mike the mountain

James Miller’s Cryonics Agreement

James D. Miller, an Accelerating Future reader and associate professor of economics at Smith College, just came up with a really interesting hypothetical economic agreement about cryonics, reproduced here for your convenience:

“Some people are planning to have their head frozen just after they die. These believers in cryonics think that freezing the head preserves brain patterns. They also believe that there is a reasonably high chance that someday humanity will have the technology to restore life to those who have undergone cryonic head freezing.

If the price of cryonics becomes low enough then a cryonics believer and unbeliever should try to come to the following three part agreement:

(1) The believer will immediately pay the unbeliever some amount of money.

(2) The believer will pay for the unbeliever to undergo cryonic freezing shortly after death.

(3) If the unbeliever is ever brought back to life he will owe a huge debt to the believer. It is hard to know what will be valued in the far future. But if brought back to life the unbeliever promises to try his best to spend at least 50% of his time and resources improving the life of the believer.

This agreement will always make the unbeliever better off, and given his beliefs it may well improve the expected future welfare of the cryonics believer.”

In an unrelated item, I’ve joined the SIAI blog team and made my first post here.