ciphergoth: (Default)
Paul Crowley ([personal profile] ciphergoth) wrote2010-01-21 09:29 am
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Cryonics

I'm considering signing up with the Cryonics Institute. Are you signed up? I'd be interested to hear your reasons why or why not. It does of course sound crazy, but when you press past that initial reaction to find out why it's crazy, I haven't heard a really satisfactory argument yet, and I'm interested to hear what people think. There are many reasons it might not work, but are there reasons to think it's really unlikely to work? How likely does recovery need to be for it to be worth it?
lovingboth: (Default)

[personal profile] lovingboth 2010-01-22 10:06 am (UTC)(link)
This train of thought had occurred to me. Looking it up on a comparison site, for a 39 year old in London, £100k whole life is about £85 a month now.

If you want the payout to be indexed with inflation, the cheapest company offering that a) ignores RPI increases of less than 1%, b) won't increase by more than 10% - so a few years of 1970s/80s level inflation will wipe out most of the value - and c) will up your premium by twice RPI. Another one will increase both cover and premiums by 5% a year.

If you want it to index better than that, you're looking at about £240 a month.

[identity profile] ciphergoth.livejournal.com 2010-01-22 10:40 am (UTC)(link)
What comparison site did you use? Thanks!
lovingboth: (Default)

[personal profile] lovingboth 2010-01-22 11:15 am (UTC)(link)
I can't remember. The companies it came up with were all 'household names' so I'd expect them all to be fine.

[identity profile] ciphergoth.livejournal.com 2010-01-22 11:18 am (UTC)(link)
Any guesses? I've tried three sites (moneysupermarket.com, uswitch.com, moneynet.co.uk) and all three have a fixed field for how many years of cover you want; I can't figure out how to get information about whole life insurance from any of them.
lovingboth: (Default)

[personal profile] lovingboth 2010-01-22 11:27 am (UTC)(link)
(Checks browser history)

bestdealinsurance.co.uk

It defaulted to term insurance, but you can tell it you want whole life.

[identity profile] lizw.livejournal.com 2010-01-22 07:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Just to be clear, I should note that whole life insurance may get you round a practical problem, but the same legal problems apply as with term insurance.

[identity profile] ciphergoth.livejournal.com 2010-01-23 07:46 am (UTC)(link)
Many thanks again for all your advice here. I shall try and find out what other cryonics people in the UK have done, and if I find something that seems workable and affordable I'll ask for advice again - cheers!

[identity profile] lizw.livejournal.com 2010-01-23 10:27 am (UTC)(link)
You're welcome - happy to help in any way I can.

[identity profile] lizw.livejournal.com 2010-01-23 11:38 am (UTC)(link)
Actually, while we're on the financial side of this, another thought: it occurs to me that you need to think not only of the cost of the actual cryopreservation and revival, but the cost of the presumed new medical treatment for whatever you were suffering from when you "died", plus the cost of living after revival. Your skills will be out of date, and you won't be able to rely on waking up in a legal system or economy where revived people (or anyone at all, necessarily) will be entitled to a pension or benefits or education grants. So it seems to me you'd need to have made some sort of investment pre-death (or via instruction in your will) that you think would plausibly produce, during the time you expect to be suspended, enough money to live on at least for the time it would take you to retrain, after allowing for inflation. Even that assumes that you'd be employable at all (think age discrimination, disability discrimination if the process doesn't leave you functioning perfectly, prejudice against people seen to have "cheated" death, etc); you might need to have enough of a fund to meet your living expenses for the rest of your life. How do CI suggest people address that?