8 ms·

As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it?

58 points by lsparrish 15y ago

bartonfink 15y ago
The choices already exist. Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs could certainly have cryopreserved themselves if they wanted to. It's not like Alcor is unknown, especially in the circles Ritchie and Jobs were in. What do you (since this is a self post) think we as society should do about it?
- lsparrish 15y ago
  Good question. Here are some possible answers: * Better social networking for cryonics participants. * More persuasive essays on the topic. * New blood in the movement. * Stronger associations to stronger movements. * Different or more aggressive marketing/promotion tactics. * Prizes similar to the X-Prize for demonstrating reversible cryopreservation on a small scale (e.g. organs) * (Maybe unrealistic?) Government funding for cryobiology, specifically as pertains to brain preservation, and secondarily as pertains to whole organisms. One major thing I'm noticing is that cryonics frequently seems to be seen as a low-status thing, despite being popularly associated with wealthy billionaires. There seems to be a paleo-humanistic (as I call it) tendency to rationalize and even glorify death as part of the grand cycle of life, and cryonics seems to be directly set against that. This may be why so many of the old sci-fi greats (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, etc.) opted out. AFACT most living sci-fi and great humanistic writers of the aging generation (Terry Pratchett, David Brin, and so forth) are not signed up nor particularly supportive. I'm not sure how to change this narrative but I strongly feel there is a problem with it. Another big problem I see is that cryonics tends to be popularly associated with selfishness -- yet it is compatible with altruism, and in fact has exceptional potential to save billions of lives if pursued aggressively (and if it works). Technically, it seems like one need not be concerned with one's own survival at all to be in favor of cryopreserving the world (particularly when economies of scale are factored in).
  - ryandvm 15y ago
    What you're seeing isn't a status thing, it's selection bias. The smart people you've mentioned generally aren't the type of people to partake in such hokum.
michaelochurch 15y ago
What makes you think no one wants to die? No one knows for sure if there's anything on the other side, but I definitely don't want to stick around this world forever. Immortality would be a curse.
- Bakkot 15y ago
  True, outlive-the-heat-death-of-the-universe immortality would be a curse. For people who are happy, living indefinitely would not.
- wavephorm 15y ago
  Long life != immortality. Obviously nobody really wants to be immortal and one day outlast the solar-system and eventually be left floating around in space for trillions of years.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    "one day outlast the solar-system and eventually be left floating around in space for trillions of years." Where can I sign up?
    - gwern 15y ago
      I'm afraid GEHIRN ended the Evangelion test pilot trials a few years ago; sorry.
- vacri 15y ago
  Immortality is not that much of a curse. When you get tired of life, just sail to the West and things will be peachy again!
cbr 15y ago
I don't think cryopreservation is that likely to work. Even its proponents are not that confident in it. I've collected some estimates: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ajn1LpstEUO_dE00ZVVfa3pzX2Y2dk9mWWRKOUVkWlE&hl=en_US#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ajn1LpstEUO_dE0...
- fl3tch 15y ago
  Even that cult of personality hasn't convinced Less Wrong...
- Udo 15y ago
  Some of these are quite interesting though the "probabilities" are completely arbitrary, of course. From what I can gather the reasons against cryo can be clustered into these: 1) Access failure: an external event prevents the initiation of your cryo-preservation, such as your relatives and/or your hospital insisting on your death taking place as scheduled, or other things preventing you from having access to the facilities needed. - These dangers are substantial. I'd wager that the majority of society is against even simple life extension, and thus even more opposed to cryo. There is also no way to mitigate this risk, since people tend not to die in circumstances under their direct control. Your best bet is probably to convince a close family member to act on your behalf when the time comes, because family has a lot of authority with... you know, the authorities. 2) Persistence failure: things that cause your preserved brain to be destroyed, such as war, system outages, economic trouble, or global catastrophes (including new laws or a radical culture shift). - The probability of just one of these occurring is pretty high, but there is simply no way to accurately estimate this risk. However, the probability of these events leading to your demise is lowered if more people adopt cryo preservation. 3) Preservation/restauration failure: some technical reason prevents your pattern from being restored into a working copy. These include excessive tissue damage before or during storage, or technical problems in reconstructing your brain back into working order. - Compared to the other risks, this one is probably very low. If you're in cryo, time is on your side. While I think that biological reanimation is most likely not on the table when it comes to brains conserved with current technologies, digital restauration looks like a very promising avenue. 4) Religious/philosophical problems: as failure modes go, these certainly stand out. Technically, they don't belong here, nevertheless some variant of religious reasoning is included in many of these lists. - I'm going to discard these points though (including the "probability" that our minds are not entirely based on a material substrate), because if those matter to someone the discussion is already over.
cydonian_monk 15y ago
