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Cryonics is another version of Pascal's Wager. Logic and reason assures that it almost certainly is not going to work, but the value of the potential upside is
by ryandvm 11y ago
Cryonics is another version of Pascal's Wager.
Logic and reason assures that it almost certainly is not going to work, but the value of the potential upside is effectively infinite to that individual, so it still may be a rational investment.
- loup-vaillant 11y agoThe original wager is more extreme than that. Paradise is eternal Fun, while hell is eternal Not Cool. Cryonics, assuming you don't believe in the afterlife, only gives a hope of life in our world, instead of certain oblivion. Life does not have infinite value. People, including atheists, sometimes give their own life for some higher purpose (another life, freedom, a better standard of living for their village…). Of course, this would be different if you seek to escape Hell. (You might be religious, and guilty of some mortal sin.)
- Apofis 11y agoI don't know about you, but to me my life has infinite value, I only have one after all.
- loup-vaillant 11y agoHow often do you commute your way to work? Driving has its risks. Now weight this risk against your salary. A cynical calculation may find that your own acts value your life at a few million dollars, maybe even a few dozen millions.
- geofft 11y ago"Life" is more than the biological definition. There are things I could do to my life that would make it no longer worth living (and, on the way there, no longer of infinite value), and living in pathological fear of death is basically the broadest category of those things.
- a8da6b0c91d 11y ago> upside is effectively infinite Shambling about like some lonely museum piece come to life sounds pretty worthless to me, personally. The value of a human life is in its context of family and society.
- WalterBright 11y agoIf I came back to life 500 years from now, I suspect I might become hopelessly homesick and depressed for the vanished past. Everyone I knew would be dust, and all my knowledge useless.
- aperrien 11y agoCan't you learn new knowledge?
- WalterBright 11y agoUp to a point. The brain is very plastic and molds itself to its environment. If the person is older, and the environment is too different, it may just give up.
- rbanffy 11y agoI suppose in 500 years it'll be possible to get a better brain.
- WalterBright 11y agoReminds me of my leet DOS programming skilz :-)
- a8da6b0c91d 11y agoThis is such weird atomized view of a human life. Dare I say autistic. "Knowledge" and skills is not really the fucking point. You are built to serve here as part of a generation.
- 11y ago
- dennisgorelik 11y agoWhat if your brain would unfrozen straight into "hell"? The researchers from the future may put your brain into very painful condition in order to keep it functional. Would cryonic worth it?