lsparrish comments on Cryonics Wants To Be Big - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (160)
As far as the cost-benefit tradeoff, it's arbitrary. Gut feeling. I wrote a Scheme program to calculate the chance I would be successfully deanimated and then reanimated. It ended up being significantly lower than I expected--I was wavering before.
Here's my program, with my probability estimates removed to avoid bias. If anyone wants to use it, feel free. It calculates the probablilty a person will be revived after X years. If you want a final probability, plug in some priors, including a distribution over how long you think it will take you to be revived.
Here is my final probability, rot13ed: Gur cebonovyvgl V'yy or erivirq va svsgl, bar uhaqerq lrnef ner svir-cbvag-guerr-creprag, gjb-cbvag-guerr-creprag erfcrpgviryl.
Edit: I'm having a hard time getting this program source to display properly, but it should run fine with some line breaks.
Okay, so I updated my chance that the correct information is present in the brain - from 75% to 99% after seeing this talk by Brian Wowk, with the team that preserved a rabbit liver. My estimates went down, not up. There was an error in my program, which I've corrected above. Even with this correction, I strongly recommend against using it without checking it yourself first.
My probability estimates are now nearly ten times higher, and I will sign up for cryonics. I guess I should either not stake my life on my programming skills, or program better.
I haven't the faintest idea. I don't apply Bayesian rules in everyday life, and I don't like to guess. But, let me even put that aside. Suppose my personal happiness would be about what it is now, and that I would continue to enjoy life for at least as long as I've been alive currently (about 2 decades). That's already more happiness than I can get a subjective impression of, so I don't feel like I can come up with a helpful answer.
Where did you get $5,000,000, and what exactly does it represent?
I'll think about this, though. You're right in saying I've spent too much time thinking about the probability of success, and not enough on the value of success. I strongly suspect my $10 comes from some idea of what a reasonable monthly fee should be as an anchor, adjusted for the probability. As such, I should reconsider it.
IIRC the figure is the average life insurance pay-out in the US. In the UK, it's more like £1,000,000