[Prize] Essay Contest: Cryonics and Effective Altruism

What about negative answers to these questions? I'd be willing to write an essay explaining that I don't think cryonics is a good utilitarian cause (not in the sense that I have another pet cause that I think it is even better, but considerations that cryonics, if successful, would be net-negative).

Would these sorts of entries be considered?

Cryonics as an effective altruism target can capture resources that would otherwise be unavailable to beneficial causes.

The average effective altruist, in determining where their marginal unit of resources will do the most good, should wish to devote themselves to charitable causes that are currently underfunded relative to the amount of good they can do. Every contribution changes this equation, as charities run out of low hanging fruit to pursue. GiveWell discusses this as the scalability limitation. A side effect of the rapid improvement in quality of life is that our opportunities for cheap dramatic improvements are decreasing over time. This has lead to differing viewpoints within the effective altruism community. There are those who wish to save lives now and those who wish to ensure future lives. Those who work on existential risk forego gained QALYs (quality adjusted life years) now in favor of small reductions in the probability of losing huge numbers of QALYs. The reasoning that argues for and against these positions is too complex to discuss at length here.

Cryonics is popular among the second group of people as it offers a similar deal, a small probability of gaining a huge number of QALYs. Analysis of whether this gain is at all comparable to the near certain QALYs one can buy for others in the present is swamped by uncertainty in several of the terms. For the sake of argument, let us be charitable to the idea that in the future humans will have extreme longevity, meaning the QALYs of a single revived cryonics patient will swamp the QALYs of a life or many lives saved now. Unfortunately even given this caveat cryonics doesn’t fare too well. The issue is that the lives saved now could also potentially have extreme longevity. Saving a single additional life now might result in multiple additional people, each of which might experience an extreme number of QALYs. If we are sympathetic to small probabilities of huge returns, we must include this possibility in the utilitarian calculation. Thus we see that individual cryonic preservation will most likely not be the most effective use of marginal resources.

Fortunately, we are not limited to calculations made on an individual basis. The very existence of GiveWell indicates that the most effective thing to do may be to influence the behavior of others. Whose behavior might we care about and why? The first group are people who are working on basic research in brain preservation and scanning. Outside of cryonics focused organizations, little to no work is being done in this area. This is important as the results of this research potentially move the date at which humans experience extreme longevity forward. The expected gains from this can be quite large, as some percentage of the human populace will die each day. Moving extreme longevity forward by even a single day could thus result in a huge reduction of lost QALYs. While it is plausible that one could contribute to such research without contributing to cryonics, this is unlikely for the vast majority of people. If we are devoting our own resources towards convincing others, we care most about the marginal case, the person with significant resources who would not otherwise have contributed. The case in which one convinces a wealthy person to sign up for cryonics and thus becomes invested in advances in basic cryonic research is one in which the date for extreme human longevity could potentially be moved forward by years. One might argue that the same effort would be better spent convincing such people to contribute to longevity promoting technologies in general, but elderly people are less likely to be interested in far-off technological improvements unless they have some chance of gaining their benefits.

Convincing such people has several knock-on effects. A person who believes they will live longer has a lower time preference and thus will likely make other decisions that positively impact the future. It makes it somewhat more likely that other wealthy people in their peer group will also become interested in longevity. If longevity promoting technologies become accepted among high status people, that will channel even more interest and resources into the field that would not otherwise have been there. The potentially largest side effect of moving the date of extreme longevity forward is that it also reduces existential risk. We are at risk for extinction largely because we are so fragile. Tech that makes humans more robust will alleviate some of these risks partially or entirely. Experiencing this enhanced robustness earlier in time exposes us to less overall risk.

Lastly, why might an individual sign up for cryonics anyway rather than contribute to longevity promoting technology in spite of our previous analysis? They might do so if it allows them to help or remain more motivated about altruist goals. Convincing someone else to sign up for cryonics will be easier if one is signed up oneself and one is happy and motivated about this decision. Determining whether or not this is true is a highly individual decision. It is worth noting that signing up significantly decreases stress for some which, coupled with low cost, could easily cause it to pay for itself. On the other hand, a young person with a low probability of dying in the near future is probably better off overall contributing to longevity tech in general rather than signing up for cryonics. Organizations such as the Brain Preservation Foundation for instance are potentially effective targets in that they are underfunded relative to other longevity promoting organizations such as SENS. While analysis of which particular branches of research needs more inquiry, the potential gains are large in that most research in this area is so poorly funded that an individual donor can actually fund projects that would simply not have happened without them.

