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Unknowns comments on How to sign up for Alcor cryo - Less Wrong
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Sometimes people will argue that if you would pay a lot to save your own life from a fatal illness, that means you don't value lives equally but prefer your own, and therefore you should sign up for cryonics. But this argument seems a bit problematic to me, because it assumes my preference to save my life in the case of the fatal illness is ideal. In reality it might not be ideal at all. I am certainly not Zachary Baumkletterer, but it's likely I would be a better person if I were. If this is the case, the problem is not that I am unwilling to sign up for cryonics, but that I would pay to save myself from the fatal illness instead of giving the money away. And this argument does not mean that if I don't want to sign up for cryonics, instead I have to start donating all my money to charity. It just means I am doing the best I feel that I can, and if I signed up for cryonics I would be doing even worse (by doing less for others.)
Yes, this, exactly.
I do nice things for myself not because I have deep-seated beliefs that doing nice things for myself is the right thing to do, but because I feel motivated to do nice things for myself.
I'm not sure that I could avoid doing those things for myself (it might require willpower I do not have) or that I should (it might make me less effective at doing other things), or that I would want to if I could and should (doing nice things for myself feels nice).
But if we invent a new nice thing to do for myself that I don't currently feel motivated to do, I don't see any reason to try to make myself do it. If it's instrumentally useful, then sure: learning to like playing chess means means that my brain gets exercise while I'm having fun.
With cryonics, though? I could try to convince myself that I want it, and then I will want it, and then I will spend money on it. I could also leave things as they are, and spend that money on things I currently want. Why should I want to want something I don't want?
You might be able to achieve significantly better life outcomes for yourself by becoming more strategic.