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I have not seen a reason to think cryonics will work at all. Even if we actually do find a way to restore frozen near-death people to life, you'd better write
by NateEag 6y ago
I have not seen a reason to think cryonics will work at all.
Even if we actually do find a way to restore frozen near-death people to life, you'd better write a heck of a pitch as to why future humans should spend resources on reviving and healing you.
Never mind all the resources being spent on keeping you properly frozen all that time.
That's all assuming the company running your freezer doesn't just go belly-up after ninety years, leaving you to thaw and rot after all that expense was dumped into keeping your now-corpse uselessly preserved for decades.
Cryonics actually plays the role so many atheists believe religion plays for the religious - comfort in the face of The End that is inevitably coming to you.
It is false hope, a tool to help you deceive yourself into thinking you can defeat death.
- biolurker1 6y agothe argument is this: certain death vs a miniscule one in a quadrillion chance or lower. It will always tilt the other way no matter what the current scientific status quo is saying because it's possible in theory and it has happened to living organisms before just not humans. Whether it's good for environment, your siblings pocket etc is not part of the core argument.
- fipar 6y agoI think even if you ignore the environment, and cost, the argument for cryonics is not very good. Let's say someone is successfully revived, there's still heart attacks, cancer, crime (and not just "lowly" criminals, crime also happens within families for inheritance, for example), accidents (car, or just slipping in the shower), earthquakes, ... The list is pretty much endless. Death is unavoidable, IMHO it's best to learn to cope with it, and focus efforts on reducing what most people would consider the worst deaths (infants, long and painful diseases, wars and torture, etc). That said, as long as not many people try this (the environmental cost would be high), if many people think about this possibility and that helps them cope with their mortality, and that of their loved ones, good for them.
- Smaug123 6y agoLearning to cope with death is not actually mutually exclusive with taking a punt on cryonics! A 1% chance of survival is still a 99% chance of death, so you'd better have made your peace with it either way.
- Juliate 6y agoYes, if only for the legal status of property/inheritance: if you are to be revided, who owns your wealth? Do you children inherit? And/when you are revived, what resources do you have? Is your family/descendants in charge of you, or you of them?
- Retric 6y agoCryogenic preservation is treated like mummification, you’re just declared dead. At which point your assets are likely to just get spent. If you want to be safe, set up a trust that pays to you preferably and if not then to any descendants you have. That’s unlikely to work if you’re somehow revived in several hundred years, but it’s better than hopping random people will hand you money voluntarily.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoYou can't have a trust with no trustee. Is your trustee really afraid of getting sued by a corpse with no heirs?
- hyko 6y agoDeposit your savings in the Alan Turing school of investment, AKA buried treasure: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-markets-saft/saft-on-wealth-learning-from-turings-silver-hoard-idUSKCN0UY2OC https://www.reuters.com/article/us-markets-saft/saft-on-weal...
- biolurker1 6y agoThe argument is zero vs non-zero and anything else is noise
- heavenlyblue 6y agoSound just like the argument for the worship of god.
- biolurker1 6y agoOrganisms have survived thousands of years frozen. God doesn't exist scientifically.
- Aeronwen 6y agoGod wants your exclusive devotion. The freezer doesn't care what else you're doing to help you to cheat death, so you can spread your faith around more and hedge your bets.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't take HN threads on generic tangents, especially generic flamewar tangents. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- heavenlyblue 6y agoIt's not a generic tangent - it's a direct reference to Pascal's wager [1]. Unfortunately the parent doesn't make their argument any more generic that Pascal's wager itself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager
- iso1631 6y agoYou're describing Pascal's wager.
- biolurker1 6y agoI am not. That wager is about something unverifiable and unprogressable. This is based on biology and science and can become a reliaty. So not even close.
- Smaug123 6y agoWell, it's not quite so black and white. We have something resembling a roadmap to achieving the revival of a cryopreserved patient, but it's hardly a certainty. The fact that your roadmap has a few more details on than does the roadmap of $religion does not make them qualitatively different.
- staticman2 6y agoPascal's wager would be verifiable if, say, someone invented a device like the ones in the Ghostbusters movies. That seems about as promising as freezing yourself after you die in my mind...
- robbiep 6y agoThe same argument could essentially be applied to the resurrection
- gus_massa 6y agoOr give the money to your children so they have a small head start that can use to conquer the world (eventually). Also, what happens if you are revived? Where are you going to live? Your home was probably sold a long time ago, or you must share it with all the intermediate revived generations. What about money? Where are you going to work? Imagine the frozen time was only 100 year. It is difficult to predict what will happen in 100 years, but it is easier to look at the past. Medical doctors didn't have penicillin and Electrical Engineers didn't have transistors. You must take most of your university courses again and perhaps part of your high school classes too.
