15 ms·

I hate that. The whole stick behind placing the money to pay for the service, the energy and resource consumption, having people work to maintain that infra...

I hate that. The whole stick behind placing the money to pay for the service, the energy and resource consumption, having people work to maintain that infra... That's rich people carrying their dominance beyond their own death, having breathing people slaving out for them, there's a revolting aspect to it.

lolinder 3y ago
There's something archetypical to this story. The rich have been trying to use their wealth to buy immortality for at least 4000 years—what we're looking at here is just a modern form of mummification, with a veneer of science instead of religion.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  There's a huge difference there, in that information storage via cryogenic preservation is an at least theoretically valid basis. It's still "Step 2: ???" but steps 1 and 3 are compatible with known science.
  - warent 3y ago
    Step 3 being... resurrection from being dead 100s of years? What known science is that?
    - hulitu 3y ago
      Maybe a perfume company developing new aromas.
  - vagab0nd 3y ago
    Mummification was probably compatible with the best known "science" back then.
    - IggleSniggle 3y ago
      Most likely the bleeding edge state of the art! Embalming practices of some cultures mystified modern science for quite a long time, iirc!
      - throwoutway 3y ago
        If bleeding was an intended pun, nicely done. That said, my only comment to this train of thought is that at least the building in the video takes up less space & resources than a pyramid.
    - Chris2048 3y ago
      You can't backdate "science" to the best approximate voodoo of the time to dunk on it. Science didn't really exist at the time.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      Was there any form of formalized scientific method at that point? I'm not sure it's fair to say that anything about mummification was science based unless you're using the term very colloquially to just mean "what people thought was right". Empirically, we're obviously way ahead of where humans were at the time of mummification, so I think it's a silly comparison anyways.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Like I said, it's a veneer of science instead of a veneer of religion. Depending on your values the scientific veneer may be more appealing than the religious one, but neither is founded in particularly strong observational evidence.
  - charles_f 3y ago
    I'd go as far as to say that the Egyptians had their shit together more than that, step 2 was pray to Thetis and step 3 resurrect in the underworld. Step 3 is still very much not compatible with known science either, so as far as you can tell the success rate is the same as it was back then
    - r00fus 3y ago
      The goal for step three is to last long enough that a future society where your endowment could pay for it could bring you back with future tech. Ie a hail-mary.
      - pavlov 3y ago
        Any future society where this is actually possible wouldn’t give a damn about the dead person’s endowment because they’d be so far beyond property rights at that technology level. That one Star Trek TNG episode from 1987 had this right. The accidentally discovered 21st century cryogenists are stunned to find their former wealth and status are irrelevant in Picard-era Federation. I think the question at that time would be: “Do we bring these likely brain-damaged people into a world they can’t understand and which would cause them pain” — and the answer might be “No, that would be cruel”.
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >“Do we bring these likely brain-damaged people into a world they can’t understand and which would cause them pain” — and the answer might be “No, that would be cruel” Some people already paid to maybe suffer that cruelty in the future, the same way some people already paid to go to the Titanic in an uncertified submarine and die.
        Chris2048 3y ago
        TNG hand-waves the problems of the economy, property rights etc, and doesn't really explain how they got to were they are. Proclaiming modern capitalist attitudes as "brain-damaged" is a bit smug given this.
      - 3y ago
  - joseda-hg 3y ago
    Step 2 is a lot less ??? than people assume, because we have at least unfrozen hamsters back to life in the 60's, it's a scale problem, not necessarily a the magic will get us there problem There was at least some basis to thinking there was an eventual way to get there, even if now it seems cargo cult-ish
- tamimio 3y ago
  >a veneer of science instead of religion. Science is some people religion nowadays
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    Except science isn't based on lies and deception, doesn't ignore self contradictions and false beliefs, is evidence based, is falsifiable, changes when new facts come in, and corrects mistakes when they're found. Other than that, you don't deserve to use computers, networks, electricity, radio, cell phones, AI, room temperature superconductors, cars, air conditioning, mathematics, logic, antibiotics, or medicine, if you falsely believe science is a religion. But if you're into religion, then logical consistency and truth seeking isn't your thing anyway, so you probably do hypocritically enjoy all the benefits and convenience of science anyway, while believing in invisible ghosts and magic, without a shred of proof.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      Preach, brother in faith!