As cryonic research efforts continue and other low hanging-fruit in increasing QALYs are exhausted, cryonics could well reach a crossover point where preserving the individual does become the best possible use of resources. When that point is reached will be somewhat subjective based on the perceived probability of success in cryonic revivification. The perceived chance of success will increase due to the efforts of cryonics research in things like the successful revivification of a mouse for instance. As this happens much of the increased potential QALYs will be “free” in that cryonics will be able to replace existing expensive medical treatment with a lower cost alternative. This threshold will move over time. If euthanasia laws continue to improve, cryonics might be a cheaper alternative for some terminally ill people in the immediate future. But this calculation would have to be made when actually ill rather than funding cryonics through life insurance as is usually the case currently.

Cryonics seems like low-hanging fruit for humanity in the interim between now and when we achieve extreme longevity. Those trying to do the most good should investigate whether or not they personally can persuade additional resources to contribute towards cryonics research. While some may argue that all resources should go towards convincing people to donate towards more guaranteed QALYs now, they should recognize that self-interest is a powerful motivator for most people.

A perfect utilitarian living a well-off life would devote themselves to altruism, finding the most effective charitable options and putting their full work towards them. In a utilitarianism for human beings, however, we have to reserve some of our time and money for ourselves, for things we will enjoy, that will revitalize us, and that will keep us going. Instead of considering every single choice in terms of whether it would make you happy enough to justify the expenditure when the opportunity cost is so high, it works well to set a budget. You should give yourself some amount of money to spend on yourself, in whatever way you like best.

Out of your self-spending budget you might buy housing, food, clothes, ice cream, or games. For each of these, you consider how much money you have available, weigh whether the purchase would be worth it, and decide to buy or not. This is the standard approach that is used all over, by utilitarians and not, and it generally works well.

Considering cryonics, which category should we put it in? Is signing up for cryonics spending money as effectively as possible to make the world better, or is it spending to make yourself happier? Could buying cryonics for yourself have enough altruistic benefit to be up there with the most cost-effective charities, or at least be in that range? To get some very rough numbers, GiveWell estimates that the AMF averts a death for each $2500 donated, or under $100 per additional year of life. This may not be the best altruistic option, but it sets a baseline cryonics would need to beat. Neuropreservation costs around $80k, so for it to be more cost effective than giving to the AMF you would need to think it's at least 10% likely give you 8,000 years of additional life. Those numbers are both very high, and keep in mind that we're comparing something very speculative to something much more heavily studied and we should expect less-studied interventions to look worse the more into the details we get.

Cryonics should, however, benefit from being more widely adopted. Both the freezing process and the long-term storage have many inefficiencies that come from being run at very small-scales. Cryonics organizations would be less likely to collapse over time if they were more central to our culture. If more people cared about freezing brains it would be higher status to research it and the technology would likely improve. This would bring down the costs and raise the probability of success. The question is, how much does your signing up do to improve these?

Perhaps if cryonics got up to 10% of the US population then the chances of success would be significantly higher. Linearity seems roughly right here, and the population is 300M, so your signup would bring us one 30 millionth of the way to 10%. This doesn't seem big enough to be a major factor. Similarly, while it's possible existential risks would be taken much more seriously if a substantial fraction of the population expected to live extremely long lives barring catastrophe, your signing up doesn't bring us very far in that direction. Funding for the Future of Humanity institute probably goes much farther.

Even if you do think the benefit of a marginal person signing up is large enough to compete with top charities, it's not clear that marginal person should be you. You should consider whether you could get these same benefits more efficiently through an organization that advocated people sign up for cryonics. With $80k to spend you should be able to get multiple signups, perhaps through running essay contests.

It's also useful to step back, however, and consider how valuable it is to preserve and revive people. If you're a total hedonistic utilitarian, caring about there being as many good lives over all time as possible, deaths averted isn't the real metric. Instead the question is how many lives will there be and how good are they? In a future society with the technology to revive cryonics patients there would still be some kind of resource limits bounding the number of people living or being emulated. Their higher technology would probably allow them to have as many people alive as they chose, within those bounds. If they decided to revive people, this would probably come in place of using those resources to create additional people or run more copies of existing people. This suggests cryonics doesn't actually make there be more people, just changes which people there are. If you're funding cryonics for the most intelligent, conscientious, or creative people then this might be somewhat useful, but the chances that any of us are the best candidate here are low.

(This applies less if you're more of a preference utilitarian, trying to have as many satisfied preferences as possible. Death is generally a major preference violation, and fewer longer lives via cryonics would mean many fewer deaths.)

