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This is a big deal. Cryosleep is probably the most likely change to occur in our lifetimes that could bring about significant social change. Given that it slow
by xevb3k 8y ago
This is a big deal. Cryosleep is probably the most likely change to occur in our lifetimes that could bring about significant social change.
Given that it slows your metabolism, I think it’s likely that we’ll be able to extend overall lifespan. Effectively we maybe able to put people to sleep, and have them wake up 50 years later.
Those “temporal refugees” will of course be completely out of sync with society, and like a living message from the past.
Of all the weird sci-fi stuff, I think this is the most likely to actually happen and the impact could be massive.
- thatcherc 8y agoIf you're interested in more of the (fictional) uses and problems presented by this technology, you might enjoy reading Cixin Liu's The Dark Forest, which makes some use of hibernation in its plot. It is the sequel to The Three Body Problem, a hard sci-fi book that would probably be enjoyed by a lot of HNers.
- drdeadringer 8y agoLarry Niven also has some exploration into these matters.
- csisvunit 8y agoAlso, Amazon is dropping $1B to produce The Three Body Problem. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/the-three-body-problem-tv-adaptation-show-amazon-a8278066.html https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/the...
- thatcherc 8y agoThat's incredible! I'm very excited to see how they do with that. It's also amazing that 1 billion dollars can be spent making a TV series today. A quick looks on Google shows that an episode of Game of Thrones (chosen because it seems like a really high budget show) costs ~$10-$15 million, so Amazon's Three Body is roughly equivalent to 6-10 seasons of GoT. Wild!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- edwinksl 8y agoGreat trilogy that explores, among many things, hibernation. Highly recommend too.
- lykr0n 8y agoI think the big use case would be to skip a couple of days or a week at a time. A week living in the real world, a week asleep. You don't miss much and you can effectively double your lifespan.
- kaybe 8y agoThe change will probably be really hard on your body so you don't want to do it that often.
- dexterdog 8y agoOr you set a trigger with your fund manager. You put in 100K and tell him to wake you when you have $2m (in today's dollars) or less than $50K.
- pwneror 8y agoCryo API
- qubex 8y agoI was thinking of this today: enter stasis and set a trigger to emerge only once one’s wealth has compounded to place them within the vaunted ”top 1%” or leave one in cryosleep indefinitely.
- dexterdog 8y agoExcept so many people would do that that it might as well be a death sentence since the cryo fees would eat away at your money faster than it could grow compared to all of the other people in the world.
- krageon 8y agoCryo fees and compound interest are separate concepts. Just because the second is present, doesn't mean the first one will grow. The opposite is true: When more people want something, you scale up production (or someone else does) and the prices (generally) go down.
- rgrieselhuber 8y ago"Effectively we maybe able to put people to sleep, and have them wake up 50 years later." Or tell them they will wake up 50 years later and then just discard them once they are asleep.
- savanaly 8y agoI mean there's lots of things we could do to people and usually we don't. What makes you think we would do it to chrononauts more than, say, people in comas they're expected to wake up from?
- rgrieselhuber 8y agoROI
- d0lph 8y agoThe ROI might be more social, imagine reviving someone from hundreds of years ago, they'd be a living relic.
- vtange 8y agoBut then why not just discard them while they sleep at a hotel you own or AirBnb or something?
- steve_musk 8y agoIf you go to a hotel the people in your life expect you to come back in a reasonable amount of time and start asking questions if you don't.
- dwaltrip 8y agoAnd then you go to jail...
- wwweston 8y agoIf there's a point where the cost of sustaining life during cryosleep goes to a fraction of the real returns on some modest investment vehicle like a mutual fund, I'd expect some of that social change would include economic disruption as thousands if not millions of people attempt to improve their lives with a century or so of compounded returns...
- AdamJacobMuller 8y agoI will recommend Lockstep, a hard sci-fi novel that posits: what if we never achieve faster than light travel, but, do achieve perfect hibernation, what does society end up looking like. It's a very fascinating book that constantly had me wishing that it delved deeper into aspects of its radically different societies. http://amzn.com/B00H6E6ATI http://amzn.com/B00H6E6ATI