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mattnewport comments on This Didn't Have To Happen - Less Wrong
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I'm an atheist and I'm not currently persuaded by the case for cryonics. I'm unpersuaded purely on a (non-rigorous, informal) cost-benefit analysis. It just seems to me that there are better things to spend my money on. It seems to me that you can make a similar case for being a survivalist - stocking up on guns, ammo and emergency supplies in case of major disaster - and while the argument is sound I just don't judge the expected utility to be worth the outlay. The social stigma is certainly a factor in both cases.
Hmmm... Interesting point, I'm not at all sure how feasible the advantage of having a survivalist hideout is. On the other hand, my position on cryonics pushes the feasibility through the roof, so it's easier to decide.
A lot of the factors you have to consider when deciding the likelihood of being revived with cryonics are the same risk factors you'd consider for maintaining a survivalist hideout but operating in the opposite direction. The more likely you consider economic or social collapse, natural disasters or other societal disruptions which would make a cryonic revival less likely the more value you'd place on survivalist preparations. It's plausible to me that my chances for living long enough to see radical life extension become feasible would be improved by survivalist preparations to a greater extent than expending the same resources on cryonics would improve my chances of being revived at some future date. The relative benefits here would depend on age and other personal factors, though again I'm not claiming to have done a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.
Factors may be the same, but the probabilities of success are on the different sides of these factors. Where cryonics succeeds, survivalist hideout is likely unnecessary, but where cryonics fails, survivalist hideout is only useful within the border cases where the society breaks down, but it's still possible to survive. And there, how much does the advance preparation help? Groups of people will still be more powerful and resilient, so I'm not convinced it's of significant benefit.
I think the history of the 20th Century has quite a few examples of situations where society broke down to a large extent within certain regions and yet it was possible to survive (in a world which overall was progressing technologically) for long enough to relocate somewhere safer. Survival in those situations probably depends on luck to quite an extent but survivalist type preparations would likely have increased the chance of survival. The US (where cryonics seems to be most popular) did not really suffer any such situations in the 20th century, with the possible exception of a few natural disasters, but much of Europe and Asia did.
I think the main area where I differ from most cryonics advocates on the probability of it working is in the likelihood of the cryonics institution surviving intact until revival is possible. I think in a future scenario somewhat like WWII in Europe or the cultural revolution in China a cryonics institution would be unlikely to survive but human civilization would as would lucky and/or prepared individuals.
How much do you expect it to cost?
At a guess somewhere around a $250,000 value life insurance policy? I don't know how much that costs but somewhere around $2000 a year maybe? I could go and look it up but those are my off the top of my head guesses.
$120/year*
The Cryonics Institute does whole-body preservation for $28,000. (I looked it up.)
That is cheaper than I expected. Surprisingly cheap - storage costs must be pretty low if that covers initial preservation and enough funds for the investment return to cover storage in perpetuity.
Liquid nitrogen is not very expensive.
Still, that money presumably has to fund storage costs in perpetuity. Assuming some of the money goes to up-front freezing costs, say you have $25,000 in 20 year TIPS yielding a fairly risk free inflation indexed 2.5%, you've got $625 a year to cover storage. That barely pays for a small self-storage unit around here. It's almost suspiciously cheap.
Liquid nitrogen is on the order of $80 - which is either the cost per month per cryostat or the cost per customer per year, I don't recall which. The Cryonics Institute owns its own building, and you can keep more than one body in a single cryostat (big cylinder of liquid nitrogen).
The annual fixed costs of cryonics are practically nothing. The costs would decline even further with economies of scale and the scale to invest in better technology. Immortality for everyone in the United States would be a rounding error in the stimulus bill.
For everyone? Well, there'd also be the cost of building the facilities... Anyways, maybe we really should try to push something like that? (Yeah yeah, I know, unlikely.)
Anyways, did you get the PM I sent? (About talking me through some of the specifics of actually signing up?)
I emailed The Cryonics Institute this morning with my details based on this application form - http://www.cryonics.org/LifeMem.html.
I got a reply almost immediately.
Then I sent $1,250 to CIHQ@aol.com via paypal.
And I'm signed up.
I also have to send a copy of the signed app form by post. I'm lucky enough to have saved up the $28,000 needed for the cryopreservation, but I reckon it's not too expensive to get a life insurance policy for the amount.
I have cheated on this decision by writing down the bottomline without figuring out an answer for myself. But if I had to give one reason to justify it, it's simple:
I want to live.
The arguments against cryonics in the comments here have any ground only in a world accustomed to disposable human life. Now I have a chance to wake up in a world which is not so.
PM? Nope, I'm not sure how to check PMs here. (Can you please ask someone else, though? Almost anyone else in the world would probably be better...)
Cost of facilities per person should go down significantly as the number of people gets large, right?
Also, don't bother with whole-body preservation. It's useless, because regrowing a body is the least of revival problems, and it's harmful, because your brain spends longer warm while the whole useless hunk of meat attached to it is cooling down. Plus it costs more.
I'd feel more comfortable with that if we knew more about the extent to which the glial cells around the heart -- not to mention the remainder of the nervous system -- play a role in learning, decisionmaking, emotion etc. I'd hate to lose any non-recoverable data from those systems and have to recreate it, e.g. learning to walk again or being missing emotional reactions, or who knows what else. I think I'd want to keep the "useless hunk of meat" around, just in case, even if it had to be separated from the head for better cooling.
If they did play such an important role in human thought, wouldn't you expect there to be case studies of people who become psychologically impaired after heart surgery (in particular, the installation of an artificial heart)?
CI only offers full-body, but it's cheaper than Alcor's neuro option.