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handoflixue comments on Organ donation vs Cryonics - Less Wrong
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Conversely, that's 0.5 lives which are extended by a few decades, versus 0.05 lives that might live for centuries. Other than that, I agree with you, but I don't think organ donation should be a major obstacle if one is genuinely interested in cryonics.
This is the most important question. I would argue that the probability of succesful reincarnation is much lower than 0.05, and thus I go with organ donation. One's probability calculations are going to change how one answers this question.
Its also worth noting that if one donates oneself to organ donation+scientific research (assuming we go the whole hog, which we might as well if we believe we will not be reaminated), the odds of me helping is definitely much higher than cyronics, and being risk averse is not necessarily a bad thing on a one time bet.
I don't think (and so far haven't read an argument claiming) that you personally signing up for cryonics impacts the actual number of lives that get to live forever. It just helps ensure that you get to be one of those lives.
If you're taking the super-long view, and AREN'T making decisions for (understandably) selfish reasons, then the money you put towards cryonics will do more good if donated towards life extension research, or invested in space travel, or promoting a socioeconomic framework which can better handle the increasingly long lived population.
The extra half-life you also get to save via organ donation doesn't end up mattering much in the long term, but unless I'm personally emotionally entangled with them, I value currently-alive people dramatically more that not-alive-yet people.
Why value currently alive people dramatically more than not-alive-yet people?
Actually, that statement was probably incorrect. This is an area where my moral framework isn't well prepared to handle, and my attempts to fix it have all resulted in hypothetical outcomes I'm not happy with. (I'd elaborate, but it's not really possible to do so without going through the entire function, which I should probably attempt to do soon but won't right now)
I suspect that saving someone's life would increase the total population by at least that much for the singularity, so you're causing even more lives to live for centuries.
Why centuries? I'd expect if they can wake people up from cryonics, they could make them last more than a couple centuries.