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Epistemic status: someone told me that someone that knew about this told them that
mRNA vaccines have been done on non-human animals for decades, and they seem fine
well, I should unpack "fully isolate" (I meant fully isolate from the virus):
- I isolate with another human
- I video-chat with multiple humans
- I chat in person with other humans outside with 3 meters distance or insider with a full-face mask :)
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 stock market (AFAIU); so if this is true, then maybe having a lot of investments in REITs would also be beneficial.
Those are the questions we intend to use for the icebreakers. No need to read them in advance -- just leaving them here in case anyone is interested.
- What do you think lead you to be interested in or curious about cryonics?
- What's your probability that cryonics works? Why?
- When was the last time you had a significant change in your worldview?
- What makes you excited?
- What's your origin story? (or how did you discover cryonics)
- What's a belief you have that you think your cryonics peers would find weird?
- What's your favorite Trolley problem variant?
- What makes you excited?
- What's an interesting reaction you got from talking about cryonics?
- What's your lying policy? (ie. when do you find it acceptable to lie)
- What do you think are plausible revival scenarios?
- What makes you sad?
- What was your family’s reaction or how do you think they would react?
- What's a belief you have that you think most people would find weird?
- What do you think of as the biggest obstacle to revival? A. Technology required for repair B. Long term stability of the organizations C. Chance of suboptimal preservation (information loss) D. Other
- What makes you anxious?
- If we're living in a simulation, would you like to get out of it right now or wait longer?
- What are your revival timelines?
- The zombie apocalypse is coming, who are 3 people you want on your team?
- What gives you wonder?
For the group activity:
- What do you think is the best way to market cryonics?
Possible alternatives:
----> What is the best way to increase cryonics membership?
----> What is the best way to popularize cryonics?
I like my comment on the Effective Altruism & Life Extension post ^ _ ^
the reason I posted this article here yesterday is because of the problem that once cryonics will be adopted globally, people will want to get pre-emptively cryopreserved to avoid any further identity degradation. however, if everyone does that, it becomes an existential risk (because no one will be around to keep improving our tech). it's a massive ultimate group prisoner dilemma. it's in anyone's best interest to do it themselves, but we would rather no one (else) does it. and it's a hard coordination problem. split brain preservation solves this by allowing the whole population to preserve half of their brain while using their other half to keep working towards the goal of reanimating the preserved half. oh, also, happy April Fools day!
Aschwin de Wolf commented on my post in the cryonics Facebook group with interesting information before knowing it was posted in the spirit of April's Fool ^ _ ^ :
Idea 1 was already proposed by Robert Prehoda in his book Suspended Animation in 1969. Practicalities aside, this is guaranteed to lead to significant cognitive damage after several sessions because it will only require one botched hypothermic circulatory arrest procedure to render the person a vegetable. In addition, the kind of broad recovery shown in animals falls short of the finer cognitive recovery that is a condition for this approach to even make sense at a technical level. Just dive a little deeper into the literature about profound hypothermic and ultra-profound hypothermic circulatory arrest.
Idea 2 is probably meant seriously but will just invite ridicule by mainstream observers and scientists by combining extreme reductionism about the nature of identity and looking really, really, desperate. You may gain two "rationalist" advocates but alienate a lot more.
Idea 2 also start off with: "A big dilemma in the biostasis community is whether one should get cryopreserved now or later." I am not aware of any of my colleagues considering this a "big dilemma" unless in cases of an early dementia diagnosis.
woops, I just realized the link was missing: https://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20191119/they-had-half-their-brains-removed-heres-what-happened-after
Offer: n_th card you personally buy is n USD (doesn't matter if other people bought cards before you)
There's a capped to this offer, but it's probably high enough that it won't be reached
I will check the deck at least once per week for at least 16 weeks (if I miss a week, the timespan is increased by a week; if still not done a year from now, then money back; but that shouldn't happen).
I invite you to abuse this, but I also reserve the right to refuse transactions:)
I might accept anonymous buyers; if you're interested, talk to me here: https://sayat.me/MatiRoy
payment can be made to:
- PayPal mathieu.roy.37@gmail.com
- Bitcoin wallet: 3C7J2X3LswsmGewPi4a63jmiFAoUzCu3vE
- Eth wallet: 0x4d06c5CdeaF69f76677629296a8C3D3B6901638D
- other payment methods available on request
Additional notes:
Fermi estimate of time requirement: checking each cards 15 times for 15 seconds = 3m45s, so roughly 3-10 USD per card. The influence on my mind for cards I'll accept will probably mostly 'cost' me -10 to +15 USD. I also value the information I will gain about how this system plays out.
