NTs Are Unable to Grasp The Simple Concepts of Probability.

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What good would any money be to you if you are dead?

Like I said, other people (friends,family, children) could use that money instead of you wasting it on procedures that in all likelihood will not work (alternatively, you could use it for other things posthumously; building a giant statue of yourself for example). Of course if you're total selfish and you have no heirs then I suppose it doesn't really matter. It does matter when other people have to pay your expensive procedure though (i.e. taxpayers, people who pay for insurance), which is why it makes good sense to use probabilities in such situations because people like you would try and exhaust every option, no matter how low the chance of success.

My money is my money and the most precious thing to me is being alive. One of the dumbest suggestions you propose is building a statue of myself which is quite a comical concept. Why would anyone be interested in a statue of me? I can't imagine.

My relations will have to live their own lives with their own choices as we all must do. Life is short enough as it is and my point in being alive is to savor every moment in every way possible. And as long as is possible.

The statue was meant as an example of other, better things you could do with your money (albeit somewhat comical). As I said, if you are completely self interested (nothing wrong with that if you are), then you could waste money on things with that extremely low expected value and will unlikely save you (for example, the expected value of .1% success costing $20,000 is only $200). You may value a statue of yourself more than $200, meaning you should build that instead of the procedure that in all likelihood won't work (there are lots of things I'm sure you value more than $200 too). Most people, however, are not completely self interested, and I think they on average would give that money to their family/children instead of wasting it (if they personally have to pay for it); outliers don't break those averages in statistics.

Edit: So, if you die of old age naturally, you don't play on leaving any inheritance for your hypothetical children?

The whole thing is extremely theoretical for me as I have nothing to leave anybody. Nobody dies of old age. It's cancer or heart problems or some medical error some other damned thing and they all have remedies. Being old is no more reason to die than being young or poor or stupid. If something can be done and I can get it done I will do it. After I'm dead I don't give a high flying fart at the moon what happens to me. Once I'm dead I'm just meat. Better they should feed me to the seagulls than to the worms. I greatly admire seagulls and would delight in giving them a decent meal.

If nobody dies of old age and there are remedies for everything else, then why are many people over the age of 80 still dying? While its true when people grow old redundant body systems fail and when enough of them fail, your life terminates. The reason these systems fail is old age, hence death by old age. There is a reason we don't see any 130 year old men. Of course it is true many people die from cancer or heart problems (which if many people are dying from implies there remedy is not 100% effective). You may not have anything to leave anybody right now, which is why I added the hypothetical part. Hypothetically speaking, I think I'd rather go for the 30-foot statue of me placed in a public park than the .1% chance of success at that cost. Also hypothetically speaking, if I had some heirs I would rather see the money I would have wasted go to them and I think most people would do the same (and I doubt it would be out of empathy or anything for me, its just expected value).

Also, if you are really so concerned about extending your life no matter the cost or probability, I wonder if you've signed up for Cryonics or something similar (you probably shouldn't say it is too expensive as all you need is to pay a few hundred dollars a year for it via life insurance). If you haven't, then why haven't you (of course this would also mean your actions would counter your words for one).

Although religion and the afterlife is 100% nonsense, cryonics at this point is 99% nonsense. I can understand anybody who is so self adulating as to desire a 30 foot tall statue of himself would be most likely to fall for such scams but at my age I have enough experience to know what is valuable and what is not. To me the most valuable thing is time spent alive and enjoying that brief moment of consciousness. All else is pretty much idiocy. If my descendants cannot take care of themselves then perhaps the genetic line is not worth maintaining. We each must find our own way in life.

A statue would serve a purpose though, to confirm and remind others of you existence, and while it is silly, it isn't that much more silly than trying to defy the probabilities no matter the cost. Even if you view cryonics has only have a 1% chance success rate, your expected value of the added life would likely make it worth it (even if it fails). I'll admit that religion has a 0% success rate in the sense that if you die, you die on this earth, and you can't really know if there is or isn't an afterlife because you can't come back and confirm it. Cryonics, on the other hand does have a legitimate probability of success (and most supports admit they only believe there is a 1-10% chance it will actually work). Even if cryonics is a bit too weird, your argument requires you consider it nonetheless since it does have a chance of working. Besides, if you don't care how your money is spent once your dead, you mind as well spend it on cryonics since you would be dead anyway, right (so, your results would be dead and cryonics doesn't work, in which case you haven't lost much since you don't care about others after you die; cryonics works and you live in the future, cryonics does work, but you didn't get it so you are still dead)?


