From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 31 1998 - 10:39:41 MST
Greg Burch wrote:
>> An Exploratory Survey Examining the Familiarity
>> with and Attitudes Toward Cryonic Preservation
>>
>> by Scott Badger
>
>This is a great paper that makes interesting reading as a probe of the effect
>of various demographic factors on attitudes about the future and technological
>advance in general. One thing it does bear out is my experience that most
>people significantly overestimate the cost of cryonic suspension: I often hear
>people guess that it must cost half a million dollars or some such figure,
>when $50k, financed easily by life insurance (especially if you're young and
>healthy), is the right number for a neurosuspension.
But the paper *doesn't* show that most people overestimate cost.
The distribution of cost estimates is normal in log space, with
the mean log being pretty close to the right answer. Some people
overestimate while others underestimate, but the median estimate
is about right.
Do people who overestimate the cost become less interested in cryonics
as a result? I don't think Scott looked at that.
The raw data is included with the paper, in case someone else wants to
look into such questions.
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