For those Alcor members who do donate to charity, good on them! Charities could always use more money, however - pledging $10/month to water aid is a great start but pledging $100,000 or more from a life insurance payout would make a massive difference.

Your second argument doesn't make sense - if no one individual could make a difference then by summation, no difference could be made by any number of individuals. You can't seriously argue that a donation of e.g. $100,000 to a life-saving charity makes no difference to anyone.

Thirdly, let me clarify that I never claimed cryonics is bad, and I do not hold that opinion. I would encourage research into cryonics in the same way that I would encourage research into cancer drugs or AIDS mitigation. However, I contend that under my personal ethical position, it would be more ethical to save many young lives than to invest in a small probability of saving one old life. Abstracting away from the specific case of cryonics, I suppose I would generally state that I believe (at this early state in life extension research) that death of/at old age is inevitable. By accepting this, instead of trying to deny it using technology that is incredibly immature and does not yet have any proof of effectiveness, one frees up one's financial resources to take care of family and friends, and if one is a wealthy individual, to attempt to save the lives of others.