Depends on what "much like your current one" means. Eighty years old and going to die soon, or with scope for living a reasonably long life?

If it's the latter, keep going - because I can always end it later myself if it turns out I made the wrong decision.

-- passing Firedrake

Exactly. If 'much like your current one' means eighty and dying, well, get it over with.
Otherwise, I guess it might depend on the state of the world. If the world is going to hell and war and ecological catastrophe, I think I might just opt for sleep.

So I'll come back with the health of someone on their deathbed?

Of course, there's the little problem of checking the angel's veracity.

Assuming chronological continuity, i.e. I'm not going to be reincarnated as a 5th century serf somewhere? Sure.

Sounds like an interesting world, full of "old souls"

People are going to stop having kids with such enthusiasm once it's widely known you're likely to get some 80 year old hitching a ride back into the world in your womb. Creepy.

Of course you can be set to inherit from whoever your child reincarnates from, using Buddhist style checks for reincarnation, that would be an incentive.

parents giving up their kids for adoption (Or killing them) because they believe they are reincarnated murderers!

The death penalty is abolished as it lets criminals basically escape scot free!

Lawmakers and judges on their deathbeds are instructed to appeal to the angel to not offer the reincarnation option to evil people

In general, live is better than dead -- live has options, dead doesn't.

But as said above, conditions of this offer are important. Are we talking about reincarnated into suffering on a "death" bed for years, decades, eternity? Or into the body of a healthy 80-year-old? If the later, with a whole bunch of other healthy 80-year-olds showing up, it becomes economically viable to maximize productivity and quality of life for the influx of returnees. Assuming there's a viable economy.

The "too many people" problem's an issue, but once you work through the "hell on earth" phase that's being shown (however badly) on TW:MD, people will inevitably reach for the resources that are available throughout the solar system and beyond.

~

I like being alive. I'd go for that one.

If "much like my current one" means "about to die", then I'd only get a couple extra days out of the deal, but, why not? Generally, I'd like a couple extra days. If "much like my current one" means "the one I have now at age 37," I'd take it. Again, I'd go for an extra 40+ years, if I had the chance.

If it means being in an 80-year-old dying body for eternity without ever dying? Maybe not so much.

Now, for what it's worth, my religion's position, to the extent that it HAS one, is somewhat similar to that option. The body in question is a perfected human body -- a human body, but without aches and pains and that sort of thing. Not superhuman, but without sickness or disease, and in the prime of one's life forever.

Except, it's not clear that it's "forever" -- it might just be that, at the end of days, everybody gets one more, perfected, lifetime, then dies forever. My religion is really pretty unclear on this stuff.

I'd choose to reincarnate.

Reincarnated without memories of my previous life right? Then reincarnation.

I fully believe that having several lifetimes full of memories would be troublesome, but even knowing that I in my current form wouldn't exist any longer, I'd still choose reincarnation.

I feel exactly the opposite; without knowledge of the reincarnation one might as well remain dead, because "one," such as they were, will remain so.

I'm confused as to how this differs from "would you take cryonics if it were offered to you for free".

I have a suspicion that this was the point of the question - people will happily sign on with the angel, so why not cryonics?

...Hm, good point.
I think the difference is that I don't really believe our future society will be willing to bring everyone back to life. The best case I can imagine, assuming the technology works out, is that they're like "welcome back, here's your reanimation bill, all your skills and knowledge are outdated and useless, here's your reeducation bill, now you're an indentured servant until you pay all that off." A more likely case is that I stay frozen for a few hundred years and then society gets tired of maintaining me and pulls the plug.

Having said that, I do expect I'll sign up for it eventually, because it's not like I have anything to lose.

“… it's not like I have anything to lose.”

Except you do have something to lose: the money it takes to sign up for cryonics. If you happen to win the lottery and get the $150,000 or so required when you're on your deathbed, sure, go for it, but that's unlikely. That money will have to be saved up, necessitating giving up whatever you would have spent it on – a better house, better food, whatever. Or are you planning to pay for it with life insurance? Then you are depriving any family of money you might want to pass onto them. And if you have no family, then you are paying life insurance premiums when you otherwise wouldn't. (I am not sure myself whether this loss of money is bad enough to make cryonics a bad option; I'm just correcting your particular assertion that there is no downside.)

Um HELLO several years later. New tech! NEW. FN. TECHNOLOGY.

I'd choose reincarnation so fast the angel won't even get the chance to finish speaking.

Assuming no cost, the ability to kill myself in the future if I so chose, and a healthy reincarnation with my memories and personality intact, I'd take the reincarnation offer.

The suicide option is non-negotiable, the others are grey areas :)

This.

Oh, I'd stay dead. Whether the angel operates on the chronological timeline or going back and forth, I have no inclination to either stumble through the crowd of the 18th century London, concealing my wrecked dentistry and great pox marks, or facing the results of the global warming fifty years from now.

Having said that, blog is a different thing, so let me play an angel for you: if LJ goes down, which it might, and you need an invitation to dreamwidth, where people seem to be moving, let me know.

Reincaration. There's some squicky aspects to it if I'm reincarnated into a newborn baby with all my memories and consciousness intact, but a change at a whole new lifetime rather than just plain being dead is worth a bit of squick.

Sounds equivalent to "you can have another eighty years of life, except you'll be trapped in a baby body for the first couple". I'd take that.

...Except wow, that's going to be hard on society. Consider this question: "You, or your wife, is about to give birth to your first child. Your child might be a completely new life which you will help to grow and develop, or it might be a reincarnated total stranger which during its previous existence developed its own beliefs and values which might or might not match your own. Which do you prefer?"
I predict a sudden decrease in the birth rate.

I go a little crazy when people claim they would prefer to part with life when the time comes regardless of there being an alternative. It is bull; how can it not be bull? How is this not obvious and something everyone is also secretly futilely wishing for.

When you say "much like your current one," are we talking wrinkly and damaged, with eighty years of use on it, or like the one I originally got?

Interpretations of Reincarnation:

Option One: Just Not Die Now, body repaired. I might take this.
Option Two: Resurected in a cleaned up form, as a healthy person in a back-aged body (with all personality and memory intact, and with people around me aware of my extant identity): Jump at the call.
Option Three: Lost memories: What does reincarnation at this point even mean?