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Vivificient comments on Rationalists Are Less Credulous But Better At Taking Ideas Seriously - Less Wrong
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This whole article makes a sleight of hand assumption that more rational = more time on LW.
I'm a proto-rationalist by these criteria. I don't see any reason cryonics can't eventually work. I've no interest in it, and I think it is kinda weird.
Some of that weirdness is the typical frozen dead body stuff. But, more than that, I'm weirded out by the immortality-ism that seems to be a big part of (some of) the tenured LW crowd (i.e. rationalists).
I've yet to hear one compelling argument for why hyper-long life = better. The standard answers seems to be "death is obviously bad and the only way you could disagree is because you are biased" and "more years can equal more utilons".
In the case of the former, yeah, death sucks 'cuz it is an end and often involves lots of pain and inconvenience in the run up to it. To the latter, yeah, I get the jist: More utilons = better. Shut up and do math. Okay.
I'm totally on board with getting rid of gratuitous pain and inconvenience that comes with aging. But, as I said, the "I want to live forever! 'cuz that is winning!" thing is just plain weird to me, at least as much so as the frozen body/head bit.
But what could I know... I'm not rational.
Upvoted for providing a clear counterexample to Yvain's assertion that people would find immortality to be "surely an outcome as desirable as any lottery jackpot".
This suggests that a partial explanation for the data is that "experienced rationalists" (high karma, long time in community) are more likely to find immortality desirable, and so more likely to sign up for cryonics despite having slightly lower faith in the technology itself.