      - DonHopkins 3y ago
        Prove me wrong.
        jack_pp 3y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
    - dalmo3 3y ago
      > you don't deserve to use computers... If that's not sarcasm then you just proved GP's point.
    - vacuity 3y ago
      > Except science isn't based on lies and deception, doesn't ignore self contradictions and false beliefs, is evidence based, is falsifiable, changes when new facts come in, and corrects mistakes when they're found. ...At its best. That's not uniform across different fields; "social sciences" such as psychology are inherently a lot less rigorous than, say, chemistry. Also, there have been a few recent HN headlines about prestigious researchers withdrawing publications due to accusations of fraud. Let's not get into confirmation bias, tribalism, and whatnot, OK? > But if you're into religion, then logical consistency and truth seeking isn't your thing anyway It depends. Some claims based on religious beliefs are falsiable and happen to be scientifically dubious. However, many things are more philosophical in nature and aren't examinable by science. It seems there's pretty good evidence that Jesus died and resurrected, if only because the Roman soldiers probably wouldn't obscure details that would damage the credibility of Jesus' religion. Does this mean God exists and is as is described in the Bible? No, not necessarily. But you'd do well to consider that "science" isn't the end-all be-all answer to the universe. "Science", as we often deviate significantly from the spirit of scientific inquiry, which still isn't the key to omniscience.
- mongol 3y ago
  That is a really good analogy!
- gnfargbl 3y ago
  Modern science seems to have gotten a lot of pretty interesting information from studying mummies. Here's one example from a very quick Google search [1]. Who's to say that future scientists won't find studying these modern-day mummies just as fascinating? [1] https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/knhcentre/research/current/manchester-studies-individual-mummies/ https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/knhcentre/research/current/ma...
  - contravariant 3y ago
    Though if that history is any guide then their hopes of being resuscitated and cured are very slim indeed. They're more likely to be eaten.
    - gnfargbl 3y ago
      I mean... if the choices are having my earthly remains burnt, left slowly to rot, or preserved-and-then-eaten-in-some-kind-of-a-ritualistic-psychosexual-ceremony-by-a-future-dystopian-civilization, then all I can say is: would you like me salted, buttered or plain?
itsthecourier 3y ago
I want to be that slave, man.
sockaddr 3y ago
“beyond their own death” I wouldn’t be so quick to judge, they may merely have a different definition of death than you do. In fact, it’s quite likely the line you’ve drawn for what death means to you would be sacrilegious in a previous time. It’s all relative.
- charles_f 3y ago
  Your heart stopped to beat, leave me the f. alone. My definition of death is the definition of death as applied on death certificates. Everything past that is just superstition and belief in supernatural at this point.
  - sockaddr 3y ago
    So the opinion you hold now based on our incomplete scientific knowledge is the only valid one to have? Anything before and after is invalid?
  - frizlab 3y ago
    If I’m not mistaken death used to be defined at “the heart stopped beating, (s)he’s dead,” and sometimes people woke up in graves because they were not actually dead… That’s where the expression saved by the bell comes from IIRC. Rich people were able to have a string in their grave which they could pull in order to ring a bell if they woke up in their grave, and somebody would come and dig them up.
    - eCa 3y ago
      > saved by the bell I think/thought that’s a boxing term?
      - frizlab 3y ago
        Oh yeah it’s possible https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/saved-by-the-bell.html https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/saved-by-the-bell.html
  - 3y ago
abecedarius 3y ago
> rich I just went through their inquiry page. They give 65 euros/month as the estimated price, for my selections. (I'm older than most HN commenters, which presumably means a higher price on the insurance. OTOH I picked neuropreservation, which should cost less than whole-body.) Further, early adopters create a market which will predictably be served at lower cost as it grows.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sebazzz 3y ago
  Yes that's the membership fee. When you are dead you pay 200 000 for final processing.
  - jamiek88 3y ago
    I think the deal with a lot of these firms is you sign across a life insurance policy for that much.
    - orlp 3y ago
      An insurance underwriter that gives 200k life policies for 65 euro / month will be bankrupt soon.
      - aforeignaffair 3y ago
        I guess you don't really understand how insurance works...
      - offices 3y ago
        Depends how old you are when you take it out. I have more than that for less than that.
  - abecedarius 3y ago
