4 ms·

My biggest concern with this idea is not having control over who wakes you up and how. Who knows who eventually owns/operates Alcor? What if their interests bec

My biggest concern with this idea is not having control over who wakes you up and how. Who knows who eventually owns/operates Alcor? What if their interests become misaligned wrt customers? As one hypothetical example, imagine Meta buys Alcor. Maybe their lawyers work it out that importing customer consciousness into the metaverse is legal and fulfills the contract. But when this happens the metaverse has safeguards that don't allow you to kill anyone including yourself. And now your consciousness is in the metaverse for an effective eternity. Maybe that sounds nice to you but maybe the thought makes you a bit uncomfortable as it does for me.

NBJack 3y ago
This is actually the first act plot for We Are Legion (We Are Bob). Turns out cryo preserved brains are a decent starting point for subservient AI smart enough to perform tasks. A fun read, but a serious possibility.
porejide 3y ago
> Who knows who eventually owns/operates Alcor? Anyone who looks them up online can find this information easily. It is required to be public since they are a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Here are their current board of directors: https://www.alcor.org/library/alcor-board-of-directors/ https://www.alcor.org/library/alcor-board-of-directors/ > What if their interests become misaligned wrt customers? Anything is possible but this seems extremely unlikely given their governing structure and requirements for being on the board of directors. Alcor has been criticized in the past because they fall very far in favor of protecting their existing patients in cryopreservation rather than making accommodations for prospective patients, leading to them turning away prospective patients for a variety of reasons. From: https://www.alcor.org/library/alcors-self-perpetuating-board/ https://www.alcor.org/library/alcors-self-perpetuating-board... > A fundamental rationale for selecting the self perpetuating Board structure was its ability to provide continuity of purpose over a long period of time. Existing Board members select those new Board members who they believe are best able to preserve Alcor’s core values and carry out its mission. All Board members are required by Alcor Bylaws to be Alcor members. While not required by the Bylaws, we also find that Alcor Board members are cryonicists of long standing and are well known within the cryonics community. By tradition, new Board members are usually sought from the ranks of Alcor Advisors, although the Board can and has selected Board Members who have not been Advisors. Board members have a strong incentive to choose carefully because the success of Alcor and the survival of our members — including our Board members — is heavily dependent on the abilities and character of future Boards of Directors. BTW, I'm not a shill for Alcor. I think some aspects of their operations are worthy of criticism. But this is not one of them. If you disagree, feel free to state why, but I would recommend at least learning the basics about them before doing so.
- TheBlight 3y ago
  >Anyone who looks them up online can find this information easily. The specific concern is about who operates it _eventually_ (perhaps centuries from now.) I can look up who is on their current board and what their governance structure happens to be now but it isn't relevant to my hypothetical concern. Lots can happen in relatively short periods of time and the well-meaning intent behind their current governance structure can surely always be subverted by sufficiently incentivized and devious humans. I also don't mean this as a specific critique of Alcor. My concern is about the general concept of "freeze-now and wake-in-100s-of-years."
- Terr_ 3y ago
  I agree it looks like someone tried to handle the thorny cases, but without real force of law protecting the corpsicles (perhaps revive-able, perhaps not) then it makes me think of "greater fool" investments, except in this case it might be charitably amended to "greater altruist". Every person buying in--or perhaps checking in--to the system needs to trust that there's another person coming after them who is equally-invested in the projects' success, and at least able to pay the power/maintenance bills. Somewhat aside, the fiction book Cryoburn (a long way through the excellent Vorkosigan saga) does explore some of these issues in the background: The protagonist visits a planet where the frozen citizens have their voting-rights delegated to whichever corporations hold their storage/revival contracts. (In fact, some corporations are even trying to commoditize contracts so that they can be traded, in a likely allusion to CDOs during the 2008 property crash.)
  - sbierwagen 3y ago
    >perhaps revive-able, perhaps not One of the core problems of cryonics is the suite of technologies needed to revive a person from the frozen state and then fix whatever was wrong with them before freezing is indistinguishable from physical immortality. So once we can revive corpsicles, nobody will ever be frozen again! So there's no situation where you could actually get that tested body of law around corpsicle rights. The cryonicsphile response is, of course, that the alternative is death. Even if there's a 1 in 100 chance of being thawed, even if you're legally enslaved to pay off the unfreezing debt or are returned as an uploaded brain in a computer, that's still better than rotting in the ground, right?
Terr_ 3y ago
I think the legal issues start occurring even sooner than that. If the person is dead, they can't enter into contracts, and the US has a rule against perpetuities, so at some point it's not clear exactly who can keep the company from during away all their biological samples. If the person is not dead, then at what point have they effectively been kidnapped if the company chooses not to revive them? (Maybe someone says the technology is ready, maybe someone else disagrees.)
sneak 3y ago
Copies of your consciousness aren’t you.
- herculity275 3y ago
  That's about as meaningful as saying that your yesterday's self is not you. Once you apply the ship of Theseus to your higher brain function thoroughly enough things can get really weird.
- rbanffy 3y ago
  I would be very sad for them, but, then, if my brain is vitrified, I am past the ability of feeling sorry for anyone.
- TheBlight 3y ago
  You're making assumptions about the nature of this hypothetical future consciousness transfer system.
rbanffy 3y ago
> not having control over who wakes you up and how. I wouldn't worry about that at all. The odds of someone waking you up from cryostasis are very low.
- cjohnson318 3y ago
  The probability of waking up is low, but it still represents 50% of all possible outcomes at that point.
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    I’d say there are billions of plausible outcomes that end in the victim not waking up and, at best, a dozen where they do. Of course, from the victim’s point of view, they always wake up. If they never do, at least they won’t feel disappointed.

