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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

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.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  The mind ceases in deep sleep as well. Neurons aren't firing or communicating, just turning on and off in continual waves. EDIT: on reading a bit more, that may be an oversimplification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-wave_sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-wave_sleep
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  I think the way you are thinking of death is sadly too common, but also profoundly materialistic and selfish. Science doesn't really tell us what happens to your consciousness after death. It doesn't say much of anything about your consciousness at all - in fact, it is still largely mystified as to why you aren't just a flesh robot following straightforward evolutionary imperatives with maybe a little quantum randomness thrown in. What you think about your conscious mind largely comes down to belief, and it looks like you believe that there is nothing more than the flesh robot, which I guess has some emergent properties that result in a conscious mind. If there really is nothing to it but what we have observed, then that's true, but there are a lot of things in the universe that we haven't observed, and this may be one of them. For all we know, any one of the religions could be right about life after death or the existence of some sort of "soul," including yours, which denies the existence of one. As to selfishness, why spend the $100k+ on having your body frozen rather than passing that along to your descendants? Do you believe that there's something special about you and/or inadequate about other people that makes your greed over a chance at a few more years of life worth the money and time you are taking from them? Why is life about what will "do me much good"? Is that all you think your life is worth? It's just about accruing a bunch of stuff so that you can hopefully spend it on becoming immortal before your clock runs out? There has always been a slice of the elite that thinks they can cheat death by doing this, and usually it doesn't go well. Usually, they are also part of some weird cult, too, that convinces them that they can beat the odds. Is this time different because instead of drinking lead or drying your body, you've chosen to freeze it instead? Death is ultimately a natural part of life, and I guess the unknown part of it is so terrifying that we spend so much of life futilely trying to prevent it. I think it's a lot better to embrace the fact that you get about 100 years on this rock to advance the state of the world as much as you can before passing the job of being its steward onto the next generation.

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.

HPsquared 3y ago
The mind ceases in deep sleep as well. Neurons aren't firing or communicating, just turning on and off in continual waves. EDIT: on reading a bit more, that may be an oversimplification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-wave_sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-wave_sleep
pclmulqdq 3y ago
I think the way you are thinking of death is sadly too common, but also profoundly materialistic and selfish. Science doesn't really tell us what happens to your consciousness after death. It doesn't say much of anything about your consciousness at all - in fact, it is still largely mystified as to why you aren't just a flesh robot following straightforward evolutionary imperatives with maybe a little quantum randomness thrown in. What you think about your conscious mind largely comes down to belief, and it looks like you believe that there is nothing more than the flesh robot, which I guess has some emergent properties that result in a conscious mind. If there really is nothing to it but what we have observed, then that's true, but there are a lot of things in the universe that we haven't observed, and this may be one of them. For all we know, any one of the religions could be right about life after death or the existence of some sort of "soul," including yours, which denies the existence of one. As to selfishness, why spend the $100k+ on having your body frozen rather than passing that along to your descendants? Do you believe that there's something special about you and/or inadequate about other people that makes your greed over a chance at a few more years of life worth the money and time you are taking from them? Why is life about what will "do me much good"? Is that all you think your life is worth? It's just about accruing a bunch of stuff so that you can hopefully spend it on becoming immortal before your clock runs out? There has always been a slice of the elite that thinks they can cheat death by doing this, and usually it doesn't go well. Usually, they are also part of some weird cult, too, that convinces them that they can beat the odds. Is this time different because instead of drinking lead or drying your body, you've chosen to freeze it instead? Death is ultimately a natural part of life, and I guess the unknown part of it is so terrifying that we spend so much of life futilely trying to prevent it. I think it's a lot better to embrace the fact that you get about 100 years on this rock to advance the state of the world as much as you can before passing the job of being its steward onto the next generation.