It's not the lack of cryo arrangements that's the problem. (I've considered cryo myself, but I'm not impressed with the likelyhood of success. Too many fracturing events, not to mention the likely extreme costs of recovery post-freezer. But if you're looking for more life, it's your only potential option.) The problem is that we haven't been focusing enough on the real issue: Death. Finding ways to extend human life indefinitely should be our generation's "Space Race." Our Apollo Program. Want to create jobs? Help us find the cure. Instead we obsess over petty things. (And I'm as guilty as the rest.) But regardless, there is one truth we all have to face: We will one day die. Even should you beat the biological death, should you somehow survive the backlash of fellow humans who reject your bid for immortality, you will still fail. Because one day the Universe will either run out of energy or contract back upon itself, at which point you will either starve or be crushed. You have a few billion years to find an answer for that.
- davidu 15y ago
  I hadn't considered my greatest fear, but now I recognize it: Finding ways to extend human life indefinitely should be our generation's "Space Race." We already suffer from over-population and pollution. Death is a key piece of the demographic shift, and just about every other anthropological process related to the change and evolution of culture and society. Living longer would not increase our society's capability or capacity, it would almost assuredly decrease it, not to mention life would be exceptionally crowded, everywhere.
  - cydonian_monk 15y ago
    I never said it would be easy. Life changes. Human life before the Industrial Revolution was considerably different than now. Birth rates would have to fall. We would have to find ways to support more of us on fewer resources. Major sacrifices and changes in lifestyle would be absolutely required. Our species as it is now would likely not survive such a transition. But, as Carl Sagan said: "It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses."
  - 15y ago
nknight 15y ago
Maybe when there's real evidence that cryonics is actually useful? Hackers of all people ought to know that no matter what your models say, it's all bullshit until you test it. And as far as I know, there's not even a model generally accepted by the scientific community that indicates any reasonable probability of success anyway.
- fl3tch 15y ago
  Models are tested by experiments. Freeze a dog for a few years and resuscitate it, then we can talk seriously about the value of cryopreservation. Until then, you're throwing your money away in a desperate grasp at immortality. And that's money that could actually help real people now. At least that could be your legacy. Don't be the next Newton trying to turn crap into gold.
  - lsparrish 15y ago
    Most of the money goes into an investment account, and eventually to biotech/nanotech research to reanimate the patient. Most of the work in reanimating the patient is repairing extreme brain damage (from cold and ischemia). Repairing brain damage is extremely valuable to people who suffer from it, and to society. Sure there are more direct ways to fund brain damage research, but you don't get the same motivation; this feels like a selfish benefit to the person who spends on it so it is more likely to compete with luxuries instead of charitable causes.
- lsparrish 15y ago
  Brain slices have really high cell survival rates (normal electrical activity), and rabbit kidneys have been reanimated with full functionality. At a minimum there should be a very large and prestigious prize (like the X-Prize) for milestones such as demonstrating organized whole brain electrical activity.
voidfiles 15y ago
As the countless quotes show without an eventual demise Steve Jobs might not have done what he did. Why not redefine the question as will life extension actually help?
michaelchisari 15y ago
I'm very interested in life extension/repair/rejuvenation (ala Aubrey De Grey), but I really have no interest in cryogenics. This may be because I'm only 32 years old, and in good health, but from everything I've read, the former is much more realistic than the latter. So I don't consider Ritchie's death without cryopreservation any more of a tragedy than the death itself.
beloch 15y ago
When you're healthy, living forever sounds great. When you've experienced a few minor illnesses and a bit of short-lived pain, such as a broken limb or two, living forever still sounds great. I had a (thankfully temporary) condition that resulted in chronic pain for about a year. It wasn't terrible pain, but pain that never goes away wears you down in a way that horrible, but short-lived, pain simply doesn't. After a while you just want it to stop. Before this period in my life I was of the opinion that immortality was worth almost anything. Now I believe that quality of life is just as important, if not more so. I would not want to live forever if it involved even a small amount of chronic pain. I used to think a little pain would be a small price to pay. That was ignorance. Jobs and Ritchie both died from diseases that probably gave them a good deal of chronic pain over the last years of their lives. I can completely understand why extending their lives was not desirable to them.
- true_religion 15y ago
  > I can completely understand why extending their lives was not desirable to them. I think its presumed that life extension would also come with improved health. What kills you is decline due to chronic conditions. Target that and stop the declined and you gain both long-life, and healthy life.
  - beloch 15y ago
    There are a lot of things that can cause chronic pain without threatening your life. We would have to learn how fix all of these non-life-threatening things in addition to what causes death, or everlasting life will lead to everlasting pain with absolute certainty.
    - lsparrish 15y ago
      You seem to be omitting reversible cryopreservation from the scenario. All you would need to do is freeze yourself until a cure is found for whatever is causing you pain. But this seems like a non-likely thought experiment scenario anyway -- I can't imagine being able to regenerate body parts and prevent aging from being lethal, yet being unable to comprehensively prevent pain.
mmaro 15y ago
Anyone remotely interested in cryonics should go read about it on LessWrong[1], instead of reading the same ol' ambivalent/pro-death comments. The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Keep in mind that after you suffer your serious accident/illness, you won't have the time/money/energy to sign up for cryonics, and you'll have more trouble convincing your next of kin to support you. And you probably won't be able to get any life insurance to pay for it, obviously. [1] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics
- dpark 15y ago
