[lionhearted]

Eliezer Yudkowsky has written about cryonics extensively at LessWrong - if anyone you know is forward-minded about living forever and at risk of passing away soon, you should probably start reading those articles and arguments for cryonics and pass them along.

(Actually, everyone should read it, but I think the state of medicine makes it unlikely that you're preserved if you die from random trauma like a car accident - so it's of more use to someone who has been diagnosed with a fatal disease, or is getting on in years)

[Eliezer]

Posts we've had to Less Wrong on this topic: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics

[loup-vaillant]

A fatal disease will probably make the life insurance that pays for your cryopreservation much more costly. Signing up when you're still healthy and young may be more beneficial, even when the probability of eventually destroying your brain is higher.

[gwern]

Eliezer wasn't talking about how you sign up or pay for it (he himself is signed up with term insurance & is young and reasonably healthy); he was talking about what kinds of dead people having signed up would be most useful to. Predictable deaths are best because the stabilization teams can be there waiting.

(There are of course wrinkles to this. If you die of alzheimers or senile dementia, is there any 'you' left, recorded in the neurons?)

[loup-vaillant]

I wasn't replying to Eliezer… And I think I agree with you. And:

> so it's of more use to someone who has been diagnosed with a fatal disease, or is getting on in years

I read this as "Cryonics is more useful for you if you are ill or old". (1) I agree, and (2) at this point, insurance companies may make it less affordable, for you.

My point is, if you wait too long (typically until illness or senescence), then Cryonics could become so expensive that the utility/cost ratio decreases, despite the fact that utility itself greatly increased.

[philwelch]

The scarier question is, if you are resurrected from cryonics, whether they will preserve enough of your neurons to protect you from similar impairment.