    That is not what they said: Membership Fee: € 25 per month Insurance Cost Estimate: € 40 per month (indicated as provisional at this stage of the price-quote) Insurance Coverage Duration: 20 years It's polite not to present speculation as fact. And you could already know your 200k was wrong since I said I chose neuropreservation, not whole-body, on the quote form.
hotpotamus 3y ago
Chilling out in a tube is a lot better than endowing some loony political organization with the proceeds of your estate in order to carry out your will from beyond the grave.
Vanit 3y ago
The Verge (I think) had some great coverage of the industry in the last year or so that showed that the industry is still a pipe dream and the bodies are regularly mishandled and effectively become unrecoverable (not that we even can guarantee that anyone preserved today will be suitable to be revived in future). For now you can find peace in the fact that all the rich people paying for it are being taken for a ride, beyond the grave.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  same as frozen eggs. imagine leaving your late-parent insurance policy in a freezer, only to have a random error and outright negligence (power, etc) blow up your last chance of having kids, that you always dreamed of. I can feel for those aspiring moms and dads
  - ellisv 3y ago
    This happens [1]. There’s also a prominent example of expensive research being lost due to combination human and mechanical error [2]. [1] https://time.com/5198546/families-affected-freezer-failure-fertility-clinic/ https://time.com/5198546/families-affected-freezer-failure-f... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/janitor-turned-off-freezer-destroyed-research-due-to-annoying-alarms-2023-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/janitor-turned-off-freezer-d...
limaoscarjuliet 3y ago
Would it be a consolation to realize they were parted with their money? To me this seems like a scheme to steal their wealth outright, providing some plausible deniabolity for the cryo folks. "Oh well, the investments did not pan out, we are pulling the plug on thr bodies."
akira2501 3y ago
It does have an Egyptian Pharaoh's charm to it. Ironically, their ancient method of preservation would be the most likely to survive into the future. Perhaps there's room for a "green preservation" service, where we effectively mummify you with your organs, then put you in a dry desert vault for the next few millennium. The "Valley of the Somewhat Upper Class," if you will.
kortilla 3y ago
“slaving” is about the dumbest term you could have picked here. These people are slaving no more than lawyers paid to execute wills.
- charles_f 3y ago
  Oh no big difference there. The lawyer's intervention is short lived, and principally serves the living. The lawyer won't spend their next decades at your service waking up in the morning to check if your precious little flesh isn't rotting yet.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    It doesn’t matter. It’s being paid for voluntary work related to death.
southernplaces7 3y ago
Not quite sure what your problem with this is. The people who paid for it weren't all absurdly rich (it doesn't cost an utter fortune) and the people who run it do so willingly and often with great motivation because many of them also have a personal curiosity stake in seeing if they can make it work somehow. I've seen and read interviews with staff at cryopreservation organizations and companies (particularly Alcor). They're far, far from slaves to rich oligarchs and many of them love their work and are very interested in its technical aspects. There's nothing revolting to wanting to see if by some change in technology or chance, you can live longer than normal, or be revived, so long as you're not taking from someone elses life or well-being to do so. Also, the electrical requirements behind these services are miniscule compared to those of many, many other at least as frivolous (and i'd say often more frivolous things, some of which people right on this site earn their money from. It's stunning how many people extrapolate their own completely emotional, subjective reactions to certain things that do them no harm into wanting to destroy or stop them.
- KronisLV 3y ago
  > It's stunning how many people extrapolate their own completely emotional, subjective reactions to certain things that do them no harm into wanting to destroy or stop them. I don't get the ignorance/hostility that people seem to have towards cryopreservation, or things like longevity research that even in the short term could have tangible benefits for letting people at least live out their later days without feeling like their bodies are breaking down and decaying, a more respectful sunset to one's life. But at the same time, I never got how people can be okay with the concept of dying - to me and some other people, that's the single most scary thing out there. With most research telling us that essentially after death the mind just... ceases. No more passage of time, no more conscious thoughts or experiences, ever. I'm not okay with that and claims about "living on" in people's memories, or leaving a legacy - that wouldn't do me much good. It's likely that cryonics is just storing corpses that will never be revived due to our current methods being too primitive. But a 1% chance or even a 0.01% chance of fighting off entropy for a while longer seems worth it, versus guaranteed doom. Aside from that, it would be interesting to see how people would act if they had lifespans of a thousand years - knowing that what you'll do to the environment, you'll have to bear the burden of yourself.