  >The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Or you think it's dumb and fruitless and a waste of money. We don't have any way of predicting the expected value of cryopreservation. It could be that after you get frozen, an earthquake/tsunami takes out the power and you thaw. Or the company goes under. Or you get abandoned. Or any number of other things. How likely are you to be unfrozen/cured/revived? No one can say for sure, but it's probably pretty unlikely. On the other hand, what's the likelihood that your estate can do something useful with an extra $25k? That's pretty likely.
  - mmaro 15y ago
    That's a reasonable concern, but at this meta level there are two things going in cryonics' favor: there's a good chance you're overconfident about its non-utility[1], and there's a chance that your reanimation comes much earlier than expected, so the cumulative risks don't add up to much. And FWIW, Alcor and Cryonics Institute don't require power for storage; they require deliveries of liquid nitrogen. I don't think either facility has much earthquake/tsunami risk, either. [1] Personally, I would want to be > 99% sure about this before completely giving up on cryonics.
SeoxyS 15y ago
These visionary geniuses and hackers' most brilliant breakthrough was the realization of the inevitable fact that sooner or later, we all die. The trick is in channeling that truth as a motivator. We must strive to achieve as much as possible today, because there might not be a tomorrow. Steve Jobs: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. Steve Jobs is the single worst example that the OP could've picked as a candidate for cryopreservation, as it goes against everything he (and I) believes in.
- jpulgarin 15y ago
  So, do you think if you had offered Steve Jobs an extra 1000 years of life, he would have said no?
  - pvarangot 15y ago
    Do you think he would have said no to a lightsaber? Or to a two-headed pony?
    - jpulgarin 15y ago
      If they go "against everything he (and I) believes in", as SeoxyS claims Steve Jobs feels about cryonics, then yes.
- mmaro 15y ago
  This is a false dichotomy. You can strive to achieve as much as possible today, as well as attempt a second chance at life through cryonics.
bitops 15y ago
Sooner or later we all have to die. It's inevitable. But, if you feel like you might have wasted your life if you were to die tomorrow, why not get up and do something about it?
asto 15y ago
To do away with death is to do away with evolution. Not a very good idea. We should work towards improving the quality of life rather than extend it. Would have been happier if the article was "as more people fall to chronically painful illnesses, isn't it time we act?"
- thret 15y ago
  Evolution happens from one generation to the next and there isn't much we can do to prevent it. You are thinking of natural selection, and we've already done away with that by ensuring humans have the opportunity to procreate regardless of physical defects.
- gwern 15y ago
  > To do away with death is to do away with evolution. Not a very good idea. It's a great idea. Evolution is about the dumbest possible optimization process which still works. I don't see Google throwing its hands up and saying 'screw engineering Bigtable or MapReduce with our silly minds, we'll just evolve those fuckers!' Science: it works, bitches. (With apologies to http://www.xkcd.com/54/ http://www.xkcd.com/54/)
blrs 15y ago
I think Hackers will have the last laugh after all. When hackers finally build an AI, it will also be the first soul. An intelligent mind decoupled from a body and thus capable of being immortal. The first step in this direction was the stored program concept itself which was best articulated by Von Neumann (http://qss.stanford.edu/~godfrey/vonNeumann/vnedvac.pdf http://qss.stanford.edu/~godfrey/vonNeumann/vnedvac.pdf) and realized in the EDVAC. This allowed programs to be decoupled from hardware. Dennis Ritchie, whose loss we all mourn, made what I consider the second big step. Decoupling large software systems from hardware, via a portable operating system. It will take a while (10-20 years?), but maybe something like ROS (http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/software/ros-platform http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/software/ros-platform) will someday become a full mind that is still decoupled from any particular hardware...a soul!!!
ryandvm 15y ago
Wow. I'm surprised how many points this post has given the absurd premises that cryopreservation is based upon. There are far too many easily identifiable things that could go wrong in the process for me to even consider dumping money into such hokum. These are the same type of people that were insisting the world double up on alchemy research two thousand years ago.
- gwern 15y ago
  Maybe we should've. Chemistry would've been impossible to develop without alchemy's findings, based as it is on the elements alchemists discovered and the techniques & equipment they refined; and alchemists gave us gunpowder, which seems like it might've had something to do with the Age of Exploration and subsequent Industrialization.
- lsparrish 15y ago
  If you were to find out that there are well defined solutions for every single easily identifiable problem, would that convince you to invest?
cies 15y ago
i made this project for this purpose: http://edu.kde.org/kturtle http://edu.kde.org/kturtle solution: the next generation.
monkeypizza 15y ago
Even if cyro doesn't preserve everything, it will probably be a better record of the past than anything else that exists from our era. As an analogy think about how we feel about people 2000 years ago - if we could have just a few comprehensive samples of something in their world, we would really like it. Even things like exhaustive lists of every word they said for a week would be incredibly useful for linguists, lists of everything they ate would be useful, etc. We shouldn't rely on their choices of what is worth preserving - we should adopt a broad based approach and try to preserve the maximum amount of things, and hope it will be useful later on. I think today we have even used graffiti preserved on the walls of Pompei to get an idea of what the ancient world was like - surely there would be valuable information stored in even an imperfectly-frozen brain? Who knows what kind of crazy theories they may have in the future, that they just would need to have a few brains to test out with?

