Like Tyler, sf author David Brin says cryonics is selfish:
A majority of citizens today perceive cryonics enthusiasts as kooky. … I share some of this skepticism. … Wouldn’t any reasonable person — one worthy of revival — dedicate a lifetime’s accumulated resources to helping their children and posterity, instead of splurging it all on a chancy, self-important gamble for personal immortality?
Consider:
“Median total [US Medicare] expenditures in the last 6 months of life [in ’00 to ’06] were $22,407.” (More)
“Out-of-pocket medical expenditures … for the years 1998-2006 … in the last year of life is estimated to be $11,618 on average.” (more)
Since US medical spending has more than doubled since then, we must now spend over $50K per person on the last six months of life. And this spending seems to, if anything, reduce lifespan. In contrast, a ~$40K (30 + 10) cryonics procedure gives a chance of a whole new life, and increases the chance of others gaining the same benefit at a lower cost. So why don’t Cowen or Brin first complain about selfish end-of-life care?
Brin continues:
Some people who sign up for storage believe their bank accounts alone — set up to earn dividends until some future era — will suffice to make them worthy of being thawed, repaired, and given full corporeal citizenship in a coming age of wonders. Somehow, I wouldn’t give that bet anything like sure odds, no matter how many technological barriers future people overcome.
Let me get this straight. People who suffer ridicule and fierce conformity pressures to pay to take a chance to avoid death and help others avoid death, who actually end up being right, and who in addition save money that gets invested in the world economy to help it to grow faster and larger, in order to generously pay future folks to revive them, do not deserve to be revived?! Even if they are quite willing to work to pay their way upon revival? Future folk should instead steal their money and refuse to revive them?! Why doesn’t Brin suggest that we today kill old folks a few weeks early to save thousands in medical costs? How exactly are they deserving yet cryonics patients not?
Btw, a second person has finally taken their cryonics hour. Any more takers?