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Armok_GoB comments on On the unpopularity of cryonics: life sucks, but at least then you die - Less Wrong
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The prospect of an hansonain future does seem like a pretty good reason to delete all records of yourself, dispose of anyone with significant memories of you, and incinerate your brain in a large explosion enough to spread the ashes of your brain for miles around. At sea.
It should make you happy with the present, though, if you use the past and the future as the baseline for comparison. As John Derbyshire once said in a different context, "We are living in a golden age. The past was pretty awful; the future will be far worse. Enjoy!"
Now I'm confused, how's other people being even worse of supposed to make me feel better?
Well, if we (the present humans) are indeed extraordinarily fortunate to live in a brief and exceptional non-Malthusian period -- what Hanson calls "the Dreamtime" -- then you should be happy to be so lucky that you get to enjoy it. Yes, you could have been even luckier to be born as some overlord who gets to be wealthy and comfortable even in a Malthusian world, but even as a commoner in a non-Malthusian era, you were dealt an exceptionally good hand.
No, I'm UN-lucky. I'd prefer a different, counterfactual universe where EVERYONE is happy at all times, and given any set universe I see no reason how which entity in it is me should matter.
A couple of comments:
Yes, a hansonian future looks appalling. Anything that gets us back into a Malthusian trap is a future that I would not want to experience.
I'm not sure that active measures to prevent oneself from being revived in such a future are necessary. If extreme population growth makes human life of little value in what are currently the developed nations, who would revive us? Cryonics has been likened to a four-dimensional ambulance ride to a future emergency room. If the emergency rooms of the 22nd century turn out to only accept the rich, cryonicists will never get revived in such a world anyway.
I find it bizarre that Robin Hanson himself both endorses cryonics and actively endorses population growth - both in the near term (conventional overpopulation of humans) and in the long term (explosive growth of competing uploads/ems).
@2: Most of it was humour, indicating excessive paranoia. Under that was basically a mix of being humble (might have reasons we would never think of to do it), and the implication that it's not only bad but so bad every little trace of probability must be pushed as close as possible to 0.
Hey now, the poor also smile!