ShamelessC 3y ago
Don’t visit LessWrong.com anytime soon then. They love this sort of thing. To the point of appearing cult like, trying to convince people with far less money than them to invest in it as a sort of obviously rational “life insurance policy”. The idea that they could ever be brought back from the dead is a fantasy, supported in their minds by the idea that the sciences will figure it out eventually. That of course ignores basic limits imposed by biological, sociological and economic systems. Not to mention that the promise of eternal life is common among cult ideologies. This is apparently business as usual for ultra wealthy technocrats who don’t have any actual contributions whatsoever but need to feel like a revolutionary. Or at least for Eliezer Yudkowsky. That and AI doomerism based on similarly shoddy philosophical arguments.
mo_42 3y ago
> I hate that. I fully understand. This was my initial reaction too. Thinking about this for a while, I have a different view: If rich people pay for this, it means their money goes into the pockets of people who operate (and own) such storage places. The alternative would be to pass their wealth to their few and already privileged descendants.
- patall 3y ago
  I think that is entirely the point: to keep the decision what to do with that wealth with those living. Imagine if the people of Egypt would still have to sacrifice one lamb each year for some ancient pharao. Sure, he pays for it, but only by still owing a flock of sheep somewhere that could very well also feed someone. I reality, the situation is so that we could nowadays place solar cells on the pyramids and use them to make money. We do not do that, but we (as a society and by our own rules) would be allowed to do that.
- charles_f 3y ago
  > it means their money goes into the pockets of people who operate (and own) such storage places. This is thinking too much within system. I don't know why you should need to keep frozen meat to get those resources > The alternative would be to pass their wealth to their few and already privileged descendants. There are alternatives (and more egalitarian and less useless) to the existing system of mostly unbounded inheritance.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  I love the curious irony that, were they to be resurrected, they will enter the world penniless as their assets were already dispersed at the time of their death. I believe the COO in the video alluded to expenses at the time of "resurrection" but I can't imagine any more than a stipend is there for the "Sleeper".
  - creer 3y ago
    I would certainly expect that, if you have the means, the money you pay for preservation and resurrection is only part of your genius plan - and it's the only part this company needs to be involved with. After that it's a technical issue of how you would attempt to transmit money to someone who died and was resurrected. Ideas in this directions would be things like trusts or foundations which purpose would be your potential eventual benefit. No idea what's the current goto method for this. For example very long term such entities are illegal in some parts of the world, but legal elsewhere.
irusensei 3y ago
I don’t have an opinion on the matter. Very few people can do this and as the video implies their fortunes have been passed to their heirs already. There is the issue of people overstaying but maybe in the future ifwhen they come back we’ll have plenty of planets available to comfortably accommodate pertly of humans. Who knows? I find it most curious however that you consider supposedly high skilled people voluntarily working for an organization as “slaving out”. This tells me you have a problem with something else than people who pay 200k EUR for their funerals.
robertlagrant 3y ago
> having breathing people slaving out for them, there's a revolting aspect to it People take a job and get paid. They can leave. It's capitalism, not monarchy or feudalism or socialism.
Chris2048 3y ago
> having breathing people slaving out for them Same is true of any funeral directors. Why are people "slaving" as opposed to being "employed", on assumption for a decent sum?
odyssey7 3y ago
Imagine a legacy codebase that takes a team of 30 highly paid engineers just to keep running. Software systems that take months of training and years of experience to fully understand… a $200k trust to operate a cold mausoleum is quaint by comparison.
insanitybit 3y ago
God forbid that some people want to live and they pay others to help that happen. What monsters.
- Viliam1234 3y ago
  We need to ban medicine. The money used to heal selfish people should be donated to the poor instead.
pimlottc 3y ago
> The whole stick behind [this]... I think the word you're looking for is "shtick" [0] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtick
creer 3y ago
I don't understand that "rich". For one, it's actually pretty inexpensive within the range of things you can "spend" money on. For another, as observed elsewhere, the breathing people are no more slaving out than you are for your own employer or customers. This is a strange view of holding a job.
tegmark 3y ago
this exact sentiment was used to discourage the birth of science. common people enraged at the pointless and wasteful expenditures of the rich. to them, their telescopes and experiments were just as stupid as this. i would relax.