- knorker 6y agoSo what? You're saying life is not worth living if you're not at least middle class with no big struggles?
- biolurker1 6y agoYes this argument could be repurposed into: if you are born in Africa there is no reason to live
- gus_massa 6y agoAfrica is a big continent, there is a wide difference in income and education level, from country to country and even inside each country. If you have some spare money to pay a refrigerator for 100 years, you are probably spoiled and want nice living conditions afterwards. Anyway, imagine you live outside a city and have only a small plot of land for subsistence. After the 100 years you don't have even the small plot of land and don't have the small herd that you inherit from your parents. How/where are you going to live? Farming has changed in the last 100 years. Artificial nitrogen fertilizers have slightly more than 100 years, now there are genetically modified crops, the preferred crops have changed. (Do you know how to harvest soy?) The cattle management has also changed, antibiotics, vitamins supplements, the number of free range herds is decreasing,...
- 6y ago
- knorker 6y agoThey should revive you because you paid for it.
- b34r 6y agoFinding some 50-300 years in the future that cares might be a problem.
- podgaj 6y agoHa!
- knorker 6y agoOne would hope that the rule of law and private contracts still exists in 50-300 years.
- staticman2 6y agoThere's an expression called ruling from the grave to reflect the difficulty of enforcing a contract after you are dead. The same principle applies as those frozen people are dead in every legal sense and practical sense and likely any biological sense.
- komali2 6y agoI would be extremely motivated to revive them and promote reviving them because I would also want to be frozen and revived. I assume this would be even moreso the case if society develops reviving technology, and therefore knows it actually works.
- knorker 6y agoYet people, doctors and civilians, try to save people who are legally dead every day…
- overcast 6y agoWe're constantly digging up old and dead things because we care.
- cryptica 6y agoSo true. Even in the best case scenario if they manage to revive you perpetually, the universe will eventually end and then you'll be there to experience it... For someone who is afraid of dying, I can't think of a worse way to go. To an atheist, uncertainty is the source of all hope.
- blhack 6y ago>To an atheist, uncertainty is the source of all hope. Isn't that somewhat backward? To an atheist, the certainty that they won't be going to an afterlife seems to be a source of hope, and for the religious person, the idea that they might is the same.
- cryptica 6y agoI don't know about other atheists, but I get some comfort knowing that the universe will continue to exist long after I die. I don't believe that there is a god but that doesn't rule out the possibility of some kind of afterlife or reincarnation or alternative form of consciousness. There are still a lot of possibilities on the table and these possibilities are a source of hope. When you think that your consciousness is special, irreplaceable and irreproducible, death becomes a lot more frightening. On the other hand, if you believe, based on empirical evidence, that your consciousness can be manufactured out of a piece of meat with some chemicals and electricity as the result of a totally random natural process (evolution), that gives a lot of hope.
- komali2 6y ago> based on empirical evidence Small nit but my so far amateur understanding of philosophy of mind indicates to me that there isn't empirical evidence connecting Mind to neurochemistry so clearly. Neither, of course, is there any evidence of the reverse, that a non physical Mind can magically influence the physical world through the brain interface. As an atheist, delving into the materialism vs dualism philosophical debate was fascinating. I was always a stout materialist but learning it hadn't managed to fend off every philosophical thrust was difficult but enlightening.
- _ink_ 6y agoWhy would they not want to revive you? How awesome would it be, if we could revive someone who lived around the year 1500, 1000 or even 0? I expect people in the year 3000 (if there are still people around and if they have it relatively good) would see it equally when looking to the year 2000.
- raxxorrax 6y agoThe novelty will probably fall off quickly.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago“Ugh, another idiot we need to explain quantum tablets and sensory implants to!”
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago> "How awesome would it be, if we could revive someone who lived around the year 1500, 1000 or even 0?" One or two of them, maybe. Probably the most famous ones. All of them, including ordinary people like you or I? Not a chance.
- komali2 6y agoI would be much more interested in what a tenth century peasant had to say considering all the famous ones were the only ones whose perspectives we get to see. The historical gaps concern the other 90% of the population.
- triceratops 6y agoThe point still applies though. After you've revived 4 or 5 peasants, you've probably gotten most of the information you were interested in. And now you have 4 or 5 peasants who are poorly adjusted to the world they now find themselves in, and you have to take care of them for a long time. How many would you revive?
- 6y ago
- ikeboy 6y agoYeah, I prefer just denying the philosophical coherency of death (only experiences exist and being dead is not an experience), or alternatively relying on a quantum multiverse or other levels of the multiverse that imply one cannot die because they'll always live on somewhere.