Eugine_Nier comments on Should criminals be denied cryonics? - Less Wrong

2 Post author: venetian 23 December 2010 04:23AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 23 December 2010 06:19:23AM *  3 points [-]

Suppose you believe that final death is an appropriate punishment for someone's crime. You also believe cryonics has probability p of working, where p is too small for you to sign up for cryonics. Should you allow the prisoner to be frozen?

If cryonics doesn't work, it doesn't make a difference; and if cryonics does, you shouldn't. Thus there is no reason to allow the prisoner to sign up for cryonics.

Notice that this conclusion doesn't depend on the probability of cryonics working, or on how certain you are the prisoner is guilty, for any certainty sufficient to justify him being executed.