lolinder 3y ago

There's something archetypical to this story. The rich have been trying to use their wealth to buy immortality for at least 4000 years—what we're looking at here is just a modern form of mummification, with a veneer of science instead of religion.

crooked-v 3y ago
There's a huge difference there, in that information storage via cryogenic preservation is an at least theoretically valid basis. It's still "Step 2: ???" but steps 1 and 3 are compatible with known science.
- warent 3y ago
  Step 3 being... resurrection from being dead 100s of years? What known science is that?
  - hulitu 3y ago
    Maybe a perfume company developing new aromas.
- vagab0nd 3y ago
  Mummification was probably compatible with the best known "science" back then.
  - IggleSniggle 3y ago
    Most likely the bleeding edge state of the art! Embalming practices of some cultures mystified modern science for quite a long time, iirc!
    - throwoutway 3y ago
      If bleeding was an intended pun, nicely done. That said, my only comment to this train of thought is that at least the building in the video takes up less space & resources than a pyramid.
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    You can't backdate "science" to the best approximate voodoo of the time to dunk on it. Science didn't really exist at the time.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    Was there any form of formalized scientific method at that point? I'm not sure it's fair to say that anything about mummification was science based unless you're using the term very colloquially to just mean "what people thought was right". Empirically, we're obviously way ahead of where humans were at the time of mummification, so I think it's a silly comparison anyways.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Like I said, it's a veneer of science instead of a veneer of religion. Depending on your values the scientific veneer may be more appealing than the religious one, but neither is founded in particularly strong observational evidence.
- charles_f 3y ago
  I'd go as far as to say that the Egyptians had their shit together more than that, step 2 was pray to Thetis and step 3 resurrect in the underworld. Step 3 is still very much not compatible with known science either, so as far as you can tell the success rate is the same as it was back then
  - r00fus 3y ago
    The goal for step three is to last long enough that a future society where your endowment could pay for it could bring you back with future tech. Ie a hail-mary.
    - pavlov 3y ago
      Any future society where this is actually possible wouldn’t give a damn about the dead person’s endowment because they’d be so far beyond property rights at that technology level. That one Star Trek TNG episode from 1987 had this right. The accidentally discovered 21st century cryogenists are stunned to find their former wealth and status are irrelevant in Picard-era Federation. I think the question at that time would be: “Do we bring these likely brain-damaged people into a world they can’t understand and which would cause them pain” — and the answer might be “No, that would be cruel”.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >“Do we bring these likely brain-damaged people into a world they can’t understand and which would cause them pain” — and the answer might be “No, that would be cruel” Some people already paid to maybe suffer that cruelty in the future, the same way some people already paid to go to the Titanic in an uncertified submarine and die.
      - Chris2048 3y ago
        TNG hand-waves the problems of the economy, property rights etc, and doesn't really explain how they got to were they are. Proclaiming modern capitalist attitudes as "brain-damaged" is a bit smug given this.
    - 3y ago
- joseda-hg 3y ago
  Step 2 is a lot less ??? than people assume, because we have at least unfrozen hamsters back to life in the 60's, it's a scale problem, not necessarily a the magic will get us there problem There was at least some basis to thinking there was an eventual way to get there, even if now it seems cargo cult-ish
tamimio 3y ago
>a veneer of science instead of religion. Science is some people religion nowadays
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  Except science isn't based on lies and deception, doesn't ignore self contradictions and false beliefs, is evidence based, is falsifiable, changes when new facts come in, and corrects mistakes when they're found. Other than that, you don't deserve to use computers, networks, electricity, radio, cell phones, AI, room temperature superconductors, cars, air conditioning, mathematics, logic, antibiotics, or medicine, if you falsely believe science is a religion. But if you're into religion, then logical consistency and truth seeking isn't your thing anyway, so you probably do hypocritically enjoy all the benefits and convenience of science anyway, while believing in invisible ghosts and magic, without a shred of proof.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    Preach, brother in faith!
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      Prove me wrong.
      - jack_pp 3y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
  - dalmo3 3y ago
    > you don't deserve to use computers... If that's not sarcasm then you just proved GP's point.
  - vacuity 3y ago
    > Except science isn't based on lies and deception, doesn't ignore self contradictions and false beliefs, is evidence based, is falsifiable, changes when new facts come in, and corrects mistakes when they're found. ...At its best. That's not uniform across different fields; "social sciences" such as psychology are inherently a lot less rigorous than, say, chemistry. Also, there have been a few recent HN headlines about prestigious researchers withdrawing publications due to accusations of fraud. Let's not get into confirmation bias, tribalism, and whatnot, OK? > But if you're into religion, then logical consistency and truth seeking isn't your thing anyway It depends. Some claims based on religious beliefs are falsiable and happen to be scientifically dubious. However, many things are more philosophical in nature and aren't examinable by science. It seems there's pretty good evidence that Jesus died and resurrected, if only because the Roman soldiers probably wouldn't obscure details that would damage the credibility of Jesus' religion. Does this mean God exists and is as is described in the Bible? No, not necessarily. But you'd do well to consider that "science" isn't the end-all be-all answer to the universe. "Science", as we often deviate significantly from the spirit of scientific inquiry, which still isn't the key to omniscience.
mongol 3y ago
That is a really good analogy!
gnfargbl 3y ago
Modern science seems to have gotten a lot of pretty interesting information from studying mummies. Here's one example from a very quick Google search [1]. Who's to say that future scientists won't find studying these modern-day mummies just as fascinating? [1] https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/knhcentre/research/current/manchester-studies-individual-mummies/ https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/knhcentre/research/current/ma...
- contravariant 3y ago
  Though if that history is any guide then their hopes of being resuscitated and cured are very slim indeed. They're more likely to be eaten.
  - gnfargbl 3y ago
    I mean... if the choices are having my earthly remains burnt, left slowly to rot, or preserved-and-then-eaten-in-some-kind-of-a-ritualistic-psychosexual-ceremony-by-a-future-dystopian-civilization, then all I can say is: would you like me salted, buttered or plain?

