Important

If someone you trust is telling you that something you never thought about is very important, then I suggest you lend an ear.

It seems like a good idea to me for most people to consider:

All those things have very long feedback loop, which might explain their slow adoption.

Enter your email address here to subscribe to the next addition. I only share information I find very valuable – so far, since 2019-10-02, I've sent 0 emails, and I plan to continue sending few as I value your attention.

The following is a list of recommended readings. There are just 3 because I can't think of other articles that are that important per word, at a direct personal and practical level.

Cryonics

Cryonics is free—in the US: https://www.oregoncryo.com/services.html (section "Research program"), and in Europe: https://cryonics-germany.org/en/neuro/.

My favorite introduction to cryonics: Why cryonics makes sense? | Wait buy why.

Ready to sign up?

I created a Cryonics GPT to help with anything cryonics-related, notably with respect to signing up (whether to, which options, and how): https://chatgpt.com/g/g-f4rQcxFwa-cryonics-gpt.

Check out this guide (which I contributed to, and keep updating in the comments): Cryonics sign up guide. Let me know if you have any questions. Use my ICE code to get 50% off on your first year of membership with Alcor: 2omojQif

Objections I think are reasonable:

• (epistemic) If you live somewhere only Alcor can get to you, and you're unlikely to die, and are not doing great financially, then the membership fee might be better invested. Although I would still recommend getting a whole-life insurance for cryonics purposes, and having a clear plan for when you'll sign up.
• (value and epistemic) You're dedicating 100% of your life towards AI alignment → Although there's also free cryonics, so that's only an argument against a membership with certain organizations.
• (value) You care a lot more about avoiding a potential bad futures by dying (Not to the point of dying right away, but to the point of not trusting anyone to cremate you when it seems like the world might be heading in a bad direction.)
• (value) You don't care much about living more than 70-90 years old even in a healthy body in the best possible world you can imagine. → That one seems very suspicious to me, but if true, then makes sense.

Objections I think are problematic:

• You're sufficiently confident cryonics doesn't preserve the mind → see Engram Preservation: Early Work Towards Mind Uploading | Robert McIntyre
• You're sufficiently confident that you would value living longer a lot yet value very little having your cryopreserved mind uploaded → see Killed by Bad Philosophy (not that cryonics requires upload)

Also check out the Facebook group Cryonics Memes for Frozen Teens.

Here's my writing on the topic:

Lifelogging as life extension

I still haven't published my main pitch of the idea, but here's a short summray.

• Almost everything everyone knows about you can be recorded.
• A superintelligent AI with full lifelog access of your life could recreate a mind that passes the "identity turing test", that is, a mind that's indistinguishable from you from the perspective of the rest of the world.
• If we combine that information with your DNA and knowledge of the human brains, we could create a (conscious) human mind passing the identity turing test.
• Death is a spectrum rather than being binary. Even when you forget some information and your personality changes somewhat, a large part of you is still alive, but also a small part is dead.
• So even if a reconstruction of you misses some memories, it's not that functionally different from you forgetting things when you age (might partly be depending on how well we can deduce thoughts based on external behavior).
• Maybe you accept all that, but think "it's just a copy". I think that's a mistaken philosophical view, but that one is harder to communicate concisely. But try to think when exactly something becomes "just a copy" vs "the original" (ex.: Where Physics Meets Experience, Killed by Bad Philosophy). And maybe you'd still value "just a copy"?
• Even just natural life might be responsible for constant microdeaths which lifelogs and superintelligent AI could be able to help fix in the future. So it could help preserve your identity even if you stay alive.
• Lifelogging is pretty cheap, so even if you think this argument is unlikely true, it might still be worth it. Are you willing to bet your life that this argument is false?
• And even just as content to be able to watch, it might be quite valuable. Imagine if we get superintelligent AI that solve all problems to the limit of physics. We could live indefinitely in an awesome world. But one of the only things it seems like you still wouldn't be able to do in that world is to retrieve forgotten/deleted/not recorded memories. It's one of few irreversable things.
• On the other hand, lifelogging seems (currently) easily reversable (ie. you can just delete the content if you change your mind), so you can download an audio recording app right now and press record while you think more about it.

I accept the trade-off of not being able to record at work, but in my social life I have a high bar for not recording. I ask for consent of course.

Also check out: The case for lifelogging as life extension.

Also check out the Facebook group Lifelogging as life extension and Lifelogging memes for life extension teens.

Here's my writing on the topic:

AI x-risks

If you care about helping the world or just improve your modeling of our future, here's some reading suggestions. Prepare for some large updates if you're not already familiar with those concepts ^_^ The stakes are astronomical (at least). An existential risk could prevent us from using those resources to create value. An s-risk could result in those resources being used to destroy value. Aligning our incentive structures and aligning artifical intelligence seem like 2 of the most important problems. For more on how to do the most good, I recommend looking at Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours. I also recommend the book Superintelligence for more on the implication of advancing artificial intelligence.

Also check out the Facebook group AI Safety Discussion (Open).

Saving money

I recommend checking out the Mr Money Mustache blog, particularly this post: Two Fun Tools from the MMM Software Department.

Here's my writing on the topic of personal longtermism, which is relevant to this topic:

For fun, I like rational fic.