topynate comments on A Much Better Life? - Less Wrong
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I know you're not Eliezer, I was addressing him because I assumed that he was the only one who had or was considering paying for cryonics here.
This site is my means of researching cryonics as I generally assume that motivated intelligent individuals such as yourselves will be equiped with any available facts to defend your positions. A sort of efficient information market hypothesis.
I also assume that I will not receive contracted services in situations where I lack leverage. This leverage could be litigation with a positive expected return or even better the threat of nonpayment. In the instance of cryonics all payments would have been made up front so the later does not apply. The chances of litigation success seem dim at first blush inlight of the issues mentioned in my posts above and below by mattnewport and others. I assumed that if there is evidence that cryonic contracts might be legally enforceable (from a perspective of legal realism) that you guys would have it here as you are smart and incentivized to research this issue (due to your financial and intellectual investment in it). The fact that you guys have no such evidence signals to me that it likely does not exist. This does not inspire me to move away from my initial skepticism wrt cryonics or to invest time in researching it.
So no I won't be looking into the details based on what I have seen so far.
Cryonics orgs that mistreat their patients lose their client base and can't get new ones. They go bust. Orgs that have established a good record, like Alcor and the Cryonics Institute, have no reason to change strategy. Alcor has entirely separated the money for care of patients in an irrevocable trust, thus guarding against the majority of principal-agent problems, like embezzlement.
Note that Alcor is a charity and the CI is a non-profit. I have never assessed such orgs by how successfully I might sue them. I routinely look at how open they are with their finances and actions.