X-Message-Number: 12887 From: "John de Rivaz" <> References: <> Subject: Re: risk/reward Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 11:34:35 -0000 The "The is no proof that cryonics can't work" discussion mentioned the risk reward ratio of various activities. However what the risk reward ratio is depends on who is looking at it. The rest of the world (ROW) considers the risk/reward ratio of a few individuals being cryopreserved is unacceptable. This is because if the cryonicists are not cryopreserved, the ROW gets their assets into its economic system for other people to spend going on holiday, buying depreciating goods like cars and washing machines and so on. If the cryonicists are cryopreserved and reanimated, then the ROW gets the benefit of their presence in a future time. The ROW couldn't give a toss about the latter. That is what the ROW thinks. In reality it is a little different to this: When someone is cryopreserved, the actual costs still go into the economic system - those providing material and labour will spend their wages on other things and so on. The sums that are invested to provide for maintenance and reanimation and so on will provide working capital for science based technology industries that will benefit everyone. If these funds were not part of a cryonicist's estate they may well get frittered away. It is the fruits of research that is the real inheritance for the succeeding generations, not the fading memories of grandparent's cruises or lavish parties. But now there is another dimension being added, and it is certainly worthy of debate. There are a vociferous group of people (the Group) who believe in the concept of cryopreservation, but think that present methods and infrastructure will be highly unlikely to result in reanimations. Therefore from this point of view it perfectly rational to ask other people who believe in the concept to sponsor various proposals that are aimed at improving present methods. Now to the Group the risk reward ratio of someone doing his own thing and being cryopreserved compared with the risk reward ratio of a collectively funded "war effort" research or similar project is decidedly poor. Yes the chap on his own *may* get reanimated with probability X (but how'd you'd put a figure on X I don't know), but the Group Project has a chance of success Y, where the Group perceive that Y>>X. A Group project is most likely to be quite well defined and it will be easy for its proposer to put a figure on the chances of success for its sponsors. Maybe even the individual realises that Y>>X from the point of view of the Group. But *from the point of view of the individual*, even if to the group X is 0.001 and Y is .999, if they are mutually exclusive then the X gamble is the only one worth taking. This is because to the individual, the "reward" part of the ratio of his own cryopreservation is infinity, and risk of it now working cannot be zero for reasons already explained. The other point is, of course, that once the individual is annihilated the assets that remain are irrelevant to him. They only way they could have been relevant is if he could send them back in time to the period when he was alive, which is, of course impossible. [The financial institutions' attempts to do this, known as the annuity, is laughable in my opinion.] -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz my homepage links to Longevity Report, Fractal Report, my singles club for people in Cornwall, music, Inventors' report, an autobio and various other projects: http://geocities.yahoo.com/longevityrpt Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12887