[dpark]

As the other commenter said, not all unknowns are equal. It's possible that Hitler was secretly frozen and will be the first person thawed in the event that we learn how. I doubt anyone can assign a true probability to that possibility, but most everyone would agree it's extremely unlikely.

And no, you can't put a probability on those events which might make cryonics fail, because you don't know how long it will be before we discover a way to revive and restore those that have been frozen. It might happen tomorrow (likely not), or it might never happen. On a long enough timeline, the probability of failure approaches 1.

You also can't really assign a probability that you will personally be unfrozen. Sure, you pay $50/mo to be maintained, but that's wholly different from the $100k it might cost to thaw you.

There are so many ways cryonics could fail you, and really only one way they could succeed.

[lsparrish]

You don't pay $50/month after you die (that would be a unworkable business model for obvious reasons), rather the $100k or so goes mostly into a trust which pays for your maintenance (more like $100/year, could be far lower on a larger scale) after you are gone. Alcor's funding minimums are higher than CI's partly because they are expecting reanimation to be costly. They also pay ongoing costs mostly from member dues so far, so the patient care trust is just sitting there accumulating interest to be later used for reanimation.

If you can get the probability of failure in any given year low enough, the half-life of the organization could be brought up to thousands of years. You can also set up back-up organizations that are obligated to take over if one of them fails. It's a matter of diversification.

[dpark]

Obviously you do not personally pay after death, but you set aside money for a trust before hand, which amounts to the same thing.

I disagree with your assertion that you can get the company to live thousands of years. How many human organizations have lasted that long? Even the Catholic church has only been around for 2k (so they claim at least) and I can't think of anything else that approaches that longevity, not even nations. And there are way too many cases for potential failure to calculate real probabilities so arguing about getting them low enough is moot.

[lsparrish]

We don't need the specific organization to survive thousands of years in its original form, we just need cryonics patients to be passed ahead peacefully to another organization in the event of failure. But yeah, religions are an example of something organized lasting thousands of years, under historical conditions.

We haven't yet had a chance to experiment with things under conditions of universal literacy, the absence of much armed conflict, and other amenities of the modern world. Certain things (fashions, cultural memes) seem to get replaced quickly under such conditions, but that doesn't seem likely to extend to something like a trust fund.

Cryonicists certainly have more motive than the average person to promote stability, literacy, and nonviolence.

[dpark]

> We don't need the specific organization to survive thousands of years in its original form, we just need cryonics patients to be passed ahead peacefully to another organization in the event of failure.

And how do you believe you'll accomplish this? The second, third, etc. companies are not going to sign up for this responsibility for free. Nor is there any guarantee that they won't also fail, or be merged into one conglomerate that fails.

> We haven't yet had a chance to experiment with things under conditions of universal literacy, the absence of much armed conflict, and other amenities of the modern world. Certain things (fashions, cultural memes) seem to get replaced quickly under such conditions, but that doesn't seem likely to extend to something like a trust fund.

I don't understand how this is at all relevant. I see no compelling reason to believe that the US will not experience natural disasters, wars, failed companies, or any number of other incidents that could cause cryo-failure. The fact that the population is fairly educated is almost completely irrelevant.

> Cryonicists certainly have more motive than the average person to promote stability, literacy, and nonviolence.

Frozen people are not in a position to promote anything. And the people keeping them frozen don't have an incentive to do anything except collect paychecks.

[lsparrish]

> And how do you believe you'll accomplish this? The second, third, etc. companies are not going to sign up for this responsibility for free.

Yes it costs more money and it has to be done in advance.

> Nor is there any guarantee that they won't also fail, or be merged into one conglomerate that fails.

You could put it in the bylaws that they cannot merge into a conglomerate, or mandate that they split every so often.

> I don't understand how this is at all relevant. I see no compelling reason to believe that the US will not experience natural disasters, wars, failed companies, or any number of other incidents that could cause cryo-failure.

Sure those are a constant risk. The solution is to put money and resources towards reducing the risks, starting with the worst ones and/or the cheapest to fix. This likely has enormous positive externalities for the population as a whole.

> The fact that the population is fairly educated is almost completely irrelevant.

Are you sure? Education is an important element of what sustains civilization.

> Frozen people are not in a position to promote anything.

They are now when they aren't frozen yet.

> And the people keeping them frozen don't have an incentive to do anything except collect paychecks.

They do if they a) expect to be frozen themselves, b) see the patients as fellow humans, or c) see the patients as priceless historical artifacts. But yes they are also motivated by whatever keeps getting them their paychecks -- obviously it is best to stack things so that the paychecks are dependent on things that are desirable for the patients.

[dpark]

> Yes it costs more money and it has to be done in advance. ... You could put it in the bylaws that they cannot merge into a conglomerate, or mandate that they split every so often. ... Sure those are a constant risk. The solution is to put money and resources towards reducing the risks, starting with the worst ones and/or the cheapest to fix. This likely has enormous positive externalities for the population as a whole.

This is a whole lot of ifs. If you could institute enough failovers (how many is enough, when we don't know the average lifespan of a cryo-company?), and if you could stop them from merging, and if you could avoid natural disasters, and if, if, if. There are so many ifs here it's ridiculous, especially given that you haven't provided any hows. This is just hand-waving. Yes, if you could solve all the problems, then there would be no problems. How, though?

> Are you sure? Education is an important element of what sustains civilization.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that an educated population has little or nothing to do with natural disasters, or company failures, or even war.

> They are now when they aren't frozen yet.

Um, okay. This doesn't have much to do with the viability of cryonics. Let's assume that all the cryonists campaign for peace and are then frozen. So now they're in a peaceful world with no way to thaw them and no change in the overall risks except perhaps with regards to war.

[lsparrish]

> Obviously you do not personally pay after death, but you set aside money for a trust before hand, which amounts to the same thing.

This is a good point, but it bears stressing that the bulk of the trust fund is there for reanimation and as protection against economic instability. Only a very tiny fraction gets used for ongoing expenses, at least in the current Alcor situation.

[dpark]

Except that the fraction for reincarnation is likely not nearly enough, given that simple surgeries routinely cost tens of thousands of dollars and building a new body is something we can't even do.

[lsparrish]

You seem to be assuming an absence of compound interest, overfunding, external funding sources, and future advances that make things cheaper.

[dpark]

You seem to be assuming that a lot of random things will somehow come together to make cryonics work.

Compound interest? Depends on how the trust is managed. Once you're dead, you're obviously not going to be able to influence that. It also depends on the economy, and we've seen some pretty long runs lately with no cumulative gains.

Overfunding? That doesn't even make sense. We're talking about there no being enough funds, and you pipe in with "what if there's too much!".

External funding? What makes you think someone in the future is going to drop a million to reanimate your head?

Future advances? Sure, but it seems pretty farfetched to say that future advances are going to make body reconstruction affordable. I mean, how long have we been waiting for affordable flying cars?