Even if signing up for cryonics isn't the best thing you can do altruistically, though, that doesn't mean you can't do it. It just should be considered in the self-spending category, compared against things like a nicer house, tastier food, or more travel. In deciding whether to purchase cryonics for yourself the main consideration is how likely it is to work. If you think it has a 20% chance, all things considered, you could probably find $1000/year in your budget for it. At a 0.01% chance, however, it's pretty likely that there's something else which would give you more enjoyment for the money. The cost is high enough that if you're considering cryonics it's definitely worth it for you to put time into getting a good handle on how likely it is. Breaking cryonics down might be helpful here, to help overcome the planning fallacy.

You should sign up for cryonics if you think it is likely to work.

1) Why might a utilitarian seeking to do the most good consider contributing time and/or money towards cryonics (as opposed to other causes)?

This essay will concentrate on the possibility that cryonics becomes commonly accepted and used within a few decades.

I) What are the effects of common acceptance of cryonics?

1) Many people will be willing to do it

2) It will become much cheaper, even more so if brain-only conversations become widely accepted. Most people in the developed countries will be able to afford cryonis.

3) The technology will improve, and therefore become much more reliable.

4) Once cryonics has "taken off", it will need no more altruistic funding. It will pay for itself and free up money for other charitable causes

Therefore, common, or at least wide-spread acceptance of cryonics will save hundreds of millions of lives ( or carry them over the singularity threshhold).

II) Cryonics as an alternative to end-life intensive care (see this essay by Yvain for an elaboration of the conditions under which people delay death )

For people who are terminally ill, cryonics offers the solution to the dillemma < " I don't want to die" vs "I don't want to undergo a series of intensive- medical treatments" >.

Cryonics has the potential to prevent a lot of costs and suffering from end-life intensive medical care. (And free up money for other uses) Noone really wants to do end-life-intensive care. The Person subjected to it does not really want to undergo this torture, the relatives don't want their beloved to suffer, and burn lots of money in the process; the state does not want to blow billions and billions on it. It is just that they all feel they have no other choice. As soon as there is an ethically accepted alternative that means less pain and lower costs, there is a strong incentive to go for it.

Cryonics offers 3 major advantages over intensive care:

(1) No suffering

(2) A good chance of survival

(3) It saves lots of money, some of which will be spent on charitable causes (once the technology is sufficiently widespread)

Traditionally, cryonics propaganda concentrates on point (2). But for many people or institutions who might be won over for cryonics, points (1) and (3) are fare more crucial.

III) What are the chances that cryonics become widely accepted in large parts of the world?

I think the chances are pretty good, given sufficient funding and competent propaganda. There are strong interest in cryonics, both personal and institutional. They just need to be adressed properly. It is imperative that cryonics propaganda adresses problems that people and institutions actually feel they have. (I have mentioned some examples in chapter II) . Most people seem to have made their peace with the fact that someday in the future, they will die and go to some afterlife, so this is NOT an effective point for propaganda to adress.

Also, note that cryonics might stand better chances in countries that do not have such a strong religious right like the US.

IV) Time is essential

Every year, that cryonics are not commonly accepted, millions will die who could otherwise have been saved.

V) Leverage

Investing Time and Money into cryonics has a high leverage. Investments, especially in propaganda, will probably snowball.

VI) Comparison to other charitable causes

There is a major difference between "traditionall" charities ( like helping people in africa) and transhumanist charities: From the perspective of mainstream society, transhumanist causes are "low-hanging poop" . Society will not consider it because it is weird, no matter the benefit. For this reason, traditionall charities are overfunded in comparison with transhumanist ones. Case in point: According to givewell, the most efficient charities are sufficiently funded.

VII) Conclusion

Spreading cryonics has the potential to save hundreds of millions of lives, and presents alternatives to useless suffering from life-prolonging treatments. The chances of accomplishing this goal are at least decent, there is lots of leverage, and the most efficient traditionall charities are already sufficiently funded. Therefore, cryonics has a much higher expected return on investments than its more traditionall alternatives.

Late. Oh well...hope deadline is not strict the judging hasn't begun yet.

Essay: Human Life Gains Value With Each Passing Year, Therefore Life Extension?

My intuition is that, given that extremely cheap interventions such as mosquito nets and deworming can significantly improve quality of life for a large number of strangers, putting lots of resources put into freezing a smaller number of strangers in hopes of radically extending their lifespan is not effective altruism and would likely not satisfy my preferences as much as other forms of altruism to strangers. This is an introspective essay which explores the basis of this intuition, and where it might be distorted by biases. I hope that other readers who may share my intuitions will find my thoughts beneficial in their own introspections.

