I think that the reason that most people don't seriously entertain cryonics is that… most people don't seriously entertain cryonics. A striking example of group bias that I read about in the NYT magazine a few months ago was that the most powerful indicator of whether men in a certain country *that has an AIDS epidemic* use condoms is whether their friends do and I think that most people just consider cryonics outside of the realm of seriousness. Any time cryonics appears in the MSM–Ted Williams for example–it's presented as evidence of perversion.

As for the pain of losing all of one's friends and relatives, for this reason, anyone that gets frozen is likely to know someone else that is also getting frozen, and as per Dan Ariely we overestimate the pain of loss significantly and seem to have a knack for moving on after traumatic events. Of course there is the matter of PTSD, but it seems to my non-expert self that this is usually the result of having witnessed a traumatic event (war, rape) rather than just receiving devistating news.

Cryonics seems to me to be something close to a logical impossibility or as close to a logical impossibility as an economic “law” is to a physical law. The principal problem is that only a small portion of the technology required for a successful “reincarnation” would effectively grant immortality for living people rendering the cryonics project redundant. Nobody is going to be getting frozen if technology permits them to prolong living indefinitely. Once the technology is there to radically extend life, there would surely be little impetus to figure out how to preserve and revive frozen corpses.

I agree that the arguments against Cryonics from squeamishness or weirdness are wrong and I also agree that the argument that “death gives meaning to life” is wrong but there is also a Lottery ticket or Pascal's wager like flavour to many of the arguments for Cryonics which imply that the money one would spend on cryonics is negligible when compared to the huge albeit improbable reward or the psychic pleasure of thinking about becoming a multimillionaire or acheiving immortality. But we do live in a world of scarcity and that money in the here and now is not negligible. If it;s not worth spendng a couple of bucks on a lottery ticket, it certainly not worth spending a lot more than that on an approximately impossible payoff.

Interesting interview by the way!

Incidentally, Will: On dying, you make a distinction between “not wanting [life] to end,” and being afraid of death. If you can't even fathom what fear of death friends would entails, shouldn't you be indifferent about whether your life ends? I don't want to die, in part because I like living, and because my family would be hurt, my wife would suffer, and my friends (presumably) would be sad (others, I'm afraid, might find themselves a tad happy, which is depressing). But all of those things matter to me now because I know what it feels like to see my parents hurt, etc. After death, however, I won't know that any of that is happening, so it won't – it can't – matter to me. Another reason I don't want to die is because I like living. But I don't want things that I like doing to end because I have to move on to other, less enjoyable things, to which I can compare the really awesome thing that just ended. Work sucks more than vacation. Of course, after I die, I won't be in any kind of position to do the comparing.

I recognize all of that now, but I still don't want to die, and I'm still afraid of it. I can't explain it, and if someone asked “what are you afraid of?” I wouldn't be able to give a satisfactory answer. But the dread is still there. I guess I just don't understand how you can, on the one hand, affirmatively want to keep living, and on the other, not “fear” death.

“'Goddammit'. I'd rather just have Robin Hanson talking by himself. Will Wilkinson gets on my nerves. A lot.”

The writer even went out of his way to call himself, “don'tlikewill.” Of course, the link in the name goes to a blog called “Paleohawk,” so make of that what you will.

Still, I thought it was funny.