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Synaptic comments on Mike Darwin on the Less Wrong intelligentsia - Less Wrong
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Would you mind going into details?
Plastination is a route that has been discussed but has had in my understanding zero research devoted to actually understanding whether it would work in humans for preserving personal identity. Ken Hayworth says that it could cost just a few thousand dollars.
Right now it may seem like there is no cheap route for effective brain preservation, but it is also clear that we as a species have not tried very hard to find out. Do you weigh that uncertainty in your calculations?
One counter to this, which I do not necessarily endorse, is that people saved from malaria may also contribute to the world in negative ways, whereas preserved people are only likely to be revived if future society has good reason to believe that they will be a net positive.
ETA: Then again, I suppose there could also be strife and violence about the status of the preserved individuals, which actually might be worse in EV.
I was referring to the difficulty cryonics organizations have had in recruiting customers, and their slow growth. I was contrasting this to the rapid growth of cost-effectiveness oriented efforts in private charity in aid, and the sophistication and money moved of groups like GiveWell (with increasing billionaire support), Giving What We Can, Life You Can Save, etc.
Yes, that's responsible for much of the EV in my mind.
I first talked about cryonics not being at the frontier of existential risk reduction, and then separately said that I thought GiveWell type donations would do better for preserving current people than cryonics. I don't think that marginal malaria cures have very large effects on existential risks, and was not making any claim about the sign (I am not very confident either way). I was trying to illustrate that for a variety of disinterested objective functions I was skeptical about cryonics promotion coming out on top, except in terms of the welfare of cryonicists (a motive I can strongly sympathize with).
ETA: I did not include plastination under the banner of cryonics (since it isn't cryonics, in terms of temperature, organizational structure, or technology). It looks more promising from a state of relative ignorance.
For those interested, my notes on plastination: http://www.gwern.net/plastination
(Also, Darwin has provided me a lot of material on plastination I have lazily failed to get around to incorporating.)