Cryonics

• Why CroynicsCryonics Makes Sense, WaitButWhy
• Cryonics Institute FAQ
• Alcor Life Extension Foundation FAQ
• Alcor FAQ for scientists

• Cognitive biases contributing to emotional prejudice in favor of cryonics (optimistic bias, motivated cognition).
• The multiply chained nature of the probabilities involved in cryonics, and whether the final expected utility is worth the cost.
• Money spent on cryonics could, arguably, be better spent on efficient charity.
• S-risks/hyperexistential risks; The far future may turn out to be dystopian and have negative expected value.

Cryonics is a proposed method for avoidingthe practice of preserving people who are dying in liquid nitrogen soon after their heart stops. The idea is that most of your brain's information content is still intact right after you've "died", i.e. medical death by using extremely cold temperatures to preserve theor legal death. If humans invent molecular nanotechnology or brain after "medical death" or "legal death" yet before "information death". If the structure of the brain can be preserved,emulation techniques, it it is posited that revival may be possible with future technology.to reconstruct the consciousness of cryopreserved patients.

See alsoRelated: Life Extension, a more general tag about ways to avoid deeath.death.

Cryonics-associated issues commonly raised on LessWrong

Pro-cryonics points

• Advanced reductionism/physicalism (because of the issues associated with identifying a person with continuity of brain information).
• Whether an extended healthy lifespan is worthwhile (relates to Fun Theory, religious rationalizations for 70-year lifespans, "sour grapes" rationalizations for why death is actually a good thing).
• The "shut up and multiply" aspect of spending $300/year (as Eliezer Yudkowsky quotes his costs for Cryonics Institute membership ($125/year) plus term life insurance ($180/year)) for a probability (how large being widely disputed) of obtaining many more years of lifespan. For this reason, cryonics advocates regard it as an extreme case of failure at rationality - a low-hanging fruit by which millions of deaths per year could be prevented at low cost.

Anti-cryonics points

• Cognitive biases contributing to emotional prejudice in favor of cryonics (optimistic bias, motivated cognition).
• The multiply chained nature of the probabilities involved in cryonics, and whether the final expected utility is worth the cost.
• Money spent on cryonics could, arguably, be better spent on efficient charity.

Notable Posts

• We Agree: Get Froze by Robin Hanson. "My co-blogger Eliezer and I may disagree on AI fooms, but we agree on something quite contrarian and, we think, huge: More likely than not, most folks who die today didn't have to die! ... It seems far more people read this blog daily than have ever signed up for cryonics. While it is hard to justify most medical procedures using standard health economics calculations, such calculations say that at today's prices cryonics seems a good deal even if you think there's only a 5% chance it'll work."
• You Only Live Twice by Eliezer Yudkowsky. "My co-blogger Robin and I may disagree on how fast an AI can improve itself, but we agree on an issue that seems much simpler to us than that: At the point where the current legal and medical system gives up on a patient, they aren't really dead."
• The Pascal's Wager Fallacy Fallacy - the fallacy of Pascal's Wager combines a high payoff with a privileged hypothesis, one with low prior probability and no particular reason to believe it.

See also Life Extension, a more general tag about ways to avoid deeath.

Cryonics is a proposed method for avoiding death by using extremely cold temperatures to preserve the practice of preserving people who are dying in liquid nitrogen soonbrain after their heart stops. The idea is that most of your brain's information content is still intact right after you've "died""medical death" or "legal death" yet before "information death". If humans invent molecular nanotechnology orthe structure of the brain emulation techniques,can be preserved, it it is posited that revival may be possible to reconstruct the consciousness of cryopreserved patients.

Cryonics-associated issues commonly raised on Less Wrong

Pro-cryonics points:

• Advanced reductionism/physicalism (because of the issues associated with identifying a person with continuity of brain information).
• Whether an extended healthy lifespan is worthwhile (relates to Fun Theory, religious rationalizations for 70-year lifespans, "sour grapes" rationalizations for why death is actually a good thing).
• The "shut up and multiply" aspect of spending $300/year (as Eliezer Yudkowsky quotes his costs for Cryonics Institute membership ($125/year) plus term life insurance ($180/year)) for a probability (how large being widely disputed) of obtaining many more years of lifespan. For this reason, cryonics advocates regard it as an extreme case of failure at rationality - a low-hanging fruit by which millions of deaths per year could be prevented at low cost.

Anti-cryonics points:future technology.

• Cognitive biases contributing to emotional prejudice in favor of cryonics (optimistic bias, motivated cognition).
• The multiply chained nature of the probabilities involved in cryonics, and whether the final expected utility is worth the cost.
• Money spent on cryonics could, arguably, be better spent on efficient charity.

Blog posts

• We Agree: Get Froze by Robin Hanson. "My co-blogger Eliezer and I may disagree on AI fooms, but we agree on something quite contrarian and, we think, huge: More likely than not, most folks who die today didn't have to die! ... It seems far more people read this blog daily than have ever signed up for cryonics. While it is hard to justify most medical procedures using standard health economics calculations, such calculations say that at today's prices cryonics seems a good deal even if you think there's only a 5% chance it'll work."
• You Only Live Twice by Eliezer Yudkowsky. "My co-blogger Robin and I may disagree on how fast an AI can improve itself, but we agree on an issue that seems much simpler to us than that: At the point where the current legal and medical system gives up on a patient, they aren't really dead."
• The Pascal's Wager Fallacy Fallacy - the fallacy of Pascal's Wager combines a high payoff with a privileged hypothesis, one with low prior probability and no particular reason to believe it. Perceptually seeing an instance of "Pascal's Wager" just from the high payoff, even when the probability is not small, is the

• Why Croynics Makes Sense, WaitButWhy
• Cryonics Institute FAQ
• Alcor Life Extension Foundation FAQ
• Alcor FAQ for scientists

• Advanced reductionism/physicalism (because of the issues associated with personal identityidentifying a person with continuity of brain information).
• Whether an extended healthy lifespan is worthwhile (relates to Fun Theory, religious rationalizations for 70-year lifespans, "sour grapes" rationalizations for why death is actually a good thing).
• The "shut up and multiply" aspect of spending $300/year (as Eliezer Yudkowsky quotes his costs for Cryonics Institute membership ($125/year) plus term life insurance ($180/year)) for a probability (how large being widely disputed) of obtaining many more years of lifespan. For this reason, cryonics advocates regard it as an extreme case of failure at rationality - a low-hanging fruit by which millions of deaths per year could be prevented at low cost.

• Advanced reductionism/physicalism (because of the issues associated with identifying a personpersonal identity with continuity of brain information).
• Whether an extended healthy lifespan is worthwhile (relates to Fun Theory, religious rationalizations for 70-year lifespans, "sour grapes" rationalizations for why death is actually a good thing).
• The "shut up and multiply" aspect of spending $300/year (as Eliezer Yudkowsky quotes his costs for Cryonics Institute membership ($125/year) plus term life insurance ($180/year)) for a probability (how large being widely disputed) of obtaining many more years of lifespan. For this reason, cryonics advocates regard it as an extreme case of failure at rationality - a low-hanging fruit by which millions of deaths per year could be prevented at low cost.