Aside from all that, you've already stated you'd be willing to spend thousands of dollars on 1% chances. So, if you are dying, you'd be willing to spend $20,000 on a procedure with a 1% chance of working, but not spend say $15,000 on cryonics with your subjective view of its 1% chance success? That seems rather odd if not contradictory to your previous statements. Either you don't believe you should spend vast amounts of money on small probabilities of saving your life, or you do, in which case you would logically have to support cryonics (not that I am necessarily arguing for cryonics, but your argument requires that you at least support it in a way).

Wow! I never thought I'd have a conversation with a cryonics salesman. Whatever.
There are many more and better alternatives to staying alive than cryonics.
Insofar as a statue is concerned, why should I give a damn if anyone knows that I existed? Millions of people each year die and nobody cares. I am no different, and a stature certainly wouldn't convey who I was to anybody. Just another damn statue. Who knows today who the model for Michelangelo's David was and who gives a damn? And that's one hell of a statue.

I'm curious as to what these "many more and better alternatives" are, could you enlightenment as to some of them (I'm being serious btw since the cryonics option only comes into play when you are already dead in a sense)? Also, I am in no way a cryonics salesman, and even if I was my argument is still perfectly valid (which you have failed to make a reasonable counter to).

As for the statue, as I stated it was meant to be an example of better spent money, but you are correct in that millions of people die each year and no one cares. However, most of those millions of people also don't have their own statues; one could argue that maybe if some of them did, people would care some (for example, you are walking around and you see this giant statue of someone you've never heard of, so you decide to look this person up). Also, many historians today believe there was no one single model for Michelangelo's David because Michelangelo tended to use different "pieces" of people in his sculptures. I'm sure if there was plaque on the bottom of the statue that said, "Model: Naughtius Maximus" people would remember his name (at least historians). But all this is beside the real point, which is addressed in my first paragraph.

Firstly I am not at all interested in dying and leaving a chunk of money to some extremely questionable process administered by what seems to me a bunch of scam artists on the basis that sometime in the next thousand years or so a bunch of anthropologists might dig up my frozen corpse and play games with it. It is about as probable as reincarnation and the result is very likely not to be me at all even if the piece of dead meat can be brought back to some form of life. That you can have any faith in pseudoscience and trust in humanity that much testifies to your foolishness. If you want to look at other possibilities for extending life Google is right there for you to diddle away your time.
The statue business is especially idiotic. I really don't care if a statue of me is looked at by a bunch of curious idiots. What possible interest can that be to me? A photo or a thumb print is a lot cheaper and carries an equal amount of information about who I really am. I'm sure some futuristic Joe Blow has better things to tittilate his curiosity.

Ah, but you have previously stated that you don't care what happens to your money after you die, so what does it matter if you leave it to some scientists with the hope of reviving you in a few hundred years or the state which will just spend it on whatever it pleases (hundreds not thousand mind you)? At the risk of sounding like a cryonics salesperson, cryonics does not freeze your corpse, but they use vitrification to "preserve" you. Also, cryonics institutions like Alcor are not particularly profitable right now, so it would seem unlikely they are scam artists (considered if they were, they could easily find better ways to make money). Interestingly, you assigned a 1% probability to cryonics, but now you have decided it is the same as religion (reincarnation) when your argument appears to be failing. Firstly, unlike religion, cryonics would offer you a chance to continue living as you are in a way, not in the afterlife or in as a cockroach. Also, many reputable scientists agree there is a scientific basis for cryonics, which cannot be said for religion (of course they also agree the problem is reviving with present technology). It would seem irrational if you assign cryonics an equally likely chance of working as reincarnation considering your previous statements. If you were to assign cryonics a 0% chance of working, then you aren't that much different than those devoutly religious who would assign a 100% probability of an afterlife or atheists who assign a definitive 0% chance of it (considering the way the scientific method works and the fact that there is no solid proof one way or the other, both probabilities are wrong). Scientifically, there is a chance of cryonics working; although, sure, it is probably going that route is a long shot right now (and it could be said is still in the experimental phase), but it still does have a legitimate chance of working, and if you are willing to pay any price when your life is on the line.....

