The probability that cryonics will work likely exceeds 85%, discounting dystopian futures, assuming a good quality of cryopreservation, and assuming that MNT is developed more or less as expected.

The usual error made in these analyses is to imagine many different kinds of "disasters", all correlated, that could cause cryonics to fail, and then multiply their probabilities together. But because all the probabilities are correlated, the resulting overall probability is unrealistically low, often by orders of magnitude.

The only real problems are (a) information theoretic death occurs for one reason or another or (b) the necessary technology to restore you to full health is never developed and applied.

Causing information theoretic death is actually a lot harder than people think. Scrambling information is not destroying information, as cryptanalysis tells us, and the laws of physics are reversible. This whole issue is discussed in Cryonics, Cryptography, and Maximum Likelihood Estimation.

The ability to arrange the atoms from which you are made as might be required to restore you're cryopreserved self to a fully functional and healthy state should be developed in the next several decades. Betting your life that Molecular NanoTechnology (MNT) will not be developed seems singularly foolish given the available evidence.

In today's modern cryopreservations carried out under reasonable conditions the patient's brain is vitrified, making it hard to argue that information theoretic death occurs during cryopreservation. Likewise, it is hard to argue that information theoretic death could occur during storage at the temperature of liquid nitrogen. This leaves us arguing over whether cryonics will work when the cryopreservation is carried out under unreasonable (poor) conditions, if Alcor itself will survive, or if the future will suffer from some dystopian disaster so awful that it makes all our efforts moot.

The most effective way to insure a good cryopreservation is to move close to Alcor before being cryopreserved. Betting your life that Alcor will spontaneously crash and burn seems remarkably pessimistic when the historical record shows that a much smaller Alcor successfully survived many challenges since 1972 and today's Alcor is much better able to survive any future challenges. This is even more true when we can shift the odds in our favor by pitching in and helping insure that Alcor survives, rather than sitting on the sidelines and simply hoping. Dystopian futures seem to be more a projection of an individual's own depression, rather than accurate forecasts of the future.

Which leads to the conclusion that cryonics actually has a high probability of success.

In discussions with a friend, who expressed great discomfort in talking about cryonics, I finally extracted the confession that he had no emotional or social basis for considering cryonics. None of his friends or family had done it, it was not part of any of the accepted rituals that he had grown up with -- there was an emotional void around it that placed it outside of the range of options that he was able to think about. It was "other", alien, of such a nature that merely rational evaluation could not be applied.

He's in his 70's, so this issue is more than just academic. He understands that by rejecting cryonics he is embracing his own death. He does not believe in an afterlife. He becomes emotionally perturbed when I discuss cryonics precisely because I am persuasive about its technical feasibility.

Perhaps this observation isn't germane to the present thread, as this seems an emotional response rather than a response driven by "no belief." But perhaps "no belief" has an emotional component, as in "I don't want to have a belief. If I had a belief, then I'd have to take an unpleasant action."

Alcor is indeed a charity, both formally in the legal sense and in the sense that everyone in the Alcor community donates their time, money, resources, their names, and anything else that will help Alcor grow and prosper. The Board all donate their time, and often much more. The staff put in long hours for modest wages. And we have countless volunteers and part-time contributors and contractors who make an immense contribution. We also have contractual relationships with other companies, who are also dedicated to the same cause.

This is because we believe in what we're doing.

Our thanks to the Less Wrong community. The monthly Board meetings review new applicants and the reasons they give for joining Alcor. Less Wrong is mentioned more and more often these days, keep up the good work!

Ralph C. Merkle, Alcor Board member

Scenario Analysis using a Simple Econometric Model of Alcor Finances by Robert A. Freitas Jr., October 2010, provides the most recent discussion of Alcor finances.

It includes a discussion of total costs to cryopreserve members, and has references to previous estimates along with inflation adjustments.

To quote from the article: "This procedure yields: TE$2010 = ($76,520)ncryo + ($1,614)Nmemb + ($622.5)Ncryo with the square of the correlation coefficient (i.e., the coefficient of determination) R^2 = 0.77. In this formulation, each member costs Alcor $1,614/yr in base expenses [16] and each new (average) cryopreservation costs Alcor about $76,520, with both figures measured in constant 2010 dollars. The latter figure seems a bit high but is very roughly consistent with estimates made by Darwin in 1990 [5] of the total cost of a neuro ($48,010) or WB ($62,526) cryopreservation in constant 2010 dollars, especially considering that much less-expensive cryoprotectants were used in 1990 than the much pricier ones (e.g., M22) that are employed in 2010. (Whelan’s 1993 estimates [7] of $42,320 (neuro) and $53,325 (WB), as converted to 2010 dollars, are slightly lower than Darwin’s.)"

Where

TE$2010 = Real Total Expenses for 2010

ncryo = Number of patients (both neuro and whole body) in cryopreservation

Nmemb = Number of Alcor members

Patient care costs assume "a constant neuro/WB mix of 65%/35% in the present and future".

Further cost estimates and assumptions are available in the article.

The most obvious cost-reduction likely to occur with widespread adoption of cryonics would be the amortization of fixed costs over a larger number of cases. The use of standard medical facilities would also allow amortization of costs over a broader base. Scheduling cryopreservations in advance could further reduce costs.

Patients already in an operating room in an attempt to save their life using existing medical procedures could be cryopreserved less expensively because many of the needed resources would already be in place. If the open heart surgery goes badly, the team could roll straight into a cryopreservation.

However, it is also possible that cryopreservation costs could increase as more sophisticated methods are developed and used. In addition, Alcor has traditionally eschewed profits in an effort to keep cryonics affordable. More traditional medical institutions might adopt higher prices to enhance profitability.

Read Signing up your relatives.

Best of luck!

I wrote Signing up your relatives to help cryonicists do exactly that.

Towards the end of the article it says:

Well, you’ve tried all the soft sell approaches. You’ve used all the rational arguments. You’ve pointed out all the simple, easy, straightforward reasons why Pat should choose cryonics. They haven’t worked. It’s time to try something with a bit more punch:

“How would you feel if I put a shotgun in my mouth and blew out my brains?”

“What?”

Pat might well try to evade answering the question. The obvious counter to any attempt at evasion is to simply repeat the question (possibly in shortened form or possibly after acknowledging Pat’s attempted counter but then saying that doesn’t answer the question):

“How would you feel if I put a shotgun in my mouth and blew out my brains?”

It seems unlikely that Pat would feel at all good in response to your hypothetical action, so we can reasonably assume that Pat eventually provides some variant of the following answer:

“Terrible!”

At which point you can say:

“That’s how I feel about what you’re doing. Look, it’s easy for you to say you don’t want cryonics. You won’t have to grieve over your own death – but I will. Remember when <beloved relative> died? Remember how you felt? Well, that’s how I’m going to feel if you aren’t cryopreserved. And I’m going to keep grieving for you for the rest of my life. Is that what you want to leave me, a lifetime of grief?”

If Pat has conceded that cryonics has some chance of working you can make an even stronger argument: “Even worse, think about what happens if cryonics is successful and I’m revived and rejuvenated: the rest of my life could be thousands of years or even longer. I’m scared I’ll never stop thinking about you and wishing you were with me, going over this conversation we’re having right now again and again in my mind, and blaming myself for not being more persuasive, for not trying harder, and for eventually giving up.”

The last quote is from Jim Halperin who said "This is the exact argument that finally convinced my dad earlier this year after countless unsuccessful attempts over the previous 15 years.”

Ralph