That's genius! Can I (or you) create a LessWrong thread inviting others to do the same?
if so, I want to claim 7 cards
can I claim cards before choosing its content?
documented here: https://causeprioritization.org/Moral_economics
Eric Magro had the genius idea of naming the event "M22 Icebreaker" given M22 is Alcor's cryoprotectant, which prevents ice formation ^^ We decided to go with a clearer title, but still wanted to share here 😅
ah, yeah, you're right! thank you
same is true with time; hobbies might be a lot about signaling wealth ("I'm so rich I can do non-productive activities"); retiring early actually sounds like a good signaling mechanism for this; retiring early likely(??) have better externalities than conspicuous consumptions, but ideally you would want people to be able to fully signal their wealth at 0 cost (whether time or monetary), and so retiring early for signaling purposes still seems to have a negative externality
another way to signal wealth might be by having a lot of children; and that one seems like it has positive externalities, and so removing the need for signaling wealth might reduce number of children
I'd like to see studies on how having your wealth publicly known changes those factors
Maybe we have strong instincts for conspicuous consumption for signaling purposes, so that even if on paper another mechanism should provide the same signaling value, maybe it wouldn't reduce conspicuous consumption as much as we'd expect (although possibly still worth it!)
Anyone has an idea how a company could provide such value? (ie. signaling wealth, with plausible deniability about the intentions, while investing the wealth)
the usual story is that Governments provide public good because Markets can't, but maybe Markets can't because Governments have secured a monopoly on them?
x-post: https://www.facebook.com/mati.roy.09/posts/10159360438609579
This hypothesis predicts that people who have a publicly known wealth spend less, controlling for other factors. Maybe we should start by studying this. (Seems high expected value to me!)
it did; we were 6; I will make it weekly
humm, should have been able to join during the whole hour
Ahhh, yep, thanks
Yeah that makes sense
I feel like this is something different; X isn't proven true or false here -- we just prove that if X then Y, and then also if ~Y then ~X
Woops, I meant 1,000*X
Ah, I actually had just came up with that one (am now realizing "original" wasn't the right word for this one) -- thanks for bringing up this "paradox"!
The violinist
Original:
- We should save the violinist
- Fetuses are like violinists
- Therefore we should save fetuses
Reverse:
- We don't care about fetuses
- Violinists are like fetuses
- Therefore we don't care about violinists (metaphorically)
Infanticide
Original:
- We don't care about killing a baby before birth
- A baby 1 minutes after birth is almost the same as a baby 1 minute before birth
- Therefore we don't care about killing a 1 minute-old baby
Reversed:
- We care about killing a 1 minute-old baby
- A baby 1 minutes after birth is almost the same as a baby 1 minute before birth
- Therefore we care about killing a baby before birth
The Non-identity problem
Original:
- We only care about things if they are bad/good for someone
- Using a lot of resources isn't bad for people in the future, it just changes who lives in the future
- Therefore we don't mind that people in the future are having a bad time because of our consumption
Reversed:
- We care that people in the future are having a bad time because of our consumption
- Consuming isn't bad for specific people in the future, it just changes who lives in the future
- Therefore we don't only care about thing if they are bad/good* for someone, but also about what kind of lives we bring into existence
Dust specs vs torture
I feel like this one was presented as a clash of 2 intuitions, so both the "reversed" is also in the original presentation.
