(I just love that I can de-escalate drama on LW. This site rocks.)

I'll concede that the previous discussions were insufficient. Let's make this place the "one and done" thread.

Do you accept that singling out cryonics is rather unfair, not as opposed to all spending, but as opposed to other Far expenses? To do this right we have to look at "How heroic should my sacrifices be?" in general; if we conclude cryonics is not worth the cost in circumstances X we should conclude the same thing about, say, end-of-life treatments.

I've tried to capture my intuitions about sacrificing a life to save several; here are the criteria that seem relevant:

• Most importantly, whether it pattern-matches giving one's life to a cause, or regular suicide. Idealism is often a good move (reasons complicated and beyond the scope of this), whereas if someone's fine with suicide they're probably completely broken and unable to recognize a good cause. I expect people who run into burning orphanages just think about distressed orphans, and treat risk of death like an environmental feature (like risk the door will be blocked; that doesn't affect the general plan, just makes them route through the window), as opposed to weighing risk to themselves against risk to orphans. I endorse this; the policy consequences are quite different even if they roughly agree on "Kill self to save more" (for example CronoDAS is waiting for his parents to croak instead of offing himself right away).
• Whether the lives you trade for are framed as Near or Far.
• Whether the life you trade away is framed as Near or Far. (I feel cryonics as Nearer than most would, for irrevelant reasons.)
• Whether the lives you trade for are framed as preventing a loss, or reaching for a gain.
• Whether the life you trade away is framed as accepting a loss, or refusing a gain.
• Whether the life you trade away is mine or someone else's, and who is getting the choice.

Note knock-on effects: If someone hears of the Resistance, and is inspired to give their life to a cause, I'm happy. (If the cause is Al-Qaeda, they've made a mistake, but an unrelated one.) If someone hears of people practicing Really Extreme Altruism and are driven to suicide as a result, I'm sad. Refusing cryonics strikes me as closer to the latter.