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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on This Didn't Have To Happen - Less Wrong
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You'd need reliable statistics on the average number of lives saved per organ donor. If it works out to 0.1 then I wouldn't accept that reply, no.
A Google search gives some hospitals and organizations claiming an average of 3.75 lives saved per organ donor.
I imagine this is the case per case of successful recovery. But a lot of people die such that their organs aren't recovered. That obviously needs to be factored in.
**On edit- It occurs to me that a lot of the cases where organs aren't recovered are also cases where cryogenic preservation wouldn't be possible. So I might be wrong about this. Maybe 3.75 is the right number to use.
Can someone think of cases where preservation is possible but organ recovery isn't?**
Elderly patient suffering organ failure due to aging. Death by cancer (not of the brain). Potential donor had HIV or othervery dangerous infectious diseases. Severe abdominal trauma.
Probably other stuff, too.
Sounds slightly suspicious. QALYs?
I'm actually pretty surprised that you haven't looked this up yourself yet. Is there a point of effectiveness at which you would switch to organ donation over cryopreservation?
ETA: Yes, I'm comparing you to a higher standard of rationality, diligence and altruism than I use for others, including myself.
Probably not, for two reasons. One, Kantian-type reasoning: Someone has to lead the way through the transition, since the ideal would be enough people cryosuspending that they could just integrate the organ donation protocols into it. Two, and more important, there's a nonzero possibility that someone ends up wanting my brain for something interesting Before It's Over - that I wouldn't literally be out of the game.
Do you also, simply, desire to live ?
Or do you mean to say that if your life didn't possess those useful qualities, then it would be better, for you, to forfeit cryonics, and have your organs donated, for instance ?
And I'm actually asking that question to other people here as well, who have altruistic arguments against cryonics. Is there an utility, a value your life has to have, like if you can contribute to something useful, in order to be cryopreserved ? For then that would be for the greatest good for the greatest number of people ?
A value below which, your life would be best not cryopreserved, and your body, used, for organ donations, or something equally destructive to you, but equally beneficial to other people (and certainly more beneficial than whatever value you could create yourself if you were alive) ?
This seems to assume that the probability that someone will be eventually successfully revived given that they have signed up for cryonics is >10%.