If cryonics works in the here and now, we could in principle (with adequate PR, policies, and so forth) replace all funerals with cryonics and save almost everyone from dying today. I would expect regenerative therapies to finally get out of clinical trials after 50 years or so, even if we were to get them working right away. This represents a very large amount of expected utility (2.5 billion deaths worth, at 50 million per year) with that amount of time.

That said, it is not such a good comparison to hold current cryonics tech up against future advances anticipated in antiaging tech. If you want to put money into future advances in life extension, generally considered, it makes more sense to consider whether meaningful antiaging (say, something significant enough to get large numbers of people to actuarial escape velocity -- perhaps a 10-year improvement) is more/less likely than the cryonics equivalent (say, reversible vitrification of the brain) to be adequately solved, and cheaply distributed to the global population, first.

Some things to consider:

1. Cryonics has already been pioneered to the point of reversible rabbit kidney, and the prospects for a brain are defensible (if uncertain) in patients right now, despite clinical death. By contrast, we can be pretty sure nobody currently has been rejuvenated from aging. The closest existing thing is caloric restriction, which appears not to work in primates. SENS is still speculative.
2. The problem of cryonics is largely brute physics (cooling, diffusion, cryoprotectant chemistry), whereas aging is predominantly a matter of the biochemistry of metabolism and regeneration. The complex biochemical technologies we uncover that we can expect to be helpful against aging may be even more effective towards cryonics, because they can be combined/hybridized with mechanically based advances (e.g. cooling more rapidly to prevent toxicity while simultaneously mitigating toxicity with engineered biochemicals).
3. Experimental feedback for cryonics research tends to be faster (and involve less suffering) because you do not have to wait for the animal to die of old age. The study can be done on a healthy animal, where the only relevant form of damage is the cryobiological/toxicological damage, which occurs instantly, and after anesthetization.

Apart from the technical advantages, it is worth considering that cryonics may be cheaper to deploy on a massive scale. Liquid nitrogen costs are much lower (per unit volume) for larger storage units. Perfusion with cryoprotectant could be worked into the existing end-of-life medical system. You wouldn't have to experiment on healthy old people with innovative therapies as SENS would need to to, only terminal or clinically dead patients would be subject to cryonics.

The efficient charity essay contest had a bottom line, it just wasn't something anyone would be likely to dispute (and which had been previously argued for on Less Wrong). Qualified entries were supposed to explain, in less jargonistic terms, that you should optimize for utilions rather than fuzzies. The idea in that case was to put the existing ideas in more layman-friendly terms.

If the bottom line we're discussing is just "some utilitarians in some situations support cryonics", my thinking is that it shouldn't be controversial, since that's pretty much already implied by the fungibility of utility. At least, if the opposite were true, I'd be surprised and want a good explanation for it. But I'm wondering if there's a more subtle issue -- perhaps it is being experienced as implying in some dark-artsy way something like "no rational utilitarian would ever oppose cryonics", something I never intended (and don't agree with).

Another explanation is that there's a real disagreement about the relative plausibility of utilitarians supporting cryonics. I have more or less implied (by the existence of the contest) that it is fairly plausible for lots of kinds of utilitarians. That is something I actually think, but is open to question. Some might be thinking it is fairly implausible for most kinds of utilitarians. It could be seen as a dark arts move on my part, that I didn't really give the opposite perspective much consideration in composing the contest.

However, the results of the contest should render that idea more of a testable prediction than it was before the contest. If it's right, it should be possible to critique most of the essays produced for the contest by pointing out how implausible the scenarios are or how odd/implausible the particular kind of utilitarianism they discuss are. If it's wrong, at least some of the scenarios should be fairly plausible ones for realistic utilitarianisms.

Is the clock running? Loans are rarely made at zero interest rate, as the time goes by does my total obligation increase?

It could be zero interest, if the primary purpose for holding onto it is to remind the person of their obligation and produce good feelings when they return the favor.

Also, what is my incentive to make any payments?

If you hold onto a debt, it shows on your credit report. Paying it off could improve your credit. But apart from that, there's the matter that it is functionally identical to donating to effective charity.

How is this relevant to anything?

The subjective feeling of obligation with regards to the original debt might affect probability of repayment over time.

Okay, that is the new deadline. (Updated.)

Does Sunday 11/17 at 8pm PST sound good?

So maybe hold onto the debt indefinitely and offer to forward any repayments to charity? That might work, but it seems like if their income increases later, it might not be as advantageous to forgive it then for tax reasons. Also, there might be a goodwill factor associated with debt-forgiveness that isn't there with repayment. The person may even feel the debt was unjustly accrued (e.g. medical bills for botched procedures) and feel repayment is a bad thing overall.

I wonder if one could focus on something that often goes untapped like innate programming ability. Have the person take a test that sees if they can learn to program, and if they can, forgive their debt and enroll them in a program to train them and get them employed.

Yes, but having the forgiveness happen in a low-income year would result in less taxes. So perhaps the charity could forgive debt in a way that is conditional on later income being donated to effective causes.

That's correct. However I will move the deadline out by a few days if anyone asks. If that happens, you will be able to use the time to edit and polish your submission further if you like.