Avoiding death is a primary goal of medicine. Avoiding side effects of treatment is a secondary goal. So it makes sense that in a far mode doctors emphasize avoiding death, but in nearer mode avoiding side effects matters more:
It's not obvious to me through introspection that "near" is more afraid of harm while "far" is more afraid of death. If you ask me abstractly whether I would undergo the riskier cancer surgery, I think I would say yes. But if I imagine you give me a button that will kill me right now with low probability if I press it and will harm me for sure if I don't, all I can think is, "I don't want to die!".
I also think more people say they would prefer euthanasia over being bed ridden than will actually make that choice when the situation arises, though I can think of other biases that may be at work here, such as overestimating the degree to which your happiness depends on your situation. (Near/far is a bias insofar as both can't be right on any one question.)
Did you base this on strong evidence, or did your introspection just return the opposite result as mine? Either way, Katja seems to strongly agree with you, since she skipped straight to explaining why this is true, without a word on whether it is true.
My Insurance is 35 year fixed term. So it will start to become expensive when I'm 65. By then, there may well be other possibilities, such as much better anti-aging medicine, a big decrease in the cost of cryonics through widespread adoption, uploading, or even the collapse of civilisation to a point where cryonic preservation/storage is no longer feasible.
Physicians are very familiar with the embarrassment and hassles of enduring long term side effects from various treatments and therefore the majority accept a higher risk of death to lessen the risks of serious long lasting side effects.
Physicians tend to think that patients and their families would rather live with long term side effects than to die.
n addition, patient survival even with side effects is considered a 'success' while the death of a patient is always scored as a physician 'failure.'
And then there is an additional cynical explanation that a patient with serious long term side effects is a patient who needs continuous medical care thereby increasing physician monetary gains as well as influence.
It would seem that a variety of unhealthy behaviors, like consuming any amount of sugar, would have "positive side effects" in the near but also cause death in the far. However, few people I know are militant in their diet as to avoid all fructose and sucrose, gluten, casein protein, processed meats, industrial plant polyunsaturated fats, etc.
It's cheap when you're young because the likelihood you die when you're young is small, so the probability of being frozen is likewise small. As you get older, when you are more likely to die, the cost will go up. You shouldn't be measuring the cost in $/year, you should be measuring the cost of one freezing.
In particular, your chance of dying during your 10-year term life insurance is only of order 2%, so your chance of being revivied is much less.
If you are young, it is not expensive. I'm 30 and pay for it with life insurance ($14 a month); membership fees are $120 a year (Cryonics Institute). So it can cost less than a dollar a day. Even with all the caveats, and supposing there is only a 1% chance I'll get frozen and revived in a decent state, I still think that's money well spent (when considering the alternative).
I don’t know much about the science, but even assuming that it is solid I would suspect that the incentives of any cryonics provider would be to only stay in business until the cost of ongoing Preservation exceeds the average new business signup profits. Now they may have to breach certain contractual arrangements but who will sue them? Even assuming that they did not behave strictly rationally most businesses just don’t survive for very long.
That's a real risk. If that's a real concern, you might want to have a look at the structure of Alcor's Patient Care Trust Fund, see:
There is a requirement that the trustees of the fund have relatives suspended at Alcor. The trust fund and that qualification rule for trustees doesn't get rid of the risk, but it might make it be less than you were assuming.
On the other hand, you apparently didn't do this already, otherwise you'd have mentioned it. Why haven't you investigated this question already?
The answer to that probably has more to do with your values than the state of cryonics, since it's a decision not to discover the state of cryonics.
I think the point is that as the economics of cryopreservation change, new startups won't have the legacy costs of the old facilities and so will be able to offer the same or better service to new customers at a cheaper price.
The clients who were frozen first will be the most expensive to revive because they have the most damage to fix. Why would someone frozen in 2060 pay to subsidize someone frozen in 2010? A competitive cryonics startup facility in 2060 will be cheaper and provide better service than one started in 2000.
A business model that depends on unpaid labor and dues of current members is not sustainable if those members can get a better deal elsewhere.
There is of course always the possibility that someone sees pain for themselves as more severe than pain for others, and thus there are more circumstances that someone would choose less pain over less death for themselves than for others.
How much does empathy effect near/far recommendations for others? For friends I am close with I think I can recommend as if they were 'near' to some extent.
When it comes to cryonics, it is difficult to have an impact when recommending something so expensive.
If cost is a main inhibitory factor, at least in the intelligent, forward looking community, an important quesiton is, "how many people would sign up if it were only $5,000"?
Yes thanks for the correction. Add membership dues to my calculation. If I was presented with evidence that these particular organizations had especially solid footing so that they might survive for centuries I would happily rethink my stance. The idea of my dead body rotting in a graveyard is not appealing.