Also, I used google, and I couldn't find anything that would classify as "many more and better alternatives" to cryonics, so since you apparently know of them, perhaps you could share your secret information?

You're right. I was very over optimistic about cryogenics. Let's say on re-estimation that the possibility of coming saving my life with current cryogenic techniques is exceedingly negligibly more than re-incarnation which is as close to zero as you can get without getting there. It is, at this point, equal to placing equipment on my grave to flag a passing flying saucer to revive me. A more likely possibility is to leave a note on the internet for a time traveler from the future to keep me alive. I could afford that.

My reference to better methods involves current medical science to keep me alive, not to revive me after I die. After I die I don't give a damn what happens to my money. It might provide a passerby with a hamburger.

With cryonics, you are "preserved" only after you are legally dead, so the "better methods" of current medical science would have already failed you (to me, your answer seems to be a kind of cop out, but whatever). As for your views on the probability of success, judging by the fact that you consider a time traveler will keep you alive and cryonics working as equally probable, you either A. "Are unable to grasp the simple concepts of probability" or perhaps more likely B. You do not tend to not be rational and have no researched the subject in any meaningful way (which could be perfectly fine and rational if not for your argument). Again, no legitimate scientist supports the idea that a flying saucer will randomly revive you or a time traveler will. Because many legitimate scientists do agree cryonics is scientifically possible and are actually seriously researching it, then rationally, it must be at least more probable than your examples. At the risk of sounding elitist, many highly intelligent people throughout time have held views that were contrary to the general public's beliefs at the time, but in the end they were proved right. During WW2 for example, most people including those who might have similar backgrounds that would later be used in space travel such as aircraft engineers would have thought traveling through space was impossible. However, as we have seen, space travel is possible and highly probable. I suppose I am saying the opinion of those who work in a specific field (and are smart) should be weighed more than your average joe who really knows nothing about it. Also, because these people are legitimate scientists and they are seriously working on cryonics, then at the very least it is more probable than flying saucers reviving you (whereas no serious scientist is working on what you describe).

I remember several years before World War II reading many interesting articles by people I respect such as Willey Ley who described the experiments of Herman Oberst with rockets with the aim of traveling through space and they seemed quite reasonable to me at the time. Although cryogenic preservation is not totally outside possibility the basic knowledge of freezing and reviving have a long way to go before the idea deserves any financial support from me. People now involved in taking money from desperate people on the basis that there is any reasonable chance of being revived are either scoundrels or superoptimistic people looking for any finance they can lay their hands on. Unfortunately I am not that gullible. I'll take my chances with time travelers since the investment is more proportional to the success.

So, people who believe there is a 1%-10% chance of success with cryonics would be considered overly optimistic (which I believe is the area that most people who support cryonics believe it to be)? I'm pretty sure most people would not consider those odds to be that good at all. Even if you assume a 1% chance it will work (which personally does not sound super optimistic), the investment would be considered worth it using a standard expected value calculation. It is known that an additional year of life is generally valued about at $120,000 (or other cases estimate about 2-3 times a person's annual income). Assume you value the additional year of life at $120,000, and there is a 1% chance that cryonics will work and that you use Alcor so the estimated total cost would be $600 annually. Let's also say cryonics gives you an additional 20 years of life when you are revived (in all likelihood it would grant more if it worked). The expected value of going with cryonics would be $24,000. In other words, you could pay for cryonics for 35 years and your expected value would still be greater by going for it (of course you could also sign up a year before you die too, creating greater expected value). Even if you assume even small probabilities, it is generally worth it in terms of expected value. Also, right now time travel in the way you describe is not even theoretically possible; whereas you acknowledged cryonics at least is, so it seems rather illogical that you would assign a higher probability to something that is currently theoretically impossible to one that is.