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CronoDAS comments on Against Cryonics & For Cost-Effective Charity - Less Wrong
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Comments (180)
Incidentally, heart transplants and cryonics both cost about the same amount of money... does the "it's selfish" argument also apply to getting a heart transplant?
Most of multifoliaterose's criticisms of cryonics apply to the majority of money spent on medical treatments in rich nations.
Getting a heart transplant has instrumental value that cryonics does not.
A heart transplant enables the recipient to continue being a productive member of society. If the recipient is doing a lot to help other people then the cost of the heart transplant is easily outweighed by the recipients' productivity.
By way of contrast, if society gets to the point where cryopreserved people can be restored, it seems likely that society will have advanced to the point where such people are much less vital to society.
Also, the odds of success for a heart transplant are probably significantly higher than the odds of success for cryorestoration.
Edit: See a remark in a post by Jason Fehr at the GiveWell Mailing List:
I don't think that having Bill Clinton cryopreserved would be nearly as valuable to society as the cardiovascular operations that he underwent were.
But if while President Bill Clinton knew he was going to be cryopreserved he might have caused the government to devote more resources to artificial intelligence research and existential risks.
So, then, should prospective heart transplant recipients have to prove that they will do enough with their remaining life to benefit humanity, in order for the operation to be approved?
I think you're holding cryonics to a much higher standard than other expenditures.
Distinguish personal morality from public enforcement. In a liberal society our personal purchases should (typically) not require anyone else's permission or "approval". But it still might be the case that it would be a better decision to choose the more selfless option, even if you have a right to be selfish. That seems just as true of traditional medical expenditures as it does of cryonics.
One of the defects of the karma system is that replies to comments tend to get less votes, even when they're as good as the original comment. Here CronoDAS's comment is at 9, and the response at only 4, even though the response does a very good job of showing that the cases mentioned are not nearly equivalent.
I consider Crono's comment more insightful than multi's and my votes reflect my position.
Would you disagree that the differences mentioned by multifoliaterose are real?
Anyway, in terms of the general point I made, I see the same thing in numerous cases, even when nearly everyone would say the quality of the comments is equal. For example you might see a parent comment at 8 at a response at 2, maybe because people are less interested, or something like that.
The difference is real. Whether it is also the real reason is another question.
Yes, I would disagree. A large fraction of the people who are getting heart transplants are old and thus not very productive. More generally, medical expenses in the last three years of life can easily run as much as a hundred thousand US dollars, and often run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Most people in the US and Europe are not at all productive their last year of life.
If I personally were debilitated to the point of not being able to contribute value comparable to the value of a heart transplant then I would prefer to decline the heart transplant and have the money go to a cost-effective charity. I would rather die knowing that I had done something to help others than live knowing that I had been a burden on society. Others may feel differently and that's fine. We all have our limits. But getting a heart transplant when one is too debilitated to contribute something of comparable value should not be considered philanthropic. Neither should cryonics.
You are making an error by not placing your own well-being into greater regard than well-being of others. It's a known aspect of human value.
Err, are you saying that his values are wrong, or just that they're not in line with majoritarian values?
For one thing, multifoliaterose is probably extrapolating from the values xe signals, which aren't identical to the values xe acts on. I don't doubt the sincerity of multifoliaterose's hypothetical resolve (and indeed I share it), but I suspect that I would find reasons to conclude otherwise were I actually in that situation. (Being signed up for cryonics might make me significantly more willing to actually refuse treatment in such a case, though!)
I'm saying that he acts under a mistaken idea about his true values. He should be more selfish (recognize himself as being more selfish).
By what factor? Assume a random stranger.
Maybe tens or thousands, but I'm as ignorant as anybody about the answer, so it's a question of pulling a best guess, not of accurately estimating the hidden variable.
It rarely bothers me when insightful original comments are voted up more than their (more or less) equally insightful responses. In my view, the original comment often “deserves” more upvotes for raising an interesting issue in the first place and thereby expanding a fruitful discussion.
Doesn't successful cryopreservation and revival have a good chance of doing the same, and for longer?
A life kept active and productive in the here and now might be more valuable in some respects than one that is dormant for the near future, given that more other individuals exist in the far future who would have to compete with the reanimated individual.
A heart transplant has a much higher expected utility than cryonics. Could that be a major cause of the negative response?
Disagree. A heart transplant that adds a few decades is less valuable than a cryopreservation that adds a few millennia.
Also, heart transplants are a congestion resource whereas cryonics is a scale resource.
So what? The value of winning the lottery is much higher than working for the next five years, but that doesn't mean it has a higher expected utility.
The expected value of an act is the sum of the products (utilities x probabilities).
Unless you think a heart transplant is just as probable to work as cryonics, then you must consider more than simply the value of each act.
To offset a difference in living 100 times as much longer (even not accounting for other utilities like quality of life), it takes 100 times the probability. I don't think cryonics is 100 times less likely to work than a heart transplant.