22 ms·

Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

300 points by mlinksva 12y ago

techdragon 12y ago
So rare to hear about this kind of thing so "present tense" And is it just me or is it just a little bit funny to hear about an ALS patient getting frozen cryogenically right as the ice bucket challenge sweeps the globe... I dare say he's truly taken the ultimate ice bucket challenge!
- GFischer 12y ago
  I didn't know who he was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(cypherpunk) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(cypherpunk) "Hal Finney (May 4, 1956 – August 28, 2014) was a developer for PGP Corporation, and was the second developer hired after Phil Zimmerman. In his early career, he is credited as lead developer on several console games" "In January 2009, Finney was the Bitcoin network's first recipient transaction."
ericb 12y ago
I'm curious--in these cryopreservation arrangements, what is done to incentivize future people to resurrect you? Anyone know?
- cousin_it 12y ago
  Well, you make a contract and pay money to the company that cryopreserves you. They could screw you over after you die, but that would be bad for their reputation and they could be sued.
  - lincolnq 12y ago
    Yeah - more specifically, it's a nonprofit whose mission statement includes the mission to eventually restore to health all its patients. So, if you believe that nonprofits are generally going to at least try to achieve the thing they were created for, it would be surprising if they didn't try. http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/mission.htm http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/mission.htm
  - darkmighty 12y ago
    Well their reputation will only come into play once the first sucessful resucitations are shown (or shown possible), which is far into the future. This risk-reward disconnect is dangerous. Funny enough, he worked on Bitcoin, which may pave ways to Autonomous Corporations. In some time perhaps you could set a an autonomous corporation managing some funds in low-risk while delegating the surplus to payments conditioned on a "proof of conservation" of the body.
  - maaku 12y ago
    Not to mention that people working at Alcor are also members and believers in cryonics. They wouldn't screw you over because they wouldn't want anyone screwing them over when it's their time.
    - ericb 12y ago
      Not sure cryo-preservation employees are all "believers." http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ted-williams-frozen-head-batting-practice-cryogenics-lab-book-article-1.381985 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ted-williams-frozen...
      - maaku 12y ago
        The other side of the story: http://www.alcor.org/press/response.html http://www.alcor.org/press/response.html (Unless your point was that Larry Johnson isn't a believer, in which case touche. But he parted with Alcor a long, long time ago.)
- zheshishei 12y ago
  A legally binding contract might do it. Or, there might be some fund that accrues interest over time to pay for the procedure. If neither of those options exist, then I suppose the first people to be revived would be in the name of science ("Let's do it just to prove that we can.") Then, I suppose anyone who's revived after that would be useful from a anthropological/historical perspective. Imagine having firsthand sources from different time periods.
  - rblatz 12y ago
    A contract is only as good as your ability to enforce it. Who will be enforcing it on your behalf?
    - zheshishei 12y ago
      Of course. One possible source could be a family lawyer or descendants. I could imagine this being a viable method within 100 years, but beyond that, it might not be so reliable. The first method (contracts) is dependent upon people. The second method (money) is dependent upon your currency remaining relevant as well as finding some way of managing the fund. People and money are both fallible, but I included them for completeness. I personally think that the last two reasons are much more likely if we're talking about hundreds (or thousands) of years. At those intervals though, a more relevant question might be, "who would store and maintain the bodies?"
- lt 12y ago
  http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq01.html#patients http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq01.html#patients
- eudox 12y ago
  By the time we have the technology to revive cryopatients, that question will likely be "why not?".
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    Maybe reviving will be easy, but IMO the real hangup is power costs. Keeping someone in cryo has regular upkeep costs. That complicates matters a lot.
    - eudox 12y ago
      Liquid Nitrogen is one of the cheapest fluids on the planet. Dewars are refilled every week. If the supply of LN was cut, the LN on each dewar would take months to evaporate -- And the patients are stored upside-down, so the head is the last thing to reach thermal equilibrium. There is no electricity involved.
      - DonHopkins 12y ago
        A friend of mine who works for Alcor once converted somebody from full body to head only. They used a chain saw.
        eudox 12y ago
        IIRC, that was in 1983, when three TransTime patients were transferred to Alcor thanks to donations. There's a very interesting article written about it: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/postmortemexamination.html http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/postmortemexamination.html
    - dtech 12y ago
