Friendly-HI comments on You Only Live Twice - Less Wrong
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> If I thought that we were on track to a Future where no one cares about human life, and lives that could easily be saved are just thrown away - then I would try to change that. Not everything worth doing is easy.
Spare me the dramatics!
I continue to not understand the economics of reviving people in the future. Your argument here seems to be that reviving frozen heads, no matter the cost, is a moral obligation. That does not make sense to me.
Thought experiment: tomorrow, John Q. Scientist reveals that he can, for the cost of $1 million, revive any person who has been cryogenically frozen. Say 1000 people are frozen cryogenically in an acceptable state right now. Do we revive them? Why? What if they will only get (maybe) another year? 5 years? 10 years? Who pays for it? What if it's $100 million?
The only people I imagine willing to pay for the operation are loved ones. Very rich loved ones. And in a large portion of the scenarios I imagine, there's at least a few generations between yourself and the technology to defrost people. Who will pay when there's no remaining loved ones? Is it a moral responsibility to spend the money? Why?
1) Why do you think a revival will remain prohibitively expensive forever?
2) If you've got no living relatives, then one reason for revival could be commercial. A company could simply revive you for a certain cost and then you have to pay them back in the long run.
The latter couldn't even be argued to be a forced contract without consent. Considering that you were taking the trouble of freezing yourself, it can safely be assumed that you'd be more than happy and willing to pay for the cost of your revival in the same way you'd pay off any ordinary debt. Hell, I should own that company.