Overton&#39;s Baseball

“She is more intelligent than me, insatiably curious and lovingly devoted to me and our 2-year-old daughter. So why is this happening?”

The question contains the answer.

Cryonics is gambling. It is a very expensive, long shot. Furthermore, it is a gamble which requires the participation of one's spouse. Not just in time and money throughout your life together, but also in deprivation at a time of loss. You've probably heard the statement that funerals aren't for the dead, they're for the living? Well, people who are into cryonics take that and turn it on its head. Rather than making preparations for the future comfort of their loved ones, they're demanding that their loved ones make the events surrounding their death be... all about the gambler. And if by some small chance the gamble does pay off, the spouse and children get none of the reward.

Imagine this offer as a personals ad. "Gambler seeks partner..."

The only way I can see it working is if both partners are devoted to cryonics. Anything else is just a gambler selfishly using another person for his own gratification.

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crasch.livejournal.com

Agree with you except for this:

Anything else is just a gambler selfishly using another person for his own gratification.

Does one's spouse and children have a moral claim to all of one's resources? I would argue no. I think my children have a claim to decent upbringing, up to the age of 18. But beyond that, anything you give your kids is out of benevolence, and not any moral claim they have to your estate.

Similarly, a spouse has some claim to your resources, especially if she's made career sacrifices to care for your children. But I don't think that gives her a moral claim to everything you have.

So as long as you provide adequately for your spouse and children, I don't think you're "using" them, selfishly or otherwise, if you choose to spend your remaining money on cryonics.

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Again, imagine that as a personal ad, or a pre-nup.

"Potential partners should be aware that I intend to set aside a significant amount of my income exclusively for my gambling habit. These funds will not be available to you or our offspring. Nor will you derive any benefit from my gambling winnings."

That's selfish. It may be your right, and you may not feel that selfishness is necessarily a bad thing, but it is selfish. And it significantly impacts your abilities—and attractiveness—as a provider. If you can find a partner willing to sign on for that, wonderful. But just as you have the right to gamble selfishly, others have the right to turn you down in favor of a partner who does not place those conditions on a relationship. It'll have an effect on your competitiveness.

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"Potential partners should be aware that I intend to set aside a significant amount of income exclusively for my shoe-buying habit..."

To each their own, I say. A life without a few benign selfish interests would be a boring life indeed.

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With clothing you at least get the benefit of a well-dressed spouse on your arm. Many selfish interests have at least some degree of positive externality. Most people like to share their interests and hobbies. If my spouse buys an expensive boat, I'll probably get to spend a few nice weekends on the lake. If my spouse likes to cook, and remodels the kitchen with professional appliances, I'll probably get to eat a few good meals. it might even turn out to be cheaper than eating similar quality meals out in the long run. It may not be a hobby I would have chosen, but I still get some good out of it.

Cryonics? 100% self-directed. No externalities. Except the negative ones of having to deal with the process if they die before you.

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No one said they were good-looking shoes, even for people who care about shoes. Anyway, the situation resolves similarly for you if you don't care about shoes at all, or hate being on the water and can't swim (in the case of the boat), but that's still no reason to begrudge your spouse some happiness.

Lastly, what kind of a spouse places no value *at all* on the happiness and survival of their partner, such that even the utterly trivial personal benefit of their partner buying shoes is of more value to them? If that were really the reason why a given spouse were against cryonics, it would be a good reason not to be their spouse. I think it much more likely that there are other, more compelling, reasons for the antagonism, rather than simply that this relatively inexpensive hobby provides no immediate value.

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If a person does dislike the water, then being married to someone who insists on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a speedboat probably will cause friction. Nobody would find it remarkable. They would certainly never bother to write a newspaper article about it. Most would conclude that two people with such divergent and interests probably shouldn't be married.

And?

"Lastly," says the gambler, "What kind of spouse places no value at all on the happiness and potential wealth of their partner, such that even the utterly trivial personal benefit of their partner buying shoes is of more value to them? If that were really the reason why a given spouse were against going to the track, it would be a good reason not to be their spouse. I think it more likely that there are other, more compelling reasons for the antagonism, rather than simply that this relatively inexpensive hobby provides no immediate value."

To which I can only say, "Indeed." Stay the hell away from gamblers of all sorts. In fact, stay away from anyone whose primary hobbies you can't stand. Let the degenerate gamblers marry each other. And speaking of gambling, good luck with that 3:1 ratio!

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I understand you're exaggerating the costs for effect, but I would like to point out that we're talking 80K for head-only cryonics, which is what Professor Hanson apparently has, and even that is usually paid for via a separate life insurance policy, which means this is the equivalent of spending a thousand dollars on a weekend in Las Vegas once a year, which seems like a weird thing to begrudge even if no specific value comes of it.

And, yes, if spending 80K or 150K (which is the higher Alcor cost for whole body, and Alcor is the *expensive* one) over a period of 30-50 years on *any* single hobby is a problem for a spouse in a middle-class couple, then there are deeper issues at work, here. It's not the money, because the money is utterly trivial for anyone much above the poverty line.

