EphemeralNight comments on Stupid Questions June 2015 - Less Wrong
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Is it unethical to have children pre-Singularity, for the risk of them dying?
I think maybe not if you sign them up for cryonic preservation?
I think it may be much more on point to talk about it being unethical to have children pre-singularity, for the inevitable needless suffering that will occur. I do believe that the moment we solve aging, it is a moral imperative to stop having children until we can be assure that we're not bringing new people into existence just to suffer.
I don't think it is unethical to keep having children today, but only so far as it is necessary to actually reach the singularity. I think ethically, we should be trying to minimize the portion of human mind-space that must experience pre-singularity existence, but not to the point of delaying the singularity.
Cryonics also has what Aschwin de Wolf calls the Cryonics and Something Else (CASE) problem. Many of the older cryonicists connected the cryonics idea with Ayn Rand's philosophy, postwar libertarianism and space colonization ideas from the 1970's. Younger people look at these Something Elses linked to cryonics and don't understand the appeal of these Baby Boomer fads. I would like to see cryonics disengage from the nerd enthusiasms of the day and become a strictly practical experimental medical technology that anyone can avail himself of without having to accept a lot of unnecessary baggage along with it.
Children of cryonicists have a record of dropping their cryopreservation arrangements when they become adults.
You would expect this from reversion to the mean.