5 ms·

Long article, and it doesn’t address what I consider the biggest problem: what incentive do people hundreds of years in the future have to bring me back to life

Long article, and it doesn’t address what I consider the biggest problem: what incentive do people hundreds of years in the future have to bring me back to life? Maybe if I was Einstein, they would want me to help solve scientific problems. But I’m not. Maybe the first few people brought back will be done for the scientific breakthrough - but they will start with the easy ones, which means people that died ten years before being brought back. Again, not me. After that, why bring some random nobody back to life?

porejide 7y ago
Alcor and Oregon Cryonics have patient care trusts that are designed to build capital to pay for revival: https://alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html https://alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html "It doesn’t do any good to use the most advanced techniques to get our members into cryopreservation unless we can keep them there, as well as build capital to eventually fund revival and reintegration." Also, if the technology to do revival develops in the future, it is likely to be relatively cheap. Analogy: in the 1910-1920s, people were interested in life extension via hormone replacement therapy (mostly misguided, but that's a separate topic). They were understandably worried that this would only be available to the rich, as it was relatively expensive to do at the time. One hundred years later, hormone replacement therapy is relatively cheap and widely available, at least in countries like the US. There are many many problems with cryonics, but IMO this is not a major one.
- richk449 7y ago
  Not sure how that helps. What is alcor’s incentive to bring me to life in the future? Remember, I’m dead, so I can’t post nasty comments on twitter when they leave me in the vat. More generally, why would I trust a private company to bring me back to life? It is extremely rare for any company to last for hundreds of years. And pretty much inconceivable for one to last that long without going through periods of very short term thinking.
  - porejide 7y ago
    So if your point is a separate one, that Alcor et al might have to close, eg as a result of war or global financial collapse, then that is a very reasonable point and absolutely a potential cause of failure. It is one of the things that Tim brings up as well: "The cryonics company goes bankrupt and doesn’t have the means, the will, or the organization to create a plan that will save the patients. I mentioned that this happened a few times with some of the earlier companies. The major companies today claim to have secure backup plans in place in case of the worst case scenario, and this security blanket is the main purpose of Alcor’s sizable trust."
    - richk449 7y ago
      No, I was just supporting my original point. I think that for the most part, people do things because they are incentivized to do them. What is Alcor's incentive to wake me up 500 years in the future? Contractual obligation? I find it very unlikely that legal systems and national organizations will still be around 500 years from now to make it necessary for Alcor to honor it's agreement with me. Market forces? I doubt it. Say Alcor is still in business - their business model will have to be very different, given the change in technology we can expect in 500 years. Since they will be selling something very different, will anyone care that they dumped those 500 year old bodies? Probably not. They will just announce on a Friday before labor day weekend that they had an anomaly and lost cooling, and by Monday everyone will have forgotten. Familial connections? Why would my ancestors want to bring me back to life? Would you want to bring your 80 year old great great great great great aunt back to life right now, and give her antibiotics for the pneumonia she died of, and then care for her? Remember, she has never seen a telephone or a computer or a tanning salon, so it is going to take a lot of work on your part just to get her comfortable with living in the modern world. If you want to bring more people into the world, why not make or adopt a baby? Why pick an old person to bring into the world? Moral obligation? Ha. I just don't see any reason for me to be brought back to life. The only way I see it working is if I somehow created a financial reward for whoever brought me back to life. That seems almost impossible to pull off though.
      - 7y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
You make some good points. I think you are even too sanguine about Einstein. In terms of bringing people back, even if they extraordinary, it still might not be worth it. For example, Archimedes was undoubtedly brilliant. However, if you were able to bring him back now, I think it would take years if not decades to try to catch up with the learning before he was able to contribute to solving modern problems. In addition, chances are that by the time humans are able to bring people back, they would have made great strides in using genetics to make people smarter. Perhaps in the world where bringing people back is possible, Einstein is at best average. One thing that cryogenically preserved people might be good for however, is as a ready source of organs for transplants. Likely the cryogenic company has info on the blood group, etc of the people that are cryogenically preserved and if someone needs an organ, they will be able to find a suitable “donor” for them.
- m463 7y ago
  Or historical specimens to mine for data about health, diseases, environmental toxins, etc. "Let's examine specimen <123> from 2019 who lived in a low-C02 atmosphere and is a carrier for heart disease (viral based)"

