Not really. The perfusion techniques haven’t really updated in decades.
Honestly, not knowledgeable enough to know how much of a qualitative difference that makes (eg. how much does that increase your expected value of future you?).
They might also improve the process somewhat, but at the current scope, the impact is very limited as long as there is like less than (~10,000?) (just a ballpark, not looking up actual number) people signed up, and the whole thing costs ~50,000$ if you are getting it real cheap. Like, I also have extended family members that are close to dying, but I am not close enough to them to convince them that this could be a good idea and the cost is a real issue for 99% of the population (Maybe more could save the money in their bank account, but can they reason through the decision?). I honestly think that there are lots of people who would sign up for cryonics if given more capacity/time to think for themselves, but it’s hard enough to get people to invest their money for future self in the same lifetime.
I think Tomorrow Biostasis is doing the kind of thing I’m speaking of, but would love to see more organizations like them.
Yeah, I had a call with them as I was not sure whether I would want to sign up or not, and it seems they are doing a great job at making the process way less painfull and weird. Not sure about the exact numbers anymore, but I remember that they expect to outgrow Alcor in a few years (or have they already?). I would really question whether there is room for lots of more cryo organizations if the public perception of them does not change, and I would definitely question whether it would be the best thing to pursue on longtermist grounds (rather than selfish (totally reasonable) grounds). I still recommend friends of mine to look into cryonics, but only because I care about them, if they care about helping other people I’d recommend other things.
I like your comparisons with other historical cases when people thought they had inevitable theories about society, and it is a thing I think about.
I do have a pet peeve though about the following claim.
Let’s consider a very short argument for strong longterminism (and a tractable way to influence the distant future by reducing x-risk):
- There is a lot of future ahead of us.
- The universe is large
- humans are fragile/the universe is harsh (most planets are not inhabitable for us (yet). We don’t survive in most space by default)
⇒ Therefore expected outcomes of your actions for the near future become rounding errors compared to future expected outcomes by making sure humanity survives.
All three of these points (while more might be necessary for a convincing case for longterminism) are very much informed by physical theories which in turn have been informed by data about the world we live in (observing through a telescope, going to the moon)!
To illustrate:
- Had I been born in a universe where physicists were predicting with high degrees of certainty (through well-established theories like thermodynamics in our world) that the universe (all of which already inhabited) would be facing an inevitable heat death in 1000 years from now, then I would think that the arguments for longterminism were weak since they would not apply to the universe we live in.
I am not convinced by your arguments around epistemology. I don’t understand your fascination with Popper. Popper’s philosophy seems more like an informal way to make bayesian updates. You did not provide sufficient evidence for me to convince me to the contrary. While I agree that rigid Bayseanism has flaws, my current best guess means more subjectivism, not less.