What do you think would be the best investment policy for a cryonics trust?
post by Mati_Roy (MathieuRoy) · 2021-04-04T19:20:22.705Z · LW · GW · No commentsThis is a question post.
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Answers 6 River 3 Mati_Roy None No comments
Assume this policy will be followed by someone else, potentially for centuries, unless your cryonics revival timeline is shorter.
You can answer differently for different trusts; notably:
- Trust with the goal of maintaining a patient in stasis indefinitely, and providing the fund for revival
- Trust with money that you will gain access to again once you're reanimated
Answers
I think the general strategy should be extreme diversification across asset classes. It might be that the stock market itself goes out of business, and stocks themselves cease to exist, on average once every thousand years. How would we know? There haven't been stock markets that long. And for a non-cryonicist who expects to have money in the market for maybe 50 years tops, that's not a problem. For a cryonicist who expects to have money in the market for a thousand years, that is actually a huge problem. So I would say put some money in the stock market. Put some money in REITs. Put some money in cryptocurrency. Put some money into artwork and coin collecting. Put some money in things that have a record of holding value for a thousand years - precious metals and gems, plots of land, water rights. Anything else you can think of that seems not stupid. This way, if any particular class of stuff goes bust, you've still got most of your capitol. If it all goes bust, well, probably nobody will be left to revive you anyway so it won't matter.
As a separate strategy, also put some money into biotech and AI specifically, both because that might lead to people figuring out how to revive you, and because if people do figure out how to revive you, it will probably be because biotech and AI have been successful.
↑ comment by Sune Jakobsen (sune-jakobsen) · 2021-04-05T17:40:00.445Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
As a separate strategy, also put some money into biotech and AI specifically, both because that might lead to people figuring out how to revive you, and because if people do figure out how to revive you, it will probably be because biotech and AI have been successful.
My intuition was in the opposite direction: in worlds where technological development is quick, you are very likely to have the funds last long enough anyway, so you should optimise for worlds where the development is slow. There are effects in both direction, so the answer likely depends on how big your initial fund is compared to the costs.
Am just thinking about this now, so not high confidence.
I'm thinking a total market cap index of all publicly traded companies in the world -- unless some stock exchanges are really sketchy for some reasons (I'm aware "sketchy" is ill-defined).
Also maybe a fraction (10%?) stored in a total market cap of deflationary currencies (decentralized ones I suppose, as for centralized ones it's generally harder to tell if they will become inflationary) as they will presumably become more in demand, in the short term as the economy might transition to them, but also in the long term as the population grows and so those the demand for currency (although if minds start running faster, I think that would decrease the value of currencies as they would be traded more often).
Maybe worlds in which reanimation is possible is correlated with other technological development, and so that might also inform some investments, but not sure which ones, and that starts adding a lot of complexity, at least while we don't have large prediction markets.
I'm also thinking those investment don't need to be liquid at all, and REITs often have a higher return because they are less liquid than stocks (AFAIU); so if this is true, then maybe having a lot of investments in REITs would also be beneficial. (2021-05-08 update: this is also true of other investment vehicles, like loans)
↑ comment by [deleted] · 2021-04-04T22:40:13.188Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
That last bit is interesting. Because, yes, from some hypotheses an instance of you will see revival if in any possible world it happens. Without a 'god hypothesis' - where even if it's not an old man in a bathrobe, something set the simulation engine to this exact universe's laws - you have to realize that in order for something to exist, everything must exist, eternally. Similarly, the 'you' reading this now is one who didn't die in the other universes before this moment.
Replies from: dave-lindbergh↑ comment by Dave Lindbergh (dave-lindbergh) · 2021-04-06T19:21:22.090Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"in order for something to exist, everything must exist, eternally"
Care to explain why? The rest of your comment I understand.
Replies from: None↑ comment by [deleted] · 2021-04-07T00:36:13.797Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Referring to one theory of the universe. It's nonsense to say that it is slowly degrading to nothing and nothing is the ground state because if this is the true law of nature nothing at all would exist. So one theory is all possible consistent universes exist which means if it is possible to survive cryo you will experience it. Similar to how our existence as humans is seeing one of the universes where we are possible, we aren't seeing the others.
Might be a wrong theory it's just a way to try to make sense of what doesn't really make any sense.
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