itsthecourier 3y ago

I want to be that slave, man.

sockaddr 3y ago

“beyond their own death” I wouldn’t be so quick to judge, they may merely have a different definition of death than you do. In fact, it’s quite likely the line you’ve drawn for what death means to you would be sacrilegious in a previous time. It’s all relative.

charles_f 3y ago
Your heart stopped to beat, leave me the f. alone. My definition of death is the definition of death as applied on death certificates. Everything past that is just superstition and belief in supernatural at this point.
- sockaddr 3y ago
  So the opinion you hold now based on our incomplete scientific knowledge is the only valid one to have? Anything before and after is invalid?
- frizlab 3y ago
  If I’m not mistaken death used to be defined at “the heart stopped beating, (s)he’s dead,” and sometimes people woke up in graves because they were not actually dead… That’s where the expression saved by the bell comes from IIRC. Rich people were able to have a string in their grave which they could pull in order to ring a bell if they woke up in their grave, and somebody would come and dig them up.
  - eCa 3y ago
    > saved by the bell I think/thought that’s a boxing term?
    - frizlab 3y ago
      Oh yeah it’s possible https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/saved-by-the-bell.html https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/saved-by-the-bell.html
- 3y ago

abecedarius 3y ago

> rich I just went through their inquiry page. They give 65 euros/month as the estimated price, for my selections. (I'm older than most HN commenters, which presumably means a higher price on the insurance. OTOH I picked neuropreservation, which should cost less than whole-body.) Further, early adopters create a market which will predictably be served at lower cost as it grows.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sebazzz 3y ago
Yes that's the membership fee. When you are dead you pay 200 000 for final processing.
- jamiek88 3y ago
  I think the deal with a lot of these firms is you sign across a life insurance policy for that much.
  - orlp 3y ago
    An insurance underwriter that gives 200k life policies for 65 euro / month will be bankrupt soon.
    - aforeignaffair 3y ago
      I guess you don't really understand how insurance works...
    - offices 3y ago
      Depends how old you are when you take it out. I have more than that for less than that.
- abecedarius 3y ago
  That is not what they said: Membership Fee: € 25 per month Insurance Cost Estimate: € 40 per month (indicated as provisional at this stage of the price-quote) Insurance Coverage Duration: 20 years It's polite not to present speculation as fact. And you could already know your 200k was wrong since I said I chose neuropreservation, not whole-body, on the quote form.

hotpotamus 3y ago

Chilling out in a tube is a lot better than endowing some loony political organization with the proceeds of your estate in order to carry out your will from beyond the grave.