porejide 7y ago

Alcor and Oregon Cryonics have patient care trusts that are designed to build capital to pay for revival: https://alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html https://alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html "It doesn’t do any good to use the most advanced techniques to get our members into cryopreservation unless we can keep them there, as well as build capital to eventually fund revival and reintegration." Also, if the technology to do revival develops in the future, it is likely to be relatively cheap. Analogy: in the 1910-1920s, people were interested in life extension via hormone replacement therapy (mostly misguided, but that's a separate topic). They were understandably worried that this would only be available to the rich, as it was relatively expensive to do at the time. One hundred years later, hormone replacement therapy is relatively cheap and widely available, at least in countries like the US. There are many many problems with cryonics, but IMO this is not a major one.

richk449 7y ago
Not sure how that helps. What is alcor’s incentive to bring me to life in the future? Remember, I’m dead, so I can’t post nasty comments on twitter when they leave me in the vat. More generally, why would I trust a private company to bring me back to life? It is extremely rare for any company to last for hundreds of years. And pretty much inconceivable for one to last that long without going through periods of very short term thinking.
- porejide 7y ago
  So if your point is a separate one, that Alcor et al might have to close, eg as a result of war or global financial collapse, then that is a very reasonable point and absolutely a potential cause of failure. It is one of the things that Tim brings up as well: "The cryonics company goes bankrupt and doesn’t have the means, the will, or the organization to create a plan that will save the patients. I mentioned that this happened a few times with some of the earlier companies. The major companies today claim to have secure backup plans in place in case of the worst case scenario, and this security blanket is the main purpose of Alcor’s sizable trust."
  - richk449 7y ago
    No, I was just supporting my original point. I think that for the most part, people do things because they are incentivized to do them. What is Alcor's incentive to wake me up 500 years in the future? Contractual obligation? I find it very unlikely that legal systems and national organizations will still be around 500 years from now to make it necessary for Alcor to honor it's agreement with me. Market forces? I doubt it. Say Alcor is still in business - their business model will have to be very different, given the change in technology we can expect in 500 years. Since they will be selling something very different, will anyone care that they dumped those 500 year old bodies? Probably not. They will just announce on a Friday before labor day weekend that they had an anomaly and lost cooling, and by Monday everyone will have forgotten. Familial connections? Why would my ancestors want to bring me back to life? Would you want to bring your 80 year old great great great great great aunt back to life right now, and give her antibiotics for the pneumonia she died of, and then care for her? Remember, she has never seen a telephone or a computer or a tanning salon, so it is going to take a lot of work on your part just to get her comfortable with living in the modern world. If you want to bring more people into the world, why not make or adopt a baby? Why pick an old person to bring into the world? Moral obligation? Ha. I just don't see any reason for me to be brought back to life. The only way I see it working is if I somehow created a financial reward for whoever brought me back to life. That seems almost impossible to pull off though.
    - 7y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago

You make some good points. I think you are even too sanguine about Einstein. In terms of bringing people back, even if they extraordinary, it still might not be worth it. For example, Archimedes was undoubtedly brilliant. However, if you were able to bring him back now, I think it would take years if not decades to try to catch up with the learning before he was able to contribute to solving modern problems. In addition, chances are that by the time humans are able to bring people back, they would have made great strides in using genetics to make people smarter. Perhaps in the world where bringing people back is possible, Einstein is at best average. One thing that cryogenically preserved people might be good for however, is as a ready source of organs for transplants. Likely the cryogenic company has info on the blood group, etc of the people that are cryogenically preserved and if someone needs an organ, they will be able to find a suitable “donor” for them.

m463 7y ago
Or historical specimens to mine for data about health, diseases, environmental toxins, etc. "Let's examine specimen <123> from 2019 who lived in a low-C02 atmosphere and is a carrier for heart disease (viral based)"