Hypothetical scenario 1: Suppose that you had to choose between extending one doomed child's life for 100 years, or extending 100 doomed children's lives for 1 year. Which would you choose?

I expect most readers to choose to extend a single doomed child's life for 100 years. To my intuition, extending 100 children's lives for only 1 year seems much less valuable, since 1 year is insufficient time to grow, develop, and live a full life.

Hypothetical scenario 2: Suppose we could extend one individual's life for 1,000 years at the cost of being unable to extend 10 doomed children's lives for 100 years?

In some respects, these two scenarios are identical. The lengths of time are equal - in both cases, we are saving an equal number of total life-years. In both cases, we are choosing between many short lives and one long life. Yet my intuition finds the second scenario more challenging than the first scenario. My intuition is that it is wrong to deny 10 doomed children a normal lifespan in exchange for greatly prolonging a single individual's life-span to abnormally long lengths. Is this intuition a true expression of my values, or is this intuition about what my values are distorted by my biases?

The case that the objection is primarily due to human bias is presented here.

One of my objections is that life-extension seems to violate my Fairness preferences. Why should a wealthy individual use resources to radically extend life while so many other lives are cut short? However, as we saw before, I was willing to ignore fairness norms in Scenario 1. Perhaps my objection is better framed in terms of status-quo bias: I feel that humans are owed 100 years of life. Cutting this span short is a loss and a tragedy, while extending it further is a luxury. In fact, my notions of how many years are “owed” was entirely determined by the status quo of natural life expectancy.

A second intuition is that I consider 100 years to be a life "fully lived". Lifespans of 1 year or 10 years seem woefully incomplete to me. Because there is simply not enough time to do anything worthwhile with a 1 year lifespan, I am not willing to sacrifice a 100 year long life in exchange for 100 lives which last for one year in Scenario 1.

Why does this intuition not easily extend to Scenario 2? I seem to have a notion that years between 10 and 50 are more valuable than years between 100 and 1000. However, my intuition most likely arises because 10-50 represent a human’s cognitive prime. Life extension assumes extension of a human’s cognitive prime as well as their life span. Might not a single human life lived continuously for 1000 years be even richer and more fully lived than 10 human lives cut short after 100 years? Just as I prefer one human life lived continuously for 100 years to 100 human lives cut short after 1 year because the longer life is richer and more "fully lived", should I not prefer one human life lived for 1000 years to 10 human lives cut short after 100 years for the same reason? Once again, because the status quo is that humans do the types of learning and growing I consider valuable between the ages of 10-50, my intuition automatically assumed that things would remain that way when considering radical life extension.

In conclusion: Assuming a lack of cognitive decline, I already hold the intuition that a human life gains value with each passing year. The human becomes more intelligent, more experienced, and more complex. My status quo bias may play a role in preventing me from applying this intuition to radical life-extension.

0 - INTRODUCTION

There are three obvious hurdles to getting a person to sign up for cryonics:

1. They must aware of it.
2. They must afford it.
3. They must want it.

We will examine each of these defeaters and determine which promises a more efficient return on intervention.

1 - AWARENESS

It is obviously the case that most people have no idea cryonics exists. They may be aware of the basic concept; science fiction has often times used freezing as a plot device enabling interstellar travel[1], and we have all heard the urban legend that Walt Disney had himself frozen after his death[2]. However, there is a very big difference between being vaguely aware of something that shows up in movies, or something which eccentric millionaires make ad-hoc arrangements for, and knowing that there is a real life company existing right now which is willing to take your money in exchange for providing a very concrete service to you. Could advertising cryonics therefore be an efficient way to increase the number of preserved humans?

Signs point to yes. In January 1994, Omni Magazine ran an advertisement for Alcor which was valued at $30,000 (47,243 in modern dollars[3]). This resulted in roughly 3,000 requests for information, which turned into 20 actual members as of 9 months after the event[4]. However, each request for information also cost an average of $6 at the time ($9.45 today). Taken all together, it seems like those 20 members cost a total of $48,000 ($75,588.81), or $2,400 ($3,779.44) per member gained. Presumably, similarly expensive advertisements in magazines or websites with a similar audience to Omni could be expected to have a similar effect today.

2 - AFFORDABILITY

Still, 20 members out of 3,000 inquiries is a rate of success of less than 1%. These people were pre-selected as science and science fiction enthusiasts, with enough curiosity to contact Alcor, and yet something stopped 2,980 of them from signing up.

Perhaps that something was money. How many people are there who want to sign up for cryonics but are unable to do so?

