X-Message-Number: 18935 Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 09:56:06 -0400 From: Jeffrey Soreff <> Subject: Re: Message #18930 >that the people surrounding me provide any support. Any response from one who >has made the leap and can offer constructive mentoring so to speak, would be >appreciated. The deciding factor for me was in noting that, even at quite modest probabilities of success, cryonics is still a rational bet. In a nutshell, for me, a cryonic suspension costs on the order of a year's salary. If a successful revival gives me roughly another typical lifetime, ~100 years, or (the way I really do the calculation), if it gives me the possibility of an indefinite lifespan and I use a 1% effective interest rate for valuing this, then it also acts like a 100 yr gain. I view the alternative use of the funds as being an extra year retired (roughly), which I value roughly the same as an extra year added to my life. So I'm trading off a possible 100 years vs 1 year, so for revival probabilities above 1%, cryonics is a good choice. Everyone estimates the odds of revival differently. I tend to think that we are likely to eventually get full molecular nanotechnology, and I think that there are perhaps 25% odds that revival of a cryonics patient will eventually become technically possible. By the time I multiply in the odds of all the other things that can go wrong, I get a revival probability of 5% or so, which is high enough to make cryonics a good choice, but all of these guesses about probabilities are of course highly uncertain in both directions. Best wishes, -Jeffrey Soreff Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18935