Over at the Effective Altruism blog, William MacAskill recently noted that effective altruists should have much greater incentives than egoists to stay alive. This made me think about how effective altruists should approach cryonics. Cryonics – having your body or brain frozen immediately after death, in the hope that future medicine will someday be able to revive you – is sometimes seen as a paradigm case of selfishness. "Why spend thousands of dollars on some speculative medical technology when millions of people are starving?" is a common reaction. However, as Robin Hanson points out, one could ask the same question of many currently widespread medical practices. Hanson has further argued that cryonics is actually a form of charity, because it has many large scale effects.
I don't intend to evaluate that argument here. Instead, I want to see whether MacAskill's point can be extended to cryonics. My basic thought is this: if you expect to be more of an effective altruist than the average person alive at the time of your revival, cryonics should make sense. Even if the chances of cryonics working aren't very high, the prospect of thousands or perhaps even millions of years of life should more than weigh up the costs. So if the expected utility calculation comes out in favor of cryonics for an egoist, it should do so for an effective altruist as well. However, the effective altruist has to deal with a lot more uncertainty. The egoist only has to consider whether he expects post-revival life to be on net positive for himself. The effective altruist, on the other hand, also has to consider whether her skills and resources can be put to good use in a world that might be very different from our own. The fact that she has certain comparative advantages today doesn't imply that she will have those same advantages in the future.
Of course, many of the negative effects associated with cryonics are multiplied for the effective altruist as well. For instance, if cryonics were to become widespread within the community, what was for the egoist only a minor social stigma runs the risk of damaging the credibility of the whole movement.
These were only my first, off-hand thoughts on the topic. Next, I should set up a simple model and do a Fermi calculation. But perhaps some of you have something to add before that?
Kristian,
ReplyDeleteYou make a very good point. I'm somewhat uncertain about the value of spreading memes. It could potentially be immensely valuable, creating a huge multiplier. Or it may not. I'd really like to get my hands on more empirical data here, but at the moment I'm inclined to agree with you.
There's another, related question about memetic stability. If I create memetic copies of myself, who in turn created copies of themselves, and so on, how much time will it take until the values become quite different from my own? This is of course a question that could come up within the course of a single life as well, especially if that life is very long, but I thought I'd just flag the issue.
That said, I'm still somewhat inclined to think that cryonics would be good from an EA perspective for certain individuals. While most of us are replaceable, not everyone is equally replaceable. Perhaps cryonics might be worth it for the few most brilliant EAs? What do you think?
I suppose the EA, or the Structural Empiricist, or even the Nirvanist (the pure atheistic Buddhist,) would see cryonics as transcending the ego in some ways.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the EA sees the preservation of their mortal soul via cryonics as an altruistic act benefiting others.
Perhaps the pure atheistic Buddhist sees cryonics as the achievement of Nirvana.
But the structural empiricist sees cryonics as simply the attainment of understanding and control over nature.
Ultimately, i think the view point which is most detached from the ego will prove to be the most correct. I think that is why that (while i agree with most everything the EA apologists espouse) i think a pure philosophy like that of structural empiricism is the correct view point to take.
Basically, understanding the nature of existence seems more important than altruistic concerns.
This is why altruism or the attainment of Nirvana, i think will prove secondary to that goal. This is why i also think cryonics is simply a stepping-stone towards it.
How can one say altruism is the hight of existence if one doesn't yet fully understand existence itself? To say it must be so without the compelling evidence required by structural empiricist seems little more than hubris on the part of the EA.
subsilico,
DeleteThis post only explores whether someone who is already an effective altruist should sign up for cryonics in order to further her EA goals. I did not intend to discuss the much broader question of what one's primary life goal should be.
What do you mean by "structural empiricism"? The only thing I've heard of by that name is van Fraassen's philosophy of science, but I don't think that's what you're referring to.
Since we are all biased in our own favour, we are apt to conclude that we should sign up for cryonics even when there isn't a sufficiently altruistic case for it. For this reason, a better way to approach the question is to ask other altruists whether they'd be willing to pay for our own cryonics subscription. If they refuse, that's good evidence that we wouldn't be justified in paying for it ourselves.
ReplyDeleteYes, that sounds like a useful debiasing technique. Speaking for myself, I would probably be willing to pay only for a select set of individuals.
DeleteIf one thinks (as many people in these circles appear to do) that the next hundred or so years are likely to be crucial for the future of sentient life, one should be more reluctant to pay for cryonics. By the time one is revived, it may well be that the future trajectory is determined to a much greater degree.
Delete"William MacAskill recently noted that effective altruists should have much greater incentives than egoists to stay alive."
ReplyDeleteOn the face of it (I could not find the original post) this seems wrong:
An egotist can attach the exact same value to his own success / happiness / fulfillment as an altruist can to his goals.
Furthermore, death destroys an egotist's chances of achieving their goals completely (assuming no personal after-life), effective altruists can add replacability into their considerations.
Lastly, there is nothing to prevent an egotist from measuring his success across his entire life span (in Aristotelian fashion), thus preventing him from risking his life for an immediate reward. In contrast, the effective altruist may well choose to risk / sacrifice his life for his goals, if doing so produces more good than he can expect to produce during that life.
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On the topic of Cryogenics - I would venture a guess that any brain frozen today would be wholly ineffective in almost every field, compared to the contemporaries of the time it awoke (think of awakening Newton today, would he even be able to write one publishable paper? My guess is that he wouldn't).
Only in the extreme case where altruism as an idea is lost and he can somehow revive it does it seem like he will be able to contribute effectively.
By the way my name is Uri Katz, I am not sure why Blogger is not displaying it, but don't wish to get into it.
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