I've looked it up in the past, and I'm pretty sure I'm not rationalizing it. Here's one data-source: http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/129_death_and_death_rates_by_age.html
For example, 15-24 (a non-trivial demographic on LW) mostly die from accidents, cars, murders, suicide, and cancer. The lead-time on cancer is not clear, but given the age group I imagine they are usually very quick and unexpected. Most of this is very bad for cryoncists - if you were diagnosed with systemic cancer today, would you fly out to California or Arizona immediately? Today I was reading the diary kept by Prince of Persia's maker during the writing of it, where he writes for one day:
Adam Derman is dead. A couple of weeks ago he went to the doctor because he’d been having headaches, and they found out his whole body was riddled with cancer. It was too late to do anything. He was 23.
25-44 is a little more doable. HIV is #1 (this dataset is from 1995 apparently), but probably not too relevant for any young people reading this who haven't reached that bracket, and then again accidents and car accidents (both bad for cryonics), cancer, heart disease, suicide, homicide, and liver disease. Of these, cancer and livers are the best ones for a cryonicists while heart attacks are pretty bad.
Adam Derman is dead. A couple of weeks ago he went to the doctor because he’d been having headaches, and they found out his whole body was riddled with cancer. It was too late to do anything. He was 23.
I was assuming that if I was going to die from cancer, I would likely know that a few years in advance, and hence shifting my probability assignment for myself dying by cancer within one year downwards from the statistic for people of my gender, age and country. I won't do that anymore.
25-44 is a little more doable.
Hmmm, yeah. If I think a little bit ...
My uncle works in insurance. I recently mentioned that I'm planning to sign up for cryonics.
"That's amazing," he said. "Convincing a young person to buy life insurance? That has to be the greatest scam ever."
I took the comment lightly, not caring to argue about it. But it got me thinking - couldn't cryonics be a great opportunity for insurance companies to make a bunch of money?
Consider:
Almost a year ago, Strange7 suggested that cryonics organizations could run this kind of marketing campaign. I think he's wrong - there's no way CI or Alcor have the money. But the biggest insurance companies do have the money, and I'd be shocked if these companies or their agencies aren't already dumping all kinds of money into market research.
What would doing this require?
I want to live in a world where cryonics ads air on TV just as often as ads for everything else people spend money on. I really can see an insurance company owning this project - if they can a) successfully revamp the image of cryonics and b) become known as the household name for it when the market gets big, they will make lots of money.
What do you think? Where has my reasoning failed? Does anyone here know anyone powerful in insurance?
Lastly, taking a cue from ciphergoth: this is not the place to rehash all the old arguments about cryonics. I'm asking about a very specific idea about marketing and life insurance, not requesting commentary on cryonics itself. Thanks!
1 Perhaps modeling the potential size of the market would offer insight here. If it turns out that this idea is not insane, I'll find a way to make it happen. I could use your help.
2 Consider what happened with diamonds in the 1900s: