extropian arguments against cryonics

From: Christian Szegedy (szegedy@or.uni-bonn.de)
Date: Wed May 09 2001 - 09:39:23 MDT


Marie Tobias wrote:

> On the flip side...
> you assume that money will be something more valuable
> then funny paper with old dead white guys on it after the
> singularity hits... interesting thought... hmmmm.

It seems to be a fact, that money is quite valuable NOW.
I did not discuss about its value after the singularity.
(Anyway, Ray Kurzweil predicts (in the "Age of Spiritual Machines")
serious deflation for this century.)

> Christian... didn't anybody ever wave a boy scout at you???
> Ever heard of BE PREPARED? or how about MURPHY's
> LAW??? One takes meaningful and thoughful precautions
> to insure that one's vital contribution to the species remains
> intact... your arguement verges on a Darwinian Selection
> Factor... think about it.

Yes, but I also heard of "CARPE DIEM" and "NO RISK, NO FUN" :)

Brian wrote:
> If you are that optimistic re: the Singularity, then why worry about the
> here and now at all? If you were 100% convinced that the Singularity can
> be made to occur soon, AND that it will be a vastly beneficial Singularity,
> then why aren't you cancelling your vacation trips and donating every
> single spare DM you've got to SIAI or another organization that you think
> will accelerate the arrival date?

I am not quite sure which organizations accalerate and which ones
postpone the singularity...;)

Even if I were sure, it is highly unprobable that my money would
accelerate the coming of singularity so much that the probability
increase of being alive at the time of the singularity would pay off.

I think it is a reasonable decision the spare that money.
Even if the singularity comes soon, it may be that the eternal life
won't be cheap.

Imagine: you signed up for Cryonics. The singularity is here.
You have signed up for cryonics. And you can't buy eternal life
lacking of money. You must take your bath instead and wait that
somebody revives you as a charity act. Your only solace is that the
technics of cryonics is "nearly" perfect.

> The fact is, no one can be that certain. You have to have a backup plan
> just in case.

If the probability that this backup plan works is neglectible
in comparison to being alive at the time of singularity, then it
is not worth paying for. That's what my matrix says.

Eliezer wrote:
> It's the Singularity that means that you only have a
> 10% chance of dying or whatever; otherwise, of course, you have a 100%
> chance of dying. If your life really matters to you, then even this close
> to the Singularity, signing up for cryonics is simply a commonsense
> precaution.

I don't know where your numbers come from. The commonsense of the
decision is highly dependent on them.

> Even if this isn't so, I don't see why anyone would want to be reanimated
> by a human team, especially if you could wait a couple of years and have a
> really high-res reanimation done by a superintelligence.

By a friendly one, of course... :)

> (Remember, you can only be reanimated once - any information lost
> is lost forever.)

The second part of the statement seems to be true...

Best regards, Christian Szegedy



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