Why am I not signed up for cryonics?
Here's my model.
In most futures, everyone is simply dead.
There's a tiny sliver of futures that are better than that, and a tiny sliver of futures that are worse than that.
What are the relative sizes of those slivers, and how much more likely am I to be revived in the "better" futures than in the "worse" futures? I really can't tell.
I don't seem to be as terrified of death as many people are. A while back I read the Stoics to reduce my fear of death, and it worked. I am, however, very averse to being revived into a worse-than-death future and not being able to escape.
I bet the hassle and cost of cryonics disincentivizes me, too, but when I boot up my internal simulator and simulate a world where cryonics is free, and obtained via a 10-question Google form, I still don't sign up. I ask to be cremated instead.
Cryonics may be reasonable for someone who is more averse to death and less averse to worse-than-death outcomes than I am. Cryonics may also be reasonable for someone who has strong reasons to believe they are more likely to be revived in better-than-death futures than in worse-than-death futures. Finally, there may be a fundamental error in my model.
This does, however, put me into disagreement with both Robin Hanson ("More likely than not, most folks who die today didn't have to die!") and Eliezer Yudkowsky ("Not signing up for cryonics [says that] you've stopped believing that human life, and your own life, is something of value").
I responded to this as a post here: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/lrf/can_we_decrease_the_risk_of_worsethandeath/
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.