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brazil84 comments on Open thread, August 19-25, 2013 - Less Wrong
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Yes I totally agree. Similarly your chances of being murdered are probably a lot lower than the average if you live in an affluent neighborhood and have a spouse who has never assaulted you.
Suicide is an interesting issue -- I would like to think that my chances of committing suicide are far lower than average but painful experience has taught me that it's very easy to be overconfident in predicting one's own actions.
Yes, but there is an easy way around this: Just buy life insurance while you are still reasonably healthy.
Actually this is what got me thinking about the issue: I was recently buying life insurance to protect my family. When I got the policy, I noticed that it had an "accelerated death benefit rider," i.e. if you are certifiably terminally ill, you can get a $100k advance on the policy proceeds. When you think about it, that's not the only way to raise substantial money in such a situation. For example, if you were terminally ill, your spouse probably wouldn't mind if you borrowed $200k against the house for cryopreservation if she knew that when you finally kicked the bucket she would get a check for a million from the insurance company.
So the upshot is that from a selfish perspective, there is a lot to be said for taking a "wait and see" approach.
(There's another issue I thought of: Like most life insurance policies, the ones I bought are good only for 20 years. There is a pretty good chance that I will live for those 20 years but in the meantime develop a serious health condition which makes it almost impossible to buy more insurance. What then?)
I agree with this to an extent.
That's a feature, not a bug, of term life insurance. That's the tradeoff you're making to get coverage now at a cheap rate. But of course, the option value exists on both sides - so if you want to lock in relatively lower rates, well, that's why whole life insurance exists.
Yes, good point. I actually looked into getting whole life insurance but the policies contained so many bells, whistles, and other confusions that I put it all on hold until I had bought some term insurance. Maybe I will look into that again.
Of course if I were disciplined, it would probably make sense to just "buy term and invest the difference" for the next 30 years.
Hmmm. You do have some interesting ideas regarding cryonics funding that do sound promising, but to be safe I would talk to Alcor, specifically Diane Cremeens, about them directly to ensure ahead of time that they'll work for them.
Probably that's a good idea. But on the other hand, what are the chances that they would turn down a certified check for $200k from someone who has a few months to live?
I suppose one could argue that setting things up years in advance so that Alcor controls the money makes it difficult for family members to obstruct your attempt to get frozen.
In addition to the money, Alcor requires a lot of legal paperwork, including a notarized will. You can probably do that if you have "a few months," but it's one more thing to worry about, especially if you're dying of something that leaves you mentally impaired and makes legal consent complicated. I don't know how strict about this Alcor would be; I second the grandparent's advice to ask Diane.