X-Message-Number: 17499
From: 
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 08:35:26 EDT
Subject: The Life Lottery

There has been another little spate of ignorant remarks in various media 
about the probability of success of cryonics (revival of patients), including 
the statement that you are better off buying lottery tickets. For newcomers 
especially, perhaps it's time to review this.

Few people know much about probability theory, and very few of those apply it 
to everyday life in anything like a systematic way. Yet many "scientific" 
critics of cryonics have the gall to call their guesses or biases "estimates 
of probability." Often they say the probability of success is very small; 
sometimes they say it is just unknown. Not so. 

As it happens, I know more about the foundations of probability theory than 
most people--including most scientists and most mathematicians. Yet it is 
relatively easy to understand, and those who can bear with me for a while, 
regardless of mathematical background, are likely to get the point.

To begin with, one cannot generally speak of "the" probability of an event. A 
probability does not refer to an event only; it refers to an event (or 
outcome) in a series of experiments or observations suitably described or 
chosen. The series is real, not imaginary, even though one can often use 
previous experience to substitute for new experiments. Since it is real, the 
series is also finite. If there are n trials and m successes, then the 
probability of success on the next trial (experiments independent) is p = 
m/n. For every new series of experiments, p will change (as will the 
variance); but if the experiments are sufficiently well defined, and the 
series long enough, the numbers p will tend to converge toward some "ideal" 
ratio, which in simple cases is intuitively obvious. For example, the 
probability of drawing a spade from a well-shuffled deck is said to be 25%; 
you will do it, on average, once in every four trials.

But these simple cases are badly misleading in the broader arena of life. It 
does no great harm to say that "the" probability of drawing a spade is  , but 
it does a great deal of harm to leap to the conclusion that other kinds of 
events have similarly simple properties. 

On our web site I have a long discussion of cryonics and probability, and 
will omit most of it here. But for a very simple example of different 
probabilities for the same event, I talked about three people estimating the 
probability that a certain team will win a certain football game. Their 
conclusions disagree widely, yet each is objective and correct; they are 
operating from different databases. This state of affairs is the rule, not 
the exception.

Further, in the cryonics case we do not have independent experiments nor 
fixed probabilities. Your own choice will change the probability. The very 
act of joining an organization and making your arrangements will improve your 
chances and those of others, in a variety of direct and indirect ways--in 
addition to just plain making you feel better.

In the state lotteries, the "expected gain" on a dollar is about fifty cents. 
On average, the players lose about half their money. Is it therefore stupid 
to bet? Not necessarily, because it gives you something to talk about and 
daydream about, which in some cases may be a net benefit. On the other hand, 
you can improve the odds in the lottery by picking unpopular numbers 
(reducing the risk of sharing), but one could say it would be stupid to bet 
one dollar even if the expected gain were two dollars, since the chance of 
winning remains miniscule.

Also, in the lottery, note that for a dying person (without cryonics) the 
"value" of a few million dollars is not much. He could buy a fancy car, but 
he couldn't drive it. He could buy fancy meals, but he couldn't eat them. He 
could rent a fancy concubine, but then what? He could endow a Chair at his 
school, or give money to his relatives, and he might settle for that fleeting 
pleasure.

But in the cryonics case, the expected gain or the value of success is 
estimated by some of us as so immensely large as to defy description. Al Capp 
had a Billionaires' Club with a sign on the front to warn the riff-raff, 
"Millionaires, Keep Out." Eventually, there will be no such disadvantaged 
wretch as a billionaire. Much more importantly, the goods or pleasures 
available, including the improvements in ourselves, will include kinds and 
qualities previously unknown. An oyster does not aspire to play the violin, 
but we at least can predicate the parallel.

If your daily life is one of suffering, as in James Swayze's case, it doesn't 
take much imagination to understand the possibility of vast improvement, 
although it does require a great deal of courage to actually work to that 
end. But if your current life is not so bad, it is very easy to keep a 
worm's-eye view and rationalize the cop-out. Well, call it evolution in 
action--self-selection of survivors.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
www.cryonics.org 

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