Surprisingly few. The "Society for Venturism" is a cryonics advocacy organization[5]. Among other things, the society is notable for organizing charity campaings on behalf of people who are dying of illness but cannot afford to pay for their preservation. A grand total of five such campaigns have been undertaken by the society (with the latest one, intended for Aaron Winborn, still ongoing).

Theoretical considerations support this empirical finding. Cryonic preservation at Alcor costs $80,000 for neuropreservation and $200,000 for full body, with surcharges of up to $25,000 for preservations in foreign countries and yearly membership fees of $620[6]. This is simply not expensive enough to account for the sheer rarity of cryonics patients (270 people currently preserved, with another 2,000 signed up for future preservation[7][8]). This also implies that offering to pay for the cryopreservation of people who want to sign up for cryonics will cost you $80,000 per preservation; considerably more expensive than the publicity method.

3 - ALLURE

Eigthy thousand to two hundred fifty five thousand is a cost on the order of buying a house, not private jet. Yet, like we saw above, only 20 people out of 3,000 which we knew were aware of cryonics actually cared to sign up. What is going on?

Once the curse of obscurity has been cured, the biggest problem with cryonics is that nobody wants it.

In his article "When You Can't Even Give it Away"[9], Mike Darwin recounts the time when the Institute for Advanced Biological Studies tried to give away a free suspension to Frederik Pohl, a science-fiction author who was aware of cryonics and had written about it favorably in the past. Pohl listened politely to their proposal, asked them for some time to think about it, and they never heard from him again despite repeated attempts to re-establish contact. Anybody who has tried to seriously talked about cryonics with their family can surely relate.

Why do people who are aware of cryonics reject it? There are many possible reasons. Perhaps they are aware of it but doubt the technical feasibility. Perhaps they consider the technology sound, but fear that political, social, or environmental problems render revival unlikely. Perhaps they think it will work, but they fear leaving their friends and family behind[10], or they are effective altruist who think that money would do more good elsewhere[11], or perhaps they actually dislikes their lives, and have no desire to extend the suffering beyond what is necessary[12]. Or perhaps all these reasons save the first one are simply rationalizations, and the real reason they don't like cryonics is because it "sounds strange and not-of-our-tribe and they don't see other people doing it"[13].

For reasons that are beyond the scope of this essay but which should be familiar to any long-term lesswrong reader, I believe this last explanation is likely to be the biggest factor. This suggests that in order to change people's minds about cryonics, our dollars should be spent bringing about social change, perhaps by copying the tactics of successful social movements in the past. Unfortunately, we cannot think of a good way to predict the relative efficiency of dollars spent in this fashion.

4 - CONCLUSION

Of the three defeaters, publicity seems like the best angle of attack. By making people aware of cryonics, you can get them to spend a lot of money for their own preservation; money which would otherwise have been directed to non-cryonics purposes.

5 - REFERENCES

[1]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumanPopsicle
[2]http://www.snopes.com/disney/info/wd-ice.htm
[3]http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm
[4]http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/sellingcryonics.html
[5]http://www.venturist.info/what-we-do.html
[6]http://www.alcor.org/BecomeMember/scheduleA.html
[7]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics
[8]http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/10/murray-ballard-cyronics/
[9]http://www.alcor.org/cryonics/cryonics8301.txt
[10]http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lf/open\_thread\_january\_2010/1e4b?context=2#comments
[11]http://lesswrong.com/lw/6vq/on\_the\_unpopularity\_of\_cryonics\_life\_sucks\_bu\t_at/4ks7
[12]http://chronopause.com/chronopause.com/index.php/2011/07/27/would-you-like-another-plate-of-this/
[13]http://lesswrong.com/lw/6vq/on\_the\_unpopularity\_of\_cryonics\_life\_sucks\_but\_at/4kzu

Would anyone like more time to complete an essay?

Meta

I don't think that this contest will accomplish what you (lsparrish) want it to accomplish, and assign a significant probability to it being of net negative value. This seems likely for the following reasons:

• I think that the reward is a monetary incentive for people to denigrate others contributions in favor of their own (as a tactic).
• I think that the reward will cause people to become emotionally invested in their own proposed solutions.
• More broadly, I think that the reward may put contestants in a 'winning' mindset and submit/argue with this in mind, and as a result fail to optimize for effective information transfer.

I also think that the implementation details of the contest could be improved iff you still plan to hold it (which I currently disapprove of):

• I think that you have failed to sufficiently specify the value set for which contestants are to optimize. Total utilitarianism? Average utilitarianism? It is reasonable to leave this open, but contestants may fail to specify this in their essays.
• I would not know what to do with a Bitcoin if I were awarded one, and I believe that you underestimate the fraction of the LW readership for which this is true.

Tapping out.

Meta