Original:
- We prefer X people experiencing Y pain than 1,000 people experiencing 2*Y pain AND this preference is true for all X, Y element of the real numbers
- This can be chained together multiple times
- We prefer 1 person experiencing 50 years of torture to a googolplex people having specs of dust in their eyes
Reversed:
- We prefer a googolplex people having specs of dust in their eyes to 1 person experiencing 50 years of torture
- There's some threshold of pain for which we care lexically more about
- We can more about 1 person experiencing slightly more pain than this threshold than a large number of people experiencing slightly less pain than this threshold
keyword to search: lexical threshold negative hedonistic utilitarianism
Experience machine
Original:
- We only care about our happiness
- An hypothetical happiness machine could bring us the most happiness
- Therefore we want to live in happiness machine
Reversed:
- We don't want to live in an happiness machine
- An happiness machine only brings us happiness
- Therefore we care about other things than happiness
Trolley problem / transplant
Original:
- We want to take actions to save more people
- Survival lotteries save more people just like pulling the lever does
- Therefore we support survival lotteries
Reversed:
- We don't support survival lotteries
- Pushing the lever is an action that changes who dies just like the survival lotteries does
- Therefore we don't support pulling the lever
Could do the same with pulling a lever vs pushing a person
Utility monster
Original:
- We care about increasing happiness
- If there was a being that had by far the highest capacity for happiness, they might be the best way to increase happiness even at the cost of everyone else
- We care about utility monsters the most (which violates the egalitarian intuition)
Reversed:
- We care about each beings equally
- If there was a being that had by far the highest capacity for happiness, we still wouldn't give them more resources
- We don't care about increasing total happiness
How can I replicate the formatting for writing "This is a linkpost for" like Jim did here [Link] Still Alive - Astral Codex Ten
Someone just mentioned to me that to get become an Alcor Associate Member, you also need to pay 60 USD to open a file
Alcor has historically defended their patients pretty thoroughly against family members wanting to take back the "biological remains". Although I think the Cryonics Institute has just never been sued; also, David Ettinger works probono as a lawyer for them.
I wonder why they never got sued. Hypotheses:
- they don't take risky case
- they are better at PR
- chance
- other
x-post on this Facebook thread
@avturchin said that KrioRus allows post-mortem sign up
that made me thought that Alcor also allows post-mortem sign up by family members that are signed up with Alcor, although at a 50k USD surcharge
OregonCryo also allows it
I think CI does also post-mortem sign up only for their members, but I'm not sure
maybe relevant: The correct response to uncertainty is not half-speed
Another consideration I just recalled from experience
Following mainstream traditions
With brain-only preservation, you can still dispose of the rest of the body in a traditional way, which often means a viewing followed by burial. For this reason, some of my family members were much more interested in brain-only preservation.
According to cryonics practitioners and thanatologists I communicated with, it's possible to remove the brain from the braincase while only leaving a scar above the forehead, and so leaving the body in a viewable state.
Although for a better preservation, a solution needs to be injected in the body which will make the body swell, which most likely renders the body not viewable (at least not in a traditional way).
Do you still use 2 phones? edit: oops, I saw your answer in your review; nvm
I think I largely agree with you, but just a thought: Mayyybe drugs can help us explore / learn about parts of ourselves that are usually "keep in check" (in some ways) by other parts_
Does your drugged self not want to get subber to stay their true (from their reference point IIUC) self?
am assuming you're implying recreating a brain with the same information content (otherwise it's trivially true AFAICT; just make a baby^^)
yeah, that seems plausible to me
in a way, that's what mind uploading is (although in that case your mind is decoupled from the hardware)
Time cost
Feel free to contract me for help signing up. I already helped multiple people. contact@matiroy.com
But I'm not in the US!
For Québec: https://cryoquebec.org/
What I chose
Whole-body with a note that Alcor could choose what seemed best at the moment of my death (ex.: if they only have the equipment for neuro cryoprotection, then neuro seems better).
20 years term-life insurance for 350k CAD, because I have a high confidence in my capacity to save enough money to be able to pay cash in 20 years, and have other safety nets. Otherwise would recommend whole life insurance.
(I think universal life insurances are bad – better to buy your investments and insurances separately to avoid extra premium. Life insurance agents will likely tell you otherwise. Life insurance agents make more money on universal life insurances.)
FYI, your comment was posted 3 times, probably because of a LessWrong bug that makes it seems as if your comment was posted when you click on 'submit'
- was a mistake
turning off comments serves as a coordination mechanism to discuss the topic at the same place
hummm, basically time-consuming, especially if/when it develops into an addiction + am less focused when horny
Am thinking of organizing a one hour livestreamed Q&A about how to sign up for cryonics on January 12th (Bedford's day). Would anyone be interested in asking me questions?
x-post: https://www.facebook.com/mati.roy.09/posts/10159154233029579