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If your definition of "sensible investment" is "very low probability of very high payout with very high probability of 100% loss" you must think the lottery is

If your definition of "sensible investment" is "very low probability of very high payout with very high probability of 100% loss" you must think the lottery is another great example of a sensible investment.

TeMPOraL 14y ago
It's not a fair comparison. For starters, right now you have P = 1 probability of 100% loss if you don't sign up (barring divine intervention). And then again, every person who invests in cryonics is making it slightly more probable to work for others, as the money goes to research and accumulating experience in doing cryopreservation. National lottery doesn't make it more probable for everyone to win (or at least for future players) if more people play it.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  On the contrary, if nobody plays the lottery, nobody will win. The lottery works by randomly redistributing the ticket fees. I look forward to hearing precisely how you figure I'm going to lose 100% on an investment I'm not making. You're comparing the 100% likely outcome that I do not live forever having spent my money on non-snake oil with the 100% likely outcome that you do not live forever having spent your money on snake oil. The idea that something impossible is going to be more likely because you're spending money on it is just assuming the outcome you want. Unicorns continue not to exist despite every little girl wishing for them. I point out that spending money on unicorn research isn't going to generate them any faster.
edanm 14y ago
Luckily for humans, we've already developed mathematics to deal with things like "what's a sensible investment" - probability and expected value. The expected value of lotteries is less than the ticket price, so it's not a sensible investment, if we assume "sensible investment" means maximizing expected value on every dollar spent (which is what you seem to be doing implicitly. Feel free to suggest another definition). On the other hand, people will tend to put very high utility on living longer, and if cryonics works, the potentially vast number of added years is amazingly valuable. Run an expected value computation on this, and because of the crazy upside of cryonics, you can have very low levels of confidence that it will actually work, and it will still be worth it from an expected value point of view.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  The expected value is the probability of the event times the value of the event. If the probability is zero, it doesn't matter what the value is, the expected value is still zero. That you've managed to convince yourself that p > 0 with cryonics is just evidence that snake oil production is a better investment.
  - edanm 14y ago
    So your real argument is, I take it, the the probability of cryonics working is 0? This is different than what I understood before. In that case, do you have any reason to think it's 0? My main evidence to the contrary is: 1. A smart group of people say that the probability is > 0: (Eliezer Yudkowsky, Robin Hanson, various others at LessWrong). They have nothing to gain from selling me on it, so I don't think they're biased. 2. It seems to me that future medical advances are pretty likely (based on history), including advances leading to being able to fix practically anything that kills people today. And it seems pretty sensible that cryonic preservation basically stops all processes at the moment of death. Combine the two, and it makes sense to me it might be possible to revive people. I'm not saying the probability is > 50%, I'm saying it can be < 1%, but still over 0, and still be worth it.
    - fusiongyro 14y ago
      You're ruining all my fun with your calm debating. > I'm not saying the probability is > 50%, I'm saying it can be < 1%, but still over 0, and still be worth it. Well, we're simply going to have to disagree. I don't find endorsement by smart people compelling. We have plenty of evidence that medicine can extend lifespans, but we have no evidence that we'll figure out a safe way to revive someone cryogenically frozen and no reason to believe extension will reach infinity. If they only solve one of the two problems you're looking at wasting a lot of money on a very strange burial or a very disappointing revival. If p < 1% but > 0 and it's worth it to you, great. But don't kid yourself about it being an investment. It's a huge gamble. And I retain the right to consider gamblers suckers.
      - 14y ago

TeMPOraL 14y ago

It's not a fair comparison. For starters, right now you have P = 1 probability of 100% loss if you don't sign up (barring divine intervention). And then again, every person who invests in cryonics is making it slightly more probable to work for others, as the money goes to research and accumulating experience in doing cryopreservation. National lottery doesn't make it more probable for everyone to win (or at least for future players) if more people play it.

fusiongyro 14y ago
On the contrary, if nobody plays the lottery, nobody will win. The lottery works by randomly redistributing the ticket fees. I look forward to hearing precisely how you figure I'm going to lose 100% on an investment I'm not making. You're comparing the 100% likely outcome that I do not live forever having spent my money on non-snake oil with the 100% likely outcome that you do not live forever having spent your money on snake oil. The idea that something impossible is going to be more likely because you're spending money on it is just assuming the outcome you want. Unicorns continue not to exist despite every little girl wishing for them. I point out that spending money on unicorn research isn't going to generate them any faster.

edanm 14y ago

Luckily for humans, we've already developed mathematics to deal with things like "what's a sensible investment" - probability and expected value. The expected value of lotteries is less than the ticket price, so it's not a sensible investment, if we assume "sensible investment" means maximizing expected value on every dollar spent (which is what you seem to be doing implicitly. Feel free to suggest another definition). On the other hand, people will tend to put very high utility on living longer, and if cryonics works, the potentially vast number of added years is amazingly valuable. Run an expected value computation on this, and because of the crazy upside of cryonics, you can have very low levels of confidence that it will actually work, and it will still be worth it from an expected value point of view.

fusiongyro 14y ago
The expected value is the probability of the event times the value of the event. If the probability is zero, it doesn't matter what the value is, the expected value is still zero. That you've managed to convince yourself that p > 0 with cryonics is just evidence that snake oil production is a better investment.
- edanm 14y ago
  So your real argument is, I take it, the the probability of cryonics working is 0? This is different than what I understood before. In that case, do you have any reason to think it's 0? My main evidence to the contrary is: 1. A smart group of people say that the probability is > 0: (Eliezer Yudkowsky, Robin Hanson, various others at LessWrong). They have nothing to gain from selling me on it, so I don't think they're biased. 2. It seems to me that future medical advances are pretty likely (based on history), including advances leading to being able to fix practically anything that kills people today. And it seems pretty sensible that cryonic preservation basically stops all processes at the moment of death. Combine the two, and it makes sense to me it might be possible to revive people. I'm not saying the probability is > 50%, I'm saying it can be < 1%, but still over 0, and still be worth it.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    You're ruining all my fun with your calm debating. > I'm not saying the probability is > 50%, I'm saying it can be < 1%, but still over 0, and still be worth it. Well, we're simply going to have to disagree. I don't find endorsement by smart people compelling. We have plenty of evidence that medicine can extend lifespans, but we have no evidence that we'll figure out a safe way to revive someone cryogenically frozen and no reason to believe extension will reach infinity. If they only solve one of the two problems you're looking at wasting a lot of money on a very strange burial or a very disappointing revival. If p < 1% but > 0 and it's worth it to you, great. But don't kid yourself about it being an investment. It's a huge gamble. And I retain the right to consider gamblers suckers.
    - 14y ago