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lsparrish comments on Optimism versus cryonics - Less Wrong
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Yet we have had people here advocate jumping off a bridge in front of a trolley if you are fat enough to stop it.
Suppose it could be argued young people create more joy per annum, for themselves and others, than do old people. Suppose (more controversially) that this excess joy over the first thirty years or so of life more than counterbalances the negative joy associated with death (for self and others).
That is, we are assuming that people contribute net positive utility to the world - even when their death after three score and ten is taken into account. Most people would, I believe, assent to this.
Now assume that there is a bound on the total number of people that can be supported comfortably in any milieu. This should be completely obvious given the previous assumption, even in a post-singularity universe. If the milieu is not yet at the carrying capacity, generate more children - don't resurrect more corpsicles!
Given this analysis, a utilitarian seems to have a clear-cut duty not to support cryonics - unless he disagrees that mortal human life is a net plus. And in that case, cryonics should be a lower priority to vasectomy or tubal ligation.
Edit: spelling correction
Your argument doesn't seem to take into account the plausible difference between old dying people and old immortal people.
Well, I had in mind a situation in which immortal people maintain a physical age of roughly 50 forever. But that the first 50 years of a person's life are so much better than any succeeding immortal 50 year period so as to make up for the mortal "bad years" from physical 50 to death.
So, I am taking it into account, though perhaps I was insufficiently explicit.
It strikes me as entirely rational to regard death as so terrible or youth as so angst-ridden that a world filled with immortals is the ideal. In which case cryonics makes sense. But it certainly is not a slam-dunk judgement. And this judgment is also inconsistent with a lack of activism regarding population limitation in the absense of cryonic revival.
It could be argued that while the creation of new children has positive utility (it certainly suits the preferences of the parents, e.g.), it is not anywhere near as high as the continued survival of humans already in existence.
Probably not for the humans already in existence. But, given a reasonable life prospect, the utility of being born is pretty high for the child being born. Higher for a neutral onlooker, too, I think.