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 more long-term, cancer becomes more important in comparison. According to http://micromorts.org/MortStats.aspx a person of my gender, age and country has 1.5% probability of dying from cancers within the next 30 years. (Then, 1.2% from circulatory system diseases, 0.93% from accidents, 0.35% from digestive system diseases, 0.32% from suicide. Whereas if only look of probabilities of dying within one year, it's 499 ppm accidents, 100 ppm suicide, 69 ppm cancers, 55 ppm circulatory system diseases, 51 ppm “Ill-defined symptoms/causes” and 40 ppm “Mental and behavioral disorders” (how would that directly cause a death which wouldn't count as a suicide?).)
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: