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Consider what will happen a hundred years from now, if the technology to restore cryopreserved people is developed and used. Our descendants will look back on o

Consider what will happen a hundred years from now, if the technology to restore cryopreserved people is developed and used. Our descendants will look back on our failure to do cryopreservation on any significant scale, and I think they will judge us harshly. We, humanity, should have a billion-dollar research project to learn how to do cryopreservation well, to improve the odds that the brains we preserve will be repairable and to get the cost down low enough to offer to everyone. Instead, we are condemning literally everyone to inevitable, permanent death, not even trying to save them. It is, without exaggeration, the greatest tragedy in the world, and it's happening because superstition and our society's anti-superstition memetic immune system misfired simultaneously.

JoshTriplett 11y ago
> We, humanity, should have a billion-dollar research project to learn how to do cryopreservation well, to improve the odds that the brains we preserve will be repairable and to get the cost down low enough to offer to everyone. Instead, we are condemning literally everyone to inevitable, permanent death, not even trying to save them. Agreed. Though I would argue we should be spending even more effort and funding on anti-aging research and AI, the two routes to what people will need at the other end of cryopreservation. (The latter being much more comprehensive than the former.)
tim333 11y ago
I've suggested to a few people the idea of cryopreservation and I've yet to find someone who wants it. The consensus is one life is enough. I quite like the idea of living on but seem to be in a minority. Rather than billion-dollar research maybe the government might be better funding a big freezer. People might be more inclined to do it if it was a no cost option compared with cremation / burial.
- jimrandomh 11y ago
  It's not just a matter of putting people in a freezer; if you do that, ice crystals will form and totally destroy the brain structures you're trying to preserve. The actual procedure involves pumping cryoprotectants into arteries very shortly after death (it has to be quick). Nearly all of the cost is in the procedure performed at time of death; once that's done, long-term refrigerated storage is trivial by comparison.

JoshTriplett 11y ago

> We, humanity, should have a billion-dollar research project to learn how to do cryopreservation well, to improve the odds that the brains we preserve will be repairable and to get the cost down low enough to offer to everyone. Instead, we are condemning literally everyone to inevitable, permanent death, not even trying to save them. Agreed. Though I would argue we should be spending even more effort and funding on anti-aging research and AI, the two routes to what people will need at the other end of cryopreservation. (The latter being much more comprehensive than the former.)

tim333 11y ago

I've suggested to a few people the idea of cryopreservation and I've yet to find someone who wants it. The consensus is one life is enough. I quite like the idea of living on but seem to be in a minority. Rather than billion-dollar research maybe the government might be better funding a big freezer. People might be more inclined to do it if it was a no cost option compared with cremation / burial.

jimrandomh 11y ago
It's not just a matter of putting people in a freezer; if you do that, ice crystals will form and totally destroy the brain structures you're trying to preserve. The actual procedure involves pumping cryoprotectants into arteries very shortly after death (it has to be quick). Nearly all of the cost is in the procedure performed at time of death; once that's done, long-term refrigerated storage is trivial by comparison.