CarlShulman comments on How Likely Is Cryonics To Work? - Less Wrong

18 Post author: jkaufman 25 September 2011 11:38PM

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Comment author: CarlShulman 26 September 2011 04:35:31AM *  15 points [-]

0.10 Something happens to you financially where you can no longer afford this

This one seems conceptually strange in a cost-benefit analysis: if you get into straits in which you don't want to pay your insurance premia and membership fees, then you stop paying and lose the protection (unless you have been suspended or died in the interim). In this situation both the costs and benefits are reduced, so it shouldn't play the role it does in the above calculation.

0.03 You mess up the paperwork, either for cryonics or life insurance

This rate is empirically too high.

0.20 Not all of what makes you you is encoded in the physical state of the brain

Why so high?

0.35 Other (there are always other things that can go wrong)

One does have to inform this probability by historical rates.

Something goes wrong in reviving

A lot of these claims are going to be correlated with each other and brain preservation adequacy (from the first section), likewise for technological/economic capacities and interests. If you apply a mistaken independence assumption and break apart many correlated things you'll get big underestimates of probability.

Comment author: jkaufman 26 September 2011 04:05:42PM *  2 points [-]

0.20 Not all of what makes you you is encoded in the physical state of the brain

Why so high?

How sure are we that electrical information is not important? That the neurons in other parts of your body are not very important?

Comment author: CarlShulman 26 September 2011 10:09:12PM *  8 points [-]

How sure are we that electrical information is not important?

Brain electrical activity can collapse to undetectable levels and be recovered from.

That the neurons in other parts of your body are not very important?

One can think about amputees and the like, and your own degree of attachment to certain kinds of muscle memory, etc.

Comment author: jkaufman 27 September 2011 10:45:12AM 2 points [-]

Ok. I've revised my probability down to 2%. Updated in the google doc. Thanks!

Comment author: jkaufman 27 September 2011 01:18:03AM *  0 points [-]

be from?

Comment author: CarlShulman 27 September 2011 01:34:45AM 0 points [-]

Mangled link.