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drethelin comments on Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Things people are willing to pay lots of money for are a strong signal to unscrupulous people. Examples abound of people doing scams as investment advice, counterfeiting art, or selling knock-off designer jewelry. Cryonics is something where you pay a lot of money for a service many years down the line. Someone could easily take in cryonics payments for years without ever having to perform a cryopreservation, and only have it become known after they've disappeared with the profits. Alternately, the impossibility of checking results means that a cryonics provider can profit off of shoddy service and equipment, and you might never realize. On these lines, any organization that is unwilling to let you inspect their preservation equipment etc. is suspect in my eyes. Cryonics organizations are also susceptible to drift in motives of their owners. Maybe the creators 10 years ago were serious about cryonics, but if the current CEO or board of directors cares more about optimizing cheap equipment and profits, then that group might become a de facto scam.
If I understand correctly, I can extract those flags, in descending order of redness:
That also suggest signs of trustworthiness:
I'd like to have more such green and red flags, but this is starting to look actionable. Thank you.
One strong signal that I think some cryonics orgs implement is preferentially hiring people who have family members in storage.
Or pets.
In the longer run, the governance of a cryo organization should be designed to try and prevent drift. I like how Alcor requires board members to be signed up as well as to have relatives or significant others signed up, but this still doesn't work against someone who's actually unscrupulous.