58 points by lsparrish 15y ago

The choices already exist. Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs could certainly have cryopreserved themselves if they wanted to. It's not like Alcor is unknown, especially in the circles Ritchie and Jobs were in. What do you (since this is a self post) think we as society should do about it?

lsparrish 15y ago
Good question. Here are some possible answers: * Better social networking for cryonics participants. * More persuasive essays on the topic. * New blood in the movement. * Stronger associations to stronger movements. * Different or more aggressive marketing/promotion tactics. * Prizes similar to the X-Prize for demonstrating reversible cryopreservation on a small scale (e.g. organs) * (Maybe unrealistic?) Government funding for cryobiology, specifically as pertains to brain preservation, and secondarily as pertains to whole organisms. One major thing I'm noticing is that cryonics frequently seems to be seen as a low-status thing, despite being popularly associated with wealthy billionaires. There seems to be a paleo-humanistic (as I call it) tendency to rationalize and even glorify death as part of the grand cycle of life, and cryonics seems to be directly set against that. This may be why so many of the old sci-fi greats (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, etc.) opted out. AFACT most living sci-fi and great humanistic writers of the aging generation (Terry Pratchett, David Brin, and so forth) are not signed up nor particularly supportive. I'm not sure how to change this narrative but I strongly feel there is a problem with it. Another big problem I see is that cryonics tends to be popularly associated with selfishness -- yet it is compatible with altruism, and in fact has exceptional potential to save billions of lives if pursued aggressively (and if it works). Technically, it seems like one need not be concerned with one's own survival at all to be in favor of cryopreserving the world (particularly when economies of scale are factored in).
- ryandvm 15y ago
  What you're seeing isn't a status thing, it's selection bias. The smart people you've mentioned generally aren't the type of people to partake in such hokum.

michaelochurch 15y ago

What makes you think no one wants to die? No one knows for sure if there's anything on the other side, but I definitely don't want to stick around this world forever. Immortality would be a curse.