NBJack 3y ago

This is actually the first act plot for We Are Legion (We Are Bob). Turns out cryo preserved brains are a decent starting point for subservient AI smart enough to perform tasks. A fun read, but a serious possibility.

porejide 3y ago

> Who knows who eventually owns/operates Alcor? Anyone who looks them up online can find this information easily. It is required to be public since they are a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Here are their current board of directors: https://www.alcor.org/library/alcor-board-of-directors/ https://www.alcor.org/library/alcor-board-of-directors/ > What if their interests become misaligned wrt customers? Anything is possible but this seems extremely unlikely given their governing structure and requirements for being on the board of directors. Alcor has been criticized in the past because they fall very far in favor of protecting their existing patients in cryopreservation rather than making accommodations for prospective patients, leading to them turning away prospective patients for a variety of reasons. From: https://www.alcor.org/library/alcors-self-perpetuating-board/ https://www.alcor.org/library/alcors-self-perpetuating-board... > A fundamental rationale for selecting the self perpetuating Board structure was its ability to provide continuity of purpose over a long period of time. Existing Board members select those new Board members who they believe are best able to preserve Alcor’s core values and carry out its mission. All Board members are required by Alcor Bylaws to be Alcor members. While not required by the Bylaws, we also find that Alcor Board members are cryonicists of long standing and are well known within the cryonics community. By tradition, new Board members are usually sought from the ranks of Alcor Advisors, although the Board can and has selected Board Members who have not been Advisors. Board members have a strong incentive to choose carefully because the success of Alcor and the survival of our members — including our Board members — is heavily dependent on the abilities and character of future Boards of Directors. BTW, I'm not a shill for Alcor. I think some aspects of their operations are worthy of criticism. But this is not one of them. If you disagree, feel free to state why, but I would recommend at least learning the basics about them before doing so.

TheBlight 3y ago
>Anyone who looks them up online can find this information easily. The specific concern is about who operates it _eventually_ (perhaps centuries from now.) I can look up who is on their current board and what their governance structure happens to be now but it isn't relevant to my hypothetical concern. Lots can happen in relatively short periods of time and the well-meaning intent behind their current governance structure can surely always be subverted by sufficiently incentivized and devious humans. I also don't mean this as a specific critique of Alcor. My concern is about the general concept of "freeze-now and wake-in-100s-of-years."
Terr_ 3y ago
I agree it looks like someone tried to handle the thorny cases, but without real force of law protecting the corpsicles (perhaps revive-able, perhaps not) then it makes me think of "greater fool" investments, except in this case it might be charitably amended to "greater altruist". Every person buying in--or perhaps checking in--to the system needs to trust that there's another person coming after them who is equally-invested in the projects' success, and at least able to pay the power/maintenance bills. Somewhat aside, the fiction book Cryoburn (a long way through the excellent Vorkosigan saga) does explore some of these issues in the background: The protagonist visits a planet where the frozen citizens have their voting-rights delegated to whichever corporations hold their storage/revival contracts. (In fact, some corporations are even trying to commoditize contracts so that they can be traded, in a likely allusion to CDOs during the 2008 property crash.)
- sbierwagen 3y ago
  >perhaps revive-able, perhaps not One of the core problems of cryonics is the suite of technologies needed to revive a person from the frozen state and then fix whatever was wrong with them before freezing is indistinguishable from physical immortality. So once we can revive corpsicles, nobody will ever be frozen again! So there's no situation where you could actually get that tested body of law around corpsicle rights. The cryonicsphile response is, of course, that the alternative is death. Even if there's a 1 in 100 chance of being thawed, even if you're legally enslaved to pay off the unfreezing debt or are returned as an uploaded brain in a computer, that's still better than rotting in the ground, right?

Terr_ 3y ago

I think the legal issues start occurring even sooner than that. If the person is dead, they can't enter into contracts, and the US has a rule against perpetuities, so at some point it's not clear exactly who can keep the company from during away all their biological samples. If the person is not dead, then at what point have they effectively been kidnapped if the company chooses not to revive them? (Maybe someone says the technology is ready, maybe someone else disagrees.)

sneak 3y ago

Copies of your consciousness aren’t you.

herculity275 3y ago
That's about as meaningful as saying that your yesterday's self is not you. Once you apply the ship of Theseus to your higher brain function thoroughly enough things can get really weird.
rbanffy 3y ago
I would be very sad for them, but, then, if my brain is vitrified, I am past the ability of feeling sorry for anyone.
TheBlight 3y ago
You're making assumptions about the nature of this hypothetical future consciousness transfer system.

rbanffy 3y ago

> not having control over who wakes you up and how. I wouldn't worry about that at all. The odds of someone waking you up from cryostasis are very low.

cjohnson318 3y ago
The probability of waking up is low, but it still represents 50% of all possible outcomes at that point.
- rbanffy 3y ago
  I’d say there are billions of plausible outcomes that end in the victim not waking up and, at best, a dozen where they do. Of course, from the victim’s point of view, they always wake up. If they never do, at least they won’t feel disappointed.