Vanit 3y ago

The Verge (I think) had some great coverage of the industry in the last year or so that showed that the industry is still a pipe dream and the bodies are regularly mishandled and effectively become unrecoverable (not that we even can guarantee that anyone preserved today will be suitable to be revived in future). For now you can find peace in the fact that all the rich people paying for it are being taken for a ride, beyond the grave.

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
same as frozen eggs. imagine leaving your late-parent insurance policy in a freezer, only to have a random error and outright negligence (power, etc) blow up your last chance of having kids, that you always dreamed of. I can feel for those aspiring moms and dads
- ellisv 3y ago
  This happens [1]. There’s also a prominent example of expensive research being lost due to combination human and mechanical error [2]. [1] https://time.com/5198546/families-affected-freezer-failure-fertility-clinic/ https://time.com/5198546/families-affected-freezer-failure-f... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/janitor-turned-off-freezer-destroyed-research-due-to-annoying-alarms-2023-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/janitor-turned-off-freezer-d...

limaoscarjuliet 3y ago

Would it be a consolation to realize they were parted with their money? To me this seems like a scheme to steal their wealth outright, providing some plausible deniabolity for the cryo folks. "Oh well, the investments did not pan out, we are pulling the plug on thr bodies."

akira2501 3y ago

It does have an Egyptian Pharaoh's charm to it. Ironically, their ancient method of preservation would be the most likely to survive into the future. Perhaps there's room for a "green preservation" service, where we effectively mummify you with your organs, then put you in a dry desert vault for the next few millennium. The "Valley of the Somewhat Upper Class," if you will.

kortilla 3y ago

“slaving” is about the dumbest term you could have picked here. These people are slaving no more than lawyers paid to execute wills.

charles_f 3y ago
Oh no big difference there. The lawyer's intervention is short lived, and principally serves the living. The lawyer won't spend their next decades at your service waking up in the morning to check if your precious little flesh isn't rotting yet.
- kortilla 3y ago
  It doesn’t matter. It’s being paid for voluntary work related to death.

southernplaces7 3y ago

Not quite sure what your problem with this is. The people who paid for it weren't all absurdly rich (it doesn't cost an utter fortune) and the people who run it do so willingly and often with great motivation because many of them also have a personal curiosity stake in seeing if they can make it work somehow. I've seen and read interviews with staff at cryopreservation organizations and companies (particularly Alcor). They're far, far from slaves to rich oligarchs and many of them love their work and are very interested in its technical aspects. There's nothing revolting to wanting to see if by some change in technology or chance, you can live longer than normal, or be revived, so long as you're not taking from someone elses life or well-being to do so. Also, the electrical requirements behind these services are miniscule compared to those of many, many other at least as frivolous (and i'd say often more frivolous things, some of which people right on this site earn their money from. It's stunning how many people extrapolate their own completely emotional, subjective reactions to certain things that do them no harm into wanting to destroy or stop them.

KronisLV 3y ago
> It's stunning how many people extrapolate their own completely emotional, subjective reactions to certain things that do them no harm into wanting to destroy or stop them. I don't get the ignorance/hostility that people seem to have towards cryopreservation, or things like longevity research that even in the short term could have tangible benefits for letting people at least live out their later days without feeling like their bodies are breaking down and decaying, a more respectful sunset to one's life. But at the same time, I never got how people can be okay with the concept of dying - to me and some other people, that's the single most scary thing out there. With most research telling us that essentially after death the mind just... ceases. No more passage of time, no more conscious thoughts or experiences, ever. I'm not okay with that and claims about "living on" in people's memories, or leaving a legacy - that wouldn't do me much good. It's likely that cryonics is just storing corpses that will never be revived due to our current methods being too primitive. But a 1% chance or even a 0.01% chance of fighting off entropy for a while longer seems worth it, versus guaranteed doom. Aside from that, it would be interesting to see how people would act if they had lifespans of a thousand years - knowing that what you'll do to the environment, you'll have to bear the burden of yourself.

