My girlfriend/SO's grandfather died last night, running on a treadmill when his heart gave out.
He wasn't signed up for cryonics, of course. She tried to convince him, and I tried myself a little the one time I met her grandparents.
"This didn't have to happen. Fucking religion."
That's what my girlfriend said.
I asked her if I could share that with you, and she said yes.
Just so that we're clear that all the wonderful emotional benefits of self-delusion come with a price, and the price isn't just to you.
I call it risk aversion because if cryonics works at all, it ups the stakes. The money dropped on signing up for it is a sure thing, so it doesn't factor into risk, and if I get frozen and just stay dead indefinitely (for whatever reason) then all I've lost compared to not signing up is that money and possibly some psychological closure for my loved ones. But the scenarios in which cryonics results in me being around for longer - possibly indefinitely - are ones which could be very extreme, in either direction. I'm not comfortable with such extreme stakes: I prefer everything I have to deal with to be within my finite lifespan, in the absence of having a near-certainty about a longer lifespan being awesome.
I don't doubt that there are some "nightmare" situations in which I'd prefer cryonics - I'd rather be frozen than spend the next seventy years being tortured, for example - but I don't live in one of those situations.
That's starting to sound like a general argument for shorter lifetimes over longer ones. Is there a reason this wouldn't apply just as well to living for five more years versus fifty? There's more room for extreme positive or negative experiences in the extra 45 years.