Back in 2010 I was looking for data about how my "life in general" was likely to go using base rates from other people. The post was Seeking book about baseline life planning and expectations. Not precisely on target, but related.
For years before I had a crazy plan to use a system of digital watches, notes with time stamps, and a Polaroid camera if I ever discover a tattoo on my body indicating I have anterograde amnesia... but senile dementia seems like a much less crazy thing to make plans for because it is predicted to afflict a relatively large percent of the population in the future.
Based on thoughts and conversations around this topic in 2010/2011, it occurred to me that it might be valuable to lay some memories down in my relative youth to help in my declining years. From people who have experience with the elderly in their declining years, I heard that a major problem is that old people can become bitter and untrusting of caregivers and therefore become harder to care for than otherwise. Also they tend to feel like they aren't in the right place and wander off. So my tentative conclusion is that if and when I "practice having a memory disorder" in advance, I should actively trust seeming strangers who help me, and try not to move around too much if my surroundings aren't recognizable. But should also probably disable or massively filter my cell phone and email and whatnot, because I'll probably be easy to scam.
Somehow, this seems all like a failure mode I should plan to avoid if I can, rather than updating in that direction now.
I wonder how much mistrust of caregivers is the result of actual bad experiences. In that case, the important thing would be figuring out procedures to improve the odds of only having good caregivers.
Second thought: avoiding bad caregivers is very important in itself.
One thing that struck me in the 2011 survey was that 90% of LW respondents were under age 38. I'm 57 myself. It seems that often rationality in planning our lives depends on estimates of what values and utility functions we will hold in the future. Has anyone looked systematically at what projected older versions of themselves would think, based on what relevant groups of existing older folks think?
"You'll understand when you're older" is an annoying form of argument. Arguably there's some grain of truth there when a 7-year-old tells you that sex is disgusting and he or she will never ever think it's anything but incredibly gross. But you could explain hormonal changes that as a matter of empirical fact change opinions on that subject in the vast majority of cases. I can't think of anything that dramatic that distinguishes 60-year-olds or 80-year-olds from 20-year-olds.
My dim recollection of studies is that on the whole as people age they tend to be less idealistic, more resigned to society the way it is rather than how it might be, and more constrained by realities of politics and economics (for starters).
I don't presume to offer anything in this regard based on my age, and in any case I'm only a single person (a nihilist when pressed, but one who finds himself happier pretending not to be and working sporadically for rationality, truth, justice, love, and all that good stuff).
When I read of cryonics, what comes to my mind is the escalating costs of health care and (as I see it) the need to curb the development of expensive life-extending medical procedures. Cryonics sounds instead like an extremely expensive procedure. Maybe no one is suggesting it be covered by health insurance, and it's just an option that some people pay out of pocket for. Even so, the "health care is a right, not a privilege" sentiment will mean that if it was shown to work, everyone would want it, and (in my estimation) society would go completely haywire in an unpleasant way.
Now, the substance of the above has probably been discussed elsewhere at length; I raise it is an example because when I was 21 I would have thought of it very differently than I do now.