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Aren't both of those also arguments against maintaining life support for coma patients? In both of these cases it costs power and insurance money, only the odds

Aren't both of those also arguments against maintaining life support for coma patients? In both of these cases it costs power and insurance money, only the odds of recovery and amount of time on support are the differences. Which does change the ethics a bit, but not massively. They're basically just long term unlikely to recover coma patients.

woodruffw 3y ago
> only the odds of recovery and amount of time on support are the differences These are large differences. We can argue about inefficiencies, but people do recover from decades-long comas. People don't recover from being dead as a doornail.
- metalcrow 3y ago
  > People don't recover from being dead as a doornail Not yet they don't. Plus, depends on how you define dead. I know people who have recovered from being dead quite a few times.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    That's why I said "doornail"; the people in question are sufficiently dead that the company here doesn't think they're at risk of being sued for killing someone. Maybe we'll be able to reanimate people eventually; for the time being, people definitely do recover from comas.
    - metalcrow 3y ago
      Haha, i'm not exactly familiar with that medical terminology. But agreed, that's fair, comas do have known examples of recovery, this doesn't. It's more like the first ever comas.
crooked-v 3y ago
There's a huge difference there: we know for a fact that some coma patients can recover, while recovery of cryogenics subjects is still so completely theoretical that the basis is "somebody will figure it out eventually".
- janalsncm 3y ago
  Even if it’s possible in the future there’s a good chance they aren’t getting frozen in the right way now and they’re just irreversibly dead.
NateEag 3y ago
Coma patients are actually alive, though, and have been known to come back. If you believe that dead people have come back, you're religious. ...this might be controversial, but I'll argue that thinking you'll live again if you get chronically frozen requires as much faith as believing you'll live again in an afterlife. There's not much evidence for either, so you're left squinting heavily at vague suggestive outlines, making your bets, then hoping and trusting it works out. The difference is what you put that faith in, and why.
- metalcrow 3y ago
  > ...this might be controversial, but I'll argue that thinking you'll live again if you get chronically frozen requires as much faith as believing you'll live again in an afterlife. I would say they are similar, but there's a key difference there. One relies on believing in the ingenuity of humans and the improvement of technology, both of which have been observed. The other relies on believing in the word of people who came long before you, which has been observed to be less then stellar. The fact of the matter is you literally have to choose between those 2 or giving up completely.
- NotSuspicious 3y ago
  > I'll argue that thinking you'll live again if you get chronically frozen requires as much faith as believing you'll live again in an afterlife. It actually requires more because there are numerous documented cases of the dead coming back to life within certain religious ontologies whereas cryonics is only a potential resurrection in the future with no precursor. Imagine a Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead without the Empty Tomb.

woodruffw 3y ago

> only the odds of recovery and amount of time on support are the differences These are large differences. We can argue about inefficiencies, but people do recover from decades-long comas. People don't recover from being dead as a doornail.

metalcrow 3y ago
> People don't recover from being dead as a doornail Not yet they don't. Plus, depends on how you define dead. I know people who have recovered from being dead quite a few times.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  That's why I said "doornail"; the people in question are sufficiently dead that the company here doesn't think they're at risk of being sued for killing someone. Maybe we'll be able to reanimate people eventually; for the time being, people definitely do recover from comas.
  - metalcrow 3y ago
    Haha, i'm not exactly familiar with that medical terminology. But agreed, that's fair, comas do have known examples of recovery, this doesn't. It's more like the first ever comas.

crooked-v 3y ago

There's a huge difference there: we know for a fact that some coma patients can recover, while recovery of cryogenics subjects is still so completely theoretical that the basis is "somebody will figure it out eventually".

janalsncm 3y ago
Even if it’s possible in the future there’s a good chance they aren’t getting frozen in the right way now and they’re just irreversibly dead.

NateEag 3y ago

Coma patients are actually alive, though, and have been known to come back. If you believe that dead people have come back, you're religious. ...this might be controversial, but I'll argue that thinking you'll live again if you get chronically frozen requires as much faith as believing you'll live again in an afterlife. There's not much evidence for either, so you're left squinting heavily at vague suggestive outlines, making your bets, then hoping and trusting it works out. The difference is what you put that faith in, and why.

metalcrow 3y ago
> ...this might be controversial, but I'll argue that thinking you'll live again if you get chronically frozen requires as much faith as believing you'll live again in an afterlife. I would say they are similar, but there's a key difference there. One relies on believing in the ingenuity of humans and the improvement of technology, both of which have been observed. The other relies on believing in the word of people who came long before you, which has been observed to be less then stellar. The fact of the matter is you literally have to choose between those 2 or giving up completely.
NotSuspicious 3y ago
> I'll argue that thinking you'll live again if you get chronically frozen requires as much faith as believing you'll live again in an afterlife. It actually requires more because there are numerous documented cases of the dead coming back to life within certain religious ontologies whereas cryonics is only a potential resurrection in the future with no precursor. Imagine a Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead without the Empty Tomb.