Bakkot 15y ago
True, outlive-the-heat-death-of-the-universe immortality would be a curse. For people who are happy, living indefinitely would not.
wavephorm 15y ago
Long life != immortality. Obviously nobody really wants to be immortal and one day outlast the solar-system and eventually be left floating around in space for trillions of years.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  "one day outlast the solar-system and eventually be left floating around in space for trillions of years." Where can I sign up?
  - gwern 15y ago
    I'm afraid GEHIRN ended the Evangelion test pilot trials a few years ago; sorry.
vacri 15y ago
Immortality is not that much of a curse. When you get tired of life, just sail to the West and things will be peachy again!

cbr 15y ago

I don't think cryopreservation is that likely to work. Even its proponents are not that confident in it. I've collected some estimates: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ajn1LpstEUO_dE00ZVVfa3pzX2Y2dk9mWWRKOUVkWlE&hl=en_US#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ajn1LpstEUO_dE0...

fl3tch 15y ago
Even that cult of personality hasn't convinced Less Wrong...
Udo 15y ago
Some of these are quite interesting though the "probabilities" are completely arbitrary, of course. From what I can gather the reasons against cryo can be clustered into these: 1) Access failure: an external event prevents the initiation of your cryo-preservation, such as your relatives and/or your hospital insisting on your death taking place as scheduled, or other things preventing you from having access to the facilities needed. - These dangers are substantial. I'd wager that the majority of society is against even simple life extension, and thus even more opposed to cryo. There is also no way to mitigate this risk, since people tend not to die in circumstances under their direct control. Your best bet is probably to convince a close family member to act on your behalf when the time comes, because family has a lot of authority with... you know, the authorities. 2) Persistence failure: things that cause your preserved brain to be destroyed, such as war, system outages, economic trouble, or global catastrophes (including new laws or a radical culture shift). - The probability of just one of these occurring is pretty high, but there is simply no way to accurately estimate this risk. However, the probability of these events leading to your demise is lowered if more people adopt cryo preservation. 3) Preservation/restauration failure: some technical reason prevents your pattern from being restored into a working copy. These include excessive tissue damage before or during storage, or technical problems in reconstructing your brain back into working order. - Compared to the other risks, this one is probably very low. If you're in cryo, time is on your side. While I think that biological reanimation is most likely not on the table when it comes to brains conserved with current technologies, digital restauration looks like a very promising avenue. 4) Religious/philosophical problems: as failure modes go, these certainly stand out. Technically, they don't belong here, nevertheless some variant of religious reasoning is included in many of these lists. - I'm going to discard these points though (including the "probability" that our minds are not entirely based on a material substrate), because if those matter to someone the discussion is already over.

cydonian_monk 15y ago

It's not the lack of cryo arrangements that's the problem. (I've considered cryo myself, but I'm not impressed with the likelyhood of success. Too many fracturing events, not to mention the likely extreme costs of recovery post-freezer. But if you're looking for more life, it's your only potential option.) The problem is that we haven't been focusing enough on the real issue: Death. Finding ways to extend human life indefinitely should be our generation's "Space Race." Our Apollo Program. Want to create jobs? Help us find the cure. Instead we obsess over petty things. (And I'm as guilty as the rest.) But regardless, there is one truth we all have to face: We will one day die. Even should you beat the biological death, should you somehow survive the backlash of fellow humans who reject your bid for immortality, you will still fail. Because one day the Universe will either run out of energy or contract back upon itself, at which point you will either starve or be crushed. You have a few billion years to find an answer for that.

davidu 15y ago
I hadn't considered my greatest fear, but now I recognize it: Finding ways to extend human life indefinitely should be our generation's "Space Race." We already suffer from over-population and pollution. Death is a key piece of the demographic shift, and just about every other anthropological process related to the change and evolution of culture and society. Living longer would not increase our society's capability or capacity, it would almost assuredly decrease it, not to mention life would be exceptionally crowded, everywhere.
- cydonian_monk 15y ago
  I never said it would be easy. Life changes. Human life before the Industrial Revolution was considerably different than now. Birth rates would have to fall. We would have to find ways to support more of us on fewer resources. Major sacrifices and changes in lifestyle would be absolutely required. Our species as it is now would likely not survive such a transition. But, as Carl Sagan said: "It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses."
- 15y ago

nknight 15y ago

Maybe when there's real evidence that cryonics is actually useful? Hackers of all people ought to know that no matter what your models say, it's all bullshit until you test it. And as far as I know, there's not even a model generally accepted by the scientific community that indicates any reasonable probability of success anyway.

