Not from searching, just from reading Chronopause mostly. I'm not sure there's any one place for it - doing a site search for 'economies of scale' turns up http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/02/26/response-to-maxim%E2%80%99s-rant-about-automation-in-cardiopulmonary-bypass/
Aschwin de Wolf has made something of a “hobby” or perhaps study out of monitoring gross waste of this kind in cryonics, and he has come up with a conclusion, with which I largely agree, that the more money you throw at cryonics (in general) the LESS results you will get. In other words, it is not just that the results don’t scale with the increased funding, but rather that positive return decreases, grinds to a halt, and result can actually become harmful! It’s seem to operate somewhat analogously to government involvement in astronautics. They spend massive amounts of money, produce dangerous garbage that fails in all of its primary missions (e.g., the Shuttle), AND they serve as a spoiler for the creation of viable alternatives. The latter is particularly pernicious. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. I wish Aschwin would write an article about these observations and his synthesis and let me publish here on Chronosphere or, failing that, that he post it on Depressed Metabolism.
You know, for many years in cryonics people have wished for two things with both great longing and great frequency: 1) that a really famous person get’s frozen, and 2) that millionaires start pumping money into cryonics. All of this reminds me of the quote from St. Theresa of Avila: “Answered prayers cause more tears than those that remain unanswered”.
Which seems shorter and more informal than I remember his assessment being.
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.