NancyLebovitz comments on On the unpopularity of cryonics: life sucks, but at least then you die - Less Wrong

67 Post author: gwern 29 July 2011 09:06PM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 29 July 2011 07:12:04AM 32 points [-]

I've met that guy-- I was talking about life extension with a random person-- he sounded like he was in his thirties. He didn't want life extension because his life was bad (ordinary job-- he was doing a survey for a bank, and this was probably about ten years ago) and he didn't want more of it and couldn't imagine things being any better.

Working conditions are somewhat better for Europeans (the author writes about a two-week vacation), but they aren't scrambling to sign up for cryonics.

Extended families are great if you're in a good one. My impression is that a fair number of people want to get away from them, but I don't know what the proportion is compared to people in nuclear families.

Michael Vassar had (has?) a theory that the three things which keep people trapped and which keep getting more expensive-- housing, credentialed education, and medical care-- are monopolized.

It would be interesting if, just as work on FAI has led to an interest in improving access to rationality, work on life extension leads to work on improving quality of life.

Comment author: Dustin 29 July 2011 11:01:19PM 17 points [-]

I like that theory of Vassar's because it fits my personal experience.

I was raised in an extremely religious household which caused me to miss out on advanced education. The internet has alleviated that to a degree, but the credentialed part certainly hasn't been alleviated. By the time I "woke up" from the indoctrination of being raised in such a religious household, I was already approaching 30 years old and relatively unwealthy while at the same time being stuck with the work skills I was taught while growing up...that is construction and remodeling of homes. While I have made the best of that by being self-employed, it certainly has kept me from doing what I really would like to do when I "grow up".

The internet has really been a boon for me as I self educated in software development and am slowly working to transition over to making my living from doing that. That's closer to what I would rather do, but I doubt I'll ever be able to get to the point where I can do what I really would love (research in any of the scientific fields I'm interested in...CS/medicine/AI/physics). At times this can be quite depressing and it feels like the person I was, was wasted.

However, all this makes me more of a fan of cryonics. Second chances and all that.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 29 July 2011 10:38:21PM 8 points [-]

Cryogenics pretty much isn't AVAILABLE in most of Europe. Not at a price, acceptability, or reliability comparable to the US at least.

Comment author: ciphergoth 31 July 2011 09:43:58PM 4 points [-]

I'm signed up, and I'm in the UK. The options aren't as good, but you take what you can get.

Comment author: hairyfigment 29 July 2011 10:46:04PM 4 points [-]

Why not? Does this seem like a good investment opportunity (for people who actually have money)?

Comment author: Armok_GoB 29 July 2011 11:10:19PM 5 points [-]

It almost certainly is. I have no idea why nobody have done it, but I'd guess some kind of coordination fail is involved. If you know any European investors you should tip them of on this, it could save lives.

It's really annoying not knowing or being the kind of person who can do stuff. My brain seems to generate potential brilliant business plans and million-dollar-ideas at an alarming rate and not having to force myself to forget them all the time so that they wont haunt me with possibilities just out of reach would probably be good for my mental health.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 31 July 2011 10:47:58PM 1 point [-]

Does this seem like a good investment opportunity (for people who actually have money)?

It almost certainly is.

Does it seem that way?

Comment author: Armok_GoB 01 August 2011 12:02:03PM 1 point [-]

That's what I said. It almost certainly is a thing that seems that way. I don't know if it actually seems that way, and even if it seem that way it might not actually be that way... um, guess I could have expressed that more clearly.