fl3tch 15y ago
Models are tested by experiments. Freeze a dog for a few years and resuscitate it, then we can talk seriously about the value of cryopreservation. Until then, you're throwing your money away in a desperate grasp at immortality. And that's money that could actually help real people now. At least that could be your legacy. Don't be the next Newton trying to turn crap into gold.
- lsparrish 15y ago
  Most of the money goes into an investment account, and eventually to biotech/nanotech research to reanimate the patient. Most of the work in reanimating the patient is repairing extreme brain damage (from cold and ischemia). Repairing brain damage is extremely valuable to people who suffer from it, and to society. Sure there are more direct ways to fund brain damage research, but you don't get the same motivation; this feels like a selfish benefit to the person who spends on it so it is more likely to compete with luxuries instead of charitable causes.
lsparrish 15y ago
Brain slices have really high cell survival rates (normal electrical activity), and rabbit kidneys have been reanimated with full functionality. At a minimum there should be a very large and prestigious prize (like the X-Prize) for milestones such as demonstrating organized whole brain electrical activity.

voidfiles 15y ago

As the countless quotes show without an eventual demise Steve Jobs might not have done what he did. Why not redefine the question as will life extension actually help?

michaelchisari 15y ago

I'm very interested in life extension/repair/rejuvenation (ala Aubrey De Grey), but I really have no interest in cryogenics. This may be because I'm only 32 years old, and in good health, but from everything I've read, the former is much more realistic than the latter. So I don't consider Ritchie's death without cryopreservation any more of a tragedy than the death itself.

beloch 15y ago

When you're healthy, living forever sounds great. When you've experienced a few minor illnesses and a bit of short-lived pain, such as a broken limb or two, living forever still sounds great. I had a (thankfully temporary) condition that resulted in chronic pain for about a year. It wasn't terrible pain, but pain that never goes away wears you down in a way that horrible, but short-lived, pain simply doesn't. After a while you just want it to stop. Before this period in my life I was of the opinion that immortality was worth almost anything. Now I believe that quality of life is just as important, if not more so. I would not want to live forever if it involved even a small amount of chronic pain. I used to think a little pain would be a small price to pay. That was ignorance. Jobs and Ritchie both died from diseases that probably gave them a good deal of chronic pain over the last years of their lives. I can completely understand why extending their lives was not desirable to them.

true_religion 15y ago
> I can completely understand why extending their lives was not desirable to them. I think its presumed that life extension would also come with improved health. What kills you is decline due to chronic conditions. Target that and stop the declined and you gain both long-life, and healthy life.
- beloch 15y ago
  There are a lot of things that can cause chronic pain without threatening your life. We would have to learn how fix all of these non-life-threatening things in addition to what causes death, or everlasting life will lead to everlasting pain with absolute certainty.
  - lsparrish 15y ago
    You seem to be omitting reversible cryopreservation from the scenario. All you would need to do is freeze yourself until a cure is found for whatever is causing you pain. But this seems like a non-likely thought experiment scenario anyway -- I can't imagine being able to regenerate body parts and prevent aging from being lethal, yet being unable to comprehensively prevent pain.

mmaro 15y ago

Anyone remotely interested in cryonics should go read about it on LessWrong[1], instead of reading the same ol' ambivalent/pro-death comments. The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Keep in mind that after you suffer your serious accident/illness, you won't have the time/money/energy to sign up for cryonics, and you'll have more trouble convincing your next of kin to support you. And you probably won't be able to get any life insurance to pay for it, obviously. [1] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics

dpark 15y ago
>The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Or you think it's dumb and fruitless and a waste of money. We don't have any way of predicting the expected value of cryopreservation. It could be that after you get frozen, an earthquake/tsunami takes out the power and you thaw. Or the company goes under. Or you get abandoned. Or any number of other things. How likely are you to be unfrozen/cured/revived? No one can say for sure, but it's probably pretty unlikely. On the other hand, what's the likelihood that your estate can do something useful with an extra $25k? That's pretty likely.
- mmaro 15y ago
  That's a reasonable concern, but at this meta level there are two things going in cryonics' favor: there's a good chance you're overconfident about its non-utility[1], and there's a chance that your reanimation comes much earlier than expected, so the cumulative risks don't add up to much. And FWIW, Alcor and Cryonics Institute don't require power for storage; they require deliveries of liquid nitrogen. I don't think either facility has much earthquake/tsunami risk, either. [1] Personally, I would want to be > 99% sure about this before completely giving up on cryonics.