ShamelessC 3y ago

Don’t visit LessWrong.com anytime soon then. They love this sort of thing. To the point of appearing cult like, trying to convince people with far less money than them to invest in it as a sort of obviously rational “life insurance policy”. The idea that they could ever be brought back from the dead is a fantasy, supported in their minds by the idea that the sciences will figure it out eventually. That of course ignores basic limits imposed by biological, sociological and economic systems. Not to mention that the promise of eternal life is common among cult ideologies. This is apparently business as usual for ultra wealthy technocrats who don’t have any actual contributions whatsoever but need to feel like a revolutionary. Or at least for Eliezer Yudkowsky. That and AI doomerism based on similarly shoddy philosophical arguments.

mo_42 3y ago

> I hate that. I fully understand. This was my initial reaction too. Thinking about this for a while, I have a different view: If rich people pay for this, it means their money goes into the pockets of people who operate (and own) such storage places. The alternative would be to pass their wealth to their few and already privileged descendants.

patall 3y ago
I think that is entirely the point: to keep the decision what to do with that wealth with those living. Imagine if the people of Egypt would still have to sacrifice one lamb each year for some ancient pharao. Sure, he pays for it, but only by still owing a flock of sheep somewhere that could very well also feed someone. I reality, the situation is so that we could nowadays place solar cells on the pyramids and use them to make money. We do not do that, but we (as a society and by our own rules) would be allowed to do that.
charles_f 3y ago
> it means their money goes into the pockets of people who operate (and own) such storage places. This is thinking too much within system. I don't know why you should need to keep frozen meat to get those resources > The alternative would be to pass their wealth to their few and already privileged descendants. There are alternatives (and more egalitarian and less useless) to the existing system of mostly unbounded inheritance.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
I love the curious irony that, were they to be resurrected, they will enter the world penniless as their assets were already dispersed at the time of their death. I believe the COO in the video alluded to expenses at the time of "resurrection" but I can't imagine any more than a stipend is there for the "Sleeper".
- creer 3y ago
  I would certainly expect that, if you have the means, the money you pay for preservation and resurrection is only part of your genius plan - and it's the only part this company needs to be involved with. After that it's a technical issue of how you would attempt to transmit money to someone who died and was resurrected. Ideas in this directions would be things like trusts or foundations which purpose would be your potential eventual benefit. No idea what's the current goto method for this. For example very long term such entities are illegal in some parts of the world, but legal elsewhere.

irusensei 3y ago

I don’t have an opinion on the matter. Very few people can do this and as the video implies their fortunes have been passed to their heirs already. There is the issue of people overstaying but maybe in the future ifwhen they come back we’ll have plenty of planets available to comfortably accommodate pertly of humans. Who knows? I find it most curious however that you consider supposedly high skilled people voluntarily working for an organization as “slaving out”. This tells me you have a problem with something else than people who pay 200k EUR for their funerals.

robertlagrant 3y ago

> having breathing people slaving out for them, there's a revolting aspect to it People take a job and get paid. They can leave. It's capitalism, not monarchy or feudalism or socialism.

Chris2048 3y ago

> having breathing people slaving out for them Same is true of any funeral directors. Why are people "slaving" as opposed to being "employed", on assumption for a decent sum?

odyssey7 3y ago

Imagine a legacy codebase that takes a team of 30 highly paid engineers just to keep running. Software systems that take months of training and years of experience to fully understand… a $200k trust to operate a cold mausoleum is quaint by comparison.

insanitybit 3y ago

God forbid that some people want to live and they pay others to help that happen. What monsters.

Viliam1234 3y ago
We need to ban medicine. The money used to heal selfish people should be donated to the poor instead.

pimlottc 3y ago

> The whole stick behind [this]... I think the word you're looking for is "shtick" [0] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtick

creer 3y ago

I don't understand that "rich". For one, it's actually pretty inexpensive within the range of things you can "spend" money on. For another, as observed elsewhere, the breathing people are no more slaving out than you are for your own employer or customers. This is a strange view of holding a job.

tegmark 3y ago

this exact sentiment was used to discourage the birth of science. common people enraged at the pointless and wasteful expenditures of the rich. to them, their telescopes and experiments were just as stupid as this. i would relax.