Robin (or Katja) --
It's not obvious to me through introspection that "near" is more afraid of harm while "far" is more afraid of death. If you ask me abstractly whether I would undergo the riskier cancer surgery, I think I would say yes. But if I imagine you give me a button that will kill me right now with low probability if I press it and will harm me for sure if I don't, all I can think is, "I don't want to die!".
I also think more people say they would prefer euthanasia over being bed ridden than will actually make that choice when the situation arises, though I can think of other biases that may be at work here, such as overestimating the degree to which your happiness depends on your situation. (Near/far is a bias insofar as both can't be right on any one question.)
Did you base this on strong evidence, or did your introspection just return the opposite result as mine? Either way, Katja seems to strongly agree with you, since she skipped straight to explaining why this is true, without a word on whether it is true.
There are a heck of a lot still around. But let's look at an 18th century bequest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
Worked out pretty well.
My Insurance is 35 year fixed term. So it will start to become expensive when I'm 65. By then, there may well be other possibilities, such as much better anti-aging medicine, a big decrease in the cost of cryonics through widespread adoption, uploading, or even the collapse of civilisation to a point where cryonic preservation/storage is no longer feasible.
But it is very likely that someday you will indeed be old, and then it will be expensive.
Well, lawyers are indeed generally advised not to represent themselves at trials...
A possible explanation:
Physicians are very familiar with the embarrassment and hassles of enduring long term side effects from various treatments and therefore the majority accept a higher risk of death to lessen the risks of serious long lasting side effects.
Physicians tend to think that patients and their families would rather live with long term side effects than to die.
n addition, patient survival even with side effects is considered a 'success' while the death of a patient is always scored as a physician 'failure.'
And then there is an additional cynical explanation that a patient with serious long term side effects is a patient who needs continuous medical care thereby increasing physician monetary gains as well as influence.
It would seem that a variety of unhealthy behaviors, like consuming any amount of sugar, would have "positive side effects" in the near but also cause death in the far. However, few people I know are militant in their diet as to avoid all fructose and sucrose, gluten, casein protein, processed meats, industrial plant polyunsaturated fats, etc.
It's cheap when you're young because the likelihood you die when you're young is small, so the probability of being frozen is likewise small. As you get older, when you are more likely to die, the cost will go up. You shouldn't be measuring the cost in $/year, you should be measuring the cost of one freezing.
In particular, your chance of dying during your 10-year term life insurance is only of order 2%, so your chance of being revivied is much less.
Yes, that's true. Cryonics Institute is much cheaper.
If you are young, it is not expensive. I'm 30 and pay for it with life insurance ($14 a month); membership fees are $120 a year (Cryonics Institute). So it can cost less than a dollar a day. Even with all the caveats, and supposing there is only a 1% chance I'll get frozen and revived in a decent state, I still think that's money well spent (when considering the alternative).
I don’t know much about the science, but even assuming that it is solid I would suspect that the incentives of any cryonics provider would be to only stay in business until the cost of ongoing Preservation exceeds the average new business signup profits. Now they may have to breach certain contractual arrangements but who will sue them? Even assuming that they did not behave strictly rationally most businesses just don’t survive for very long.
That's a real risk. If that's a real concern, you might want to have a look at the structure of Alcor's Patient Care Trust Fund, see:
http://www.alcor.org/AboutA...
There is a requirement that the trustees of the fund have relatives suspended at Alcor. The trust fund and that qualification rule for trustees doesn't get rid of the risk, but it might make it be less than you were assuming.
On the other hand, you apparently didn't do this already, otherwise you'd have mentioned it. Why haven't you investigated this question already?
The answer to that probably has more to do with your values than the state of cryonics, since it's a decision not to discover the state of cryonics.
I think the point is that as the economics of cryopreservation change, new startups won't have the legacy costs of the old facilities and so will be able to offer the same or better service to new customers at a cheaper price.
The clients who were frozen first will be the most expensive to revive because they have the most damage to fix. Why would someone frozen in 2060 pay to subsidize someone frozen in 2010? A competitive cryonics startup facility in 2060 will be cheaper and provide better service than one started in 2000.
A business model that depends on unpaid labor and dues of current members is not sustainable if those members can get a better deal elsewhere.
There is of course always the possibility that someone sees pain for themselves as more severe than pain for others, and thus there are more circumstances that someone would choose less pain over less death for themselves than for others.
How much does empathy effect near/far recommendations for others? For friends I am close with I think I can recommend as if they were 'near' to some extent.
When it comes to cryonics, it is difficult to have an impact when recommending something so expensive.
If cost is a main inhibitory factor, at least in the intelligent, forward looking community, an important quesiton is, "how many people would sign up if it were only $5,000"?
Yes thanks for the correction. Add membership dues to my calculation. If I was presented with evidence that these particular organizations had especially solid footing so that they might survive for centuries I would happily rethink my stance. The idea of my dead body rotting in a graveyard is not appealing.
Right because foundations are forever. I'm sure most 19th century foundations are still around today