SeoxyS 15y ago

These visionary geniuses and hackers' most brilliant breakthrough was the realization of the inevitable fact that sooner or later, we all die. The trick is in channeling that truth as a motivator. We must strive to achieve as much as possible today, because there might not be a tomorrow. Steve Jobs: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. Steve Jobs is the single worst example that the OP could've picked as a candidate for cryopreservation, as it goes against everything he (and I) believes in.

jpulgarin 15y ago
So, do you think if you had offered Steve Jobs an extra 1000 years of life, he would have said no?
- pvarangot 15y ago
  Do you think he would have said no to a lightsaber? Or to a two-headed pony?
  - jpulgarin 15y ago
    If they go "against everything he (and I) believes in", as SeoxyS claims Steve Jobs feels about cryonics, then yes.
mmaro 15y ago
This is a false dichotomy. You can strive to achieve as much as possible today, as well as attempt a second chance at life through cryonics.

bitops 15y ago

Sooner or later we all have to die. It's inevitable. But, if you feel like you might have wasted your life if you were to die tomorrow, why not get up and do something about it?

asto 15y ago

To do away with death is to do away with evolution. Not a very good idea. We should work towards improving the quality of life rather than extend it. Would have been happier if the article was "as more people fall to chronically painful illnesses, isn't it time we act?"

thret 15y ago
Evolution happens from one generation to the next and there isn't much we can do to prevent it. You are thinking of natural selection, and we've already done away with that by ensuring humans have the opportunity to procreate regardless of physical defects.
gwern 15y ago
> To do away with death is to do away with evolution. Not a very good idea. It's a great idea. Evolution is about the dumbest possible optimization process which still works. I don't see Google throwing its hands up and saying 'screw engineering Bigtable or MapReduce with our silly minds, we'll just evolve those fuckers!' Science: it works, bitches. (With apologies to http://www.xkcd.com/54/ http://www.xkcd.com/54/)

blrs 15y ago

I think Hackers will have the last laugh after all. When hackers finally build an AI, it will also be the first soul. An intelligent mind decoupled from a body and thus capable of being immortal. The first step in this direction was the stored program concept itself which was best articulated by Von Neumann (http://qss.stanford.edu/~godfrey/vonNeumann/vnedvac.pdf http://qss.stanford.edu/~godfrey/vonNeumann/vnedvac.pdf) and realized in the EDVAC. This allowed programs to be decoupled from hardware. Dennis Ritchie, whose loss we all mourn, made what I consider the second big step. Decoupling large software systems from hardware, via a portable operating system. It will take a while (10-20 years?), but maybe something like ROS (http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/software/ros-platform http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/software/ros-platform) will someday become a full mind that is still decoupled from any particular hardware...a soul!!!

ryandvm 15y ago

Wow. I'm surprised how many points this post has given the absurd premises that cryopreservation is based upon. There are far too many easily identifiable things that could go wrong in the process for me to even consider dumping money into such hokum. These are the same type of people that were insisting the world double up on alchemy research two thousand years ago.

gwern 15y ago
Maybe we should've. Chemistry would've been impossible to develop without alchemy's findings, based as it is on the elements alchemists discovered and the techniques & equipment they refined; and alchemists gave us gunpowder, which seems like it might've had something to do with the Age of Exploration and subsequent Industrialization.
lsparrish 15y ago
If you were to find out that there are well defined solutions for every single easily identifiable problem, would that convince you to invest?

cies 15y ago

i made this project for this purpose: http://edu.kde.org/kturtle http://edu.kde.org/kturtle solution: the next generation.

monkeypizza 15y ago

Even if cyro doesn't preserve everything, it will probably be a better record of the past than anything else that exists from our era. As an analogy think about how we feel about people 2000 years ago - if we could have just a few comprehensive samples of something in their world, we would really like it. Even things like exhaustive lists of every word they said for a week would be incredibly useful for linguists, lists of everything they ate would be useful, etc. We shouldn't rely on their choices of what is worth preserving - we should adopt a broad based approach and try to preserve the maximum amount of things, and hope it will be useful later on. I think today we have even used graffiti preserved on the walls of Pompei to get an idea of what the ancient world was like - surely there would be valuable information stored in even an imperfectly-frozen brain? Who knows what kind of crazy theories they may have in the future, that they just would need to have a few brains to test out with?