop-thinking than an answer. It’s easier not to worry about whether I could sign up for cryonics when I can downsize the expected impact by a factor of 100, but you’re right—even a 1% chance would still be worth it.
1) Look at GiveWell. This is precisely the kind of analysis they do.
2) It’s stops being OK to wait when you are not OK with dying right now. Since you are young, you can get life insurance for dirt cheap, $1-$10 a month. (Still probably have to wait until you are 18, unless your parents are supportive.) That would be Term Life insurance, which means it’ll be for something like 30 years. Then you’ll have to renew it at a much higher cost, since you’ll be older. So it won’t be the most cost efficient (or may be it will be) way to spend money, but it will serve its purpose. There is no harm in finding out exactly how much it will cost for you. I would recommend talking to Rudi Hoffman, cryonics life insurance is his specialty.
1) I find GiveWell’s analysis very convincing on the question of which charity to donate to; they estimate it costs between $500 and $1000 to save a life with Village Reach. What I can’t seem to find is how many lives I would save by becoming an organ donor—if GiveWell has reported on this, I can’t find it (and it seems outside their scope).
2) I’m taking a look at this. It appears to be nearly impossible to buy life insurance when under 18, but I’ll keep looking.
With a little research online you’ll probably be able to figure out the average number of lives saved per organ donor and the probability that you will become one before you age to the point when your organs aren’t wanted.
My quick Googling prior to making posting the grandparent seemed to show that the demand for donor organs goes unfilled—people die on the waiting list.
1) Calculate how many lives you can save with your organs. Pre-commit to donate enough money to save as many lives, on top of what you would normally want to donate.
2) Since you are under 18, I can see your problem. Your chances of dying where cryonics would be an option (read: not in an accident) are so tiny, it’s probably OK to wait. But you can always take out a loan (maybe?) or borrow from someone.
3) Do you want to take that chance? I also believe that the Singularity will happen within my lifetime, but I am totally willing to pay ~$80 a month to increase the chance of my brain existing when it happens (even if it’s only 1%).
I’m afraid 1. just doesn’t work, at all—if you can save more lives by being an organ donor, and you think this is the right thing to do, this is an entirely separate question from how many lives you can save by giving money to VillageReach, and I don’t see how the answer to one can have a bearing on the other.
If you save thousands of lives by giving away money during your lifetime, then on the day you die, the relevant question is still: can I save more lives at the margin by being cryogenically preserved or by donating my organs? Unless you think of saving lives as some sort of competition, rather than as intrinsically a good thing to do, the answer to this question is completely unaffected by how much money you gave away when you were alive.
Edit I now realise the suggestion is to give away extra money when you die, but this just has exactly the same problem. You don’t get extra money by freezing your body.
NB—I’m not saying I really believe the objection is valid, I’m just saying that your proposed solution really doesn’t work.
Another thing to think about here: if you save lives by donating your organs, the organs will probably go to elderly people who are not signed up for cryonics, and will probably die in the next few decades regardless. So you will have saved a few decades of infirmity. On the other hand, if you are revived from cryopreservation, you will probably be revived to immortal, healthy life. So, if the Singularity/some other form of immortality does not happen until more than a few decades after your death, you can save more years, with greater average quality of life, by cryopreserving yourself.
ETA: Also, if the people your organs go to are signed up for cryonics, then getting your organs still wouldn’t make that much difference to the total number of years they live.
So… sign up for the “head only” cryonics. All your organs get donated to others, and you still get cryonics, because nobody gets a donor brain.
You could still even donate your corneas...
Edit and have just read further down the comments to see why this is not optimal…
Doesn’t sound like a good fix to me. Isn’t the donated money necessarily taking away from some other (presumably also life-saving or otherwise valued) endeavor? Instead I’d point out that it’s possible to have it both ways: freeze the brain and donate the rest. Not much demand for brain-donors, compared to kidneys or corneas.
Currently, it’s not possible to do both.
Factor that into your analysis of cryonics: if enough people sign up, organ donation can be integrated into the vitrification protocol.
1) Statistics on this are almost impossible to find, with lots of websites declaring that you can save 100 lives without any substantiation. If there are any studies of average lives saved per donor, I haven’t been able to find them. Saving 100 people another way would be prohibitively expensive, but I’m not convinced those numbers are right. 2) This is my biggest hang-up. It’s hard to get a loan without a steady job, and most people I know won’t loan me money for something they think is crazy. At least for the next 30 years, my chances of dying where cryonics would be an option are pretty small. When does it stop being OK to wait? 3) Now that you point it out, this is more a excuse-to-stop-thinking than an answer. It’s easier not to worry about whether I could sign up for cryonics when I can downsize the expected impact by a factor of 100, but you’re right—even a 1% chance would still be worth it.
1) Look at GiveWell. This is precisely the kind of analysis they do.
2) It’s stops being OK to wait when you are not OK with dying right now. Since you are young, you can get life insurance for dirt cheap, $1-$10 a month. (Still probably have to wait until you are 18, unless your parents are supportive.) That would be Term Life insurance, which means it’ll be for something like 30 years. Then you’ll have to renew it at a much higher cost, since you’ll be older. So it won’t be the most cost efficient (or may be it will be) way to spend money, but it will serve its purpose. There is no harm in finding out exactly how much it will cost for you. I would recommend talking to Rudi Hoffman, cryonics life insurance is his specialty.
1) I find GiveWell’s analysis very convincing on the question of which charity to donate to; they estimate it costs between $500 and $1000 to save a life with Village Reach. What I can’t seem to find is how many lives I would save by becoming an organ donor—if GiveWell has reported on this, I can’t find it (and it seems outside their scope).
2) I’m taking a look at this. It appears to be nearly impossible to buy life insurance when under 18, but I’ll keep looking.
With a little research online you’ll probably be able to figure out the average number of lives saved per organ donor and the probability that you will become one before you age to the point when your organs aren’t wanted.
But not necessarily the marginal number of lives saved, which is the important thing.
My quick Googling prior to making posting the grandparent seemed to show that the demand for donor organs goes unfilled—people die on the waiting list.