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Utterly trivial? That's a lot of money. In many parts of the country, that's a second home, or a summer cabin at least. That buys a lot of cruises. Trips to Europe. A trust fund for the kids. Things you can share. Things you both value. Given a choice between two equally good candidates for marriage, one of whom is willing to engage in hobbies that the couple can share, which increase their social status, and is a sure thing, and one of whom is focused on a hobby that benefits only himself, is an extreme long-shot to ever pay off at all, and has significant negative emotional and social externalities for his spouse...

Ultimately, I'm not the one you have to convince. I'm not a potential partner. Tell it to the ladies. "I know you could marry the guy who has a summer cottage on the lake, or likes to tour Europe. How would you like to be in charge of freezing my brain?"

The only thing I want to know is how that works out for you.

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80K is a lot of money spread over, say, 40 years? Sure, it'll pay for an additional trip to Europe every 5-10 years, I guess. For me, personally, State Farm's website just quoted me about $2400 a year or a little more than $200 a month for the rest of my life to insure me for 150K. If I'd started 15 years ago, it would have been quite a lot less, and somewhat less if I'd picked 80K, so I think $2000 a year is a reasonable figure. For a middle-class couple making 100-150K a year, that doesn't seem like a lot of money -- it won't even pay for a trip to Europe for the family unless you save up for a bunch of years.

Anyway, I was married for 10 years to a woman who wasn't against the idea of cryonics, though she'd never heard of it before I mentioned it when we were dating, so they are out there. We split up for reasons having nothing to do with that, especially given that I haven't ever actually signed up, yet. Sloth, I guess.

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crasch.livejournal.com

I was addressing your claim that a cryonicist is "using" his wife and kids if he fails to hand over all his money to them at death.

I also disagree that a cryonicist is necessarily selfish. The relevant definition of "selfish" is "concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others"

A cryonicist who had himself cryopreserved without adequately providing for the wellbeing of his surviving wife and kids would indeed be selfish.

But if your wife and kid's wellbeing is provided for, I don't think it's selfish to spend the remainder of your assets on cryopreservation.

What _is_ selfish is a wife who would deny her husband a chance at a vastly increased lifespan so that she can spend _all_ of her husband's money on herself.

As for cryonics decreasing one's attractiveness, to be sure, some women do evaluate their men primarily by how much money they can provide, living or dead. And such women are likely to be turned off by a competing interest, such as cryonics. But if a woman is rejecting you primarily because she won't make as much money when you die, would you want to be with her in any case?

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It's not just about money.

The spouse has to cooperate with the preservation process. A process that places additional stress on them at one of the most stressful times of their life, and robs them of the traditional means of coping that have developed over thousands of years of human civilization specifically to help deal with that emotional distress. To provide comfort and closure.

Denying them that, and placing additional burdens on them at the same time? That's selfish. That's using another person.

So they get screwed emotionally and fiscally.

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Spending a great deal of money to preserve a corpse in preparation for some kind of afterlife is a pretty long-standing tradition for hominids. Even Neanderthals buried their dead, and I read an article recently that suggested that Neanderthals may have had spiritual/religious/intellectual traditions millenia before homo sapiens did anything useful.

The Egyptians also believed in a physical afterlife (using corpse-preservation technology we no longer possess!) and spent a relatively huge amount of money on their most important dead. Even today, the average middle-class funeral (with a basic casket, embalming, burial plot, headstone, flowers, musicians, officiant, food/liquor for the bereaved, etc.) costs at least several thousand $.

Until a cryonically-frozen living, healthy organism can be successfully thawed and reanimated, I see no reason to believe that freezing the recently deceased is anything more than a novel and expensive burial technique. $80-$150K isn't a lot more when compared to what people spend on other rituals throughout their lives (weddings, cars, vacations, midlife crises, etc.).

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$80-$150K isn't a lot more when compared to what people spend on other rituals throughout their lives (weddings, cars, vacations, midlife crises, etc.).

Ah, the sweet, sweet stench of privilege.

I'm not sure, but I think that might be just as outlandish as using the burial traditions of Egyptian Pharaohs supported by the labor of millions of slaves as a model for "normal" human behavior.

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"Outrageous! I would never consider myself so privileged as to benefit from the enslavement of millions," I type on my Microsoft keyboard, connected to a Dell workstation with an Intel motherboard.

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Hey, that's a good thing, let's do more of it. In fact, let's make that the model upon which we'll build our relationships. The Egyptians built monuments to their own immortality, and we clearly are willing to enslave people, so my wife and kids should be overjoyed at the prospect of contributing to my futile attempt at living forever!

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Whoa, I had no idea until I read this article that Robin Hanson's wife is a hospice worker. That must produce some interesting discussions in their house from time to time...!

I find it odd that someone would be so judgy about what another person wants to do with their body, spare time or money. If someone wants their remains to be interred in a gigantic pyramid, in a hole in the ground with their feet facing Jerusalem, or upside-down in a cryonics tank, it's all fine with me.

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crasch.livejournal.com

Yeah, I had no idea who Robin's wife was either. I wonder if the article made her seem more hostile than she is? Robin's thoughts on the article are here:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/07/modern-male-sati.html#more-23587

(And I agree with you--live and let freeze, I say, so long as the wife isn't left unexpectedly destitute, and the children are properly cared for.)

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