      I think you pay for those upfront. Similar to how todays Nobel prize money is still payed from money grown from Nobel's assets at the time of his death.
      - im3w1l 12y ago
- blake8086 12y ago
  There is a post on the front page right now http://www.gentweb.co.uk/wirerecorder.htm http://www.gentweb.co.uk/wirerecorder.htm about re-constructing some old wire recordings just to listen to the past. Imagine the opportunity to bring the person themselves back, instead of just audio. I think if technology advances sufficiently that it is "easy" and "cheap" enough, people will resurrect cryo-preserved patients just because it suits them to do so. If I had a button I could push that would bring someone who died in 1800 back to life, I would push it. I believe I'm not the only person who feels this way, either.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    You would only do it while it remained novel, though. When two or three people are cryopreserved, novelty is enough, but what about when thousands or millions are?
    - tonysuper 12y ago
      Then you do it out of a sense of duty to the past. People spend ages carefully preserving forks and other trinkets from the 1700s. Surely an entire person would be worth equal care, and a group of people more so.
      - meepmorp 12y ago
        > People spend ages carefully preserving forks and other trinkets from the 1700s. Surely an entire person would be worth equal care, and a group of people more so. Trinkets from a bygone era don't require medical care, housing, and feeding. Note, too, that historical preservation goes only so far - there's plenty of places where old buildings are torn down to make way for new ones. I have trouble seeing where frozen corpses are markedly more attractive to refurbish.
        danielweber 12y ago
        Trinkets also don't have agency. What if someone wouldn't want to be brought back to life? Trying another way, let's say the technology is created to bring Finney back, but it would only keep him alive for 4 hours, and after that there would be no chance of him ever returning. Would it be violating his beliefs for future-folk to bring him back for those 4 hours just because they want to hear what he has to say?
- nazgulnarsil 12y ago
  Once we've defeated death, reviving people who were preserved is the next logical step after saving everyone currently alive. Saving everyone who was not cryopreserved might not be possible, but will also be worth a shot.
  - tzs 12y ago
    > Once we've defeated death, reviving people who were preserved is the next logical step after saving everyone currently alive ...unless defeating death leads to a huge overpopulation problem and severe restrictions on producing new children. Then there will likely be a lot of popular opposition to reviving them. A revived frozen person first will need to have the condition that killed them dealt with. Then they will need training to be able to function at a basic level in society [1]. If we haven't got to a guaranteed basic income system or some other system that gets rid of the need for people to have jobs or live off welfare, there will probably be very few jobs that the revived person can be trained for. Other than exceptional circumstances, such as reviving someone who would have knowledge of historical interest, it is hard to see how reviving a frozen person would be better for the future people than letting someone have a child. I think Larry Niven's stories have it right--a given frozen person is far more likely to be broken up for transplant material than be revived whole in most potential future societies. [1] I'm assuming it will take us a fairly long time to get to the defeated death stage, and so it will be a very different world that the person is revived into.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - gress 12y ago
    Once we've defeated death, the incentive will be to reduce the population sharply and strictly control reproduction. Adding new people from amongst the dead will be the last thing on anyone's minds.
- michaelkeenan 12y ago
  If there were no government or Friendly AGI doing it for everyone, I imagine it would chain backward through time: those still alive who are friends and family of the cryo-preserved would resurrect them. Then, those people would know older cryo-preserved people, and would resurrect them. (Unless, I suppose, the cost were exorbitant and the cryo-resurrected didn't have the means. But this is a future, post-death, probably post-singularity world; it'd probably be a society of abundance.)
- jbarham 12y ago
  Well there is the old joke about the COBOL programmer who was cryogenically frozen: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/alex/cobol.html http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/alex/cobol.html
- SeoxyS 12y ago
  Self-interest. In order to preserve the continued success of the Alcor company. In order for people to continue buying cryogenic services, the company would have to be able to demonstrate that it's actually doing what it claims to do (keep the bodies frozen and stable). As soon as that stops, nobody would ever trust them with any business, ever. And as soon as revival is possible, it becomes the cheapest option, versus incurring the ongoing costs of preservation.
cousin_it 12y ago
In 2009, he described his experience with ALS in a poignant post titled "Dying Outside": http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ab/dying_outside/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ab/dying_outside/ . I'm very sad to see him go.
mef 12y ago
Interesting that someone would choose to be cryopreserved somewhere where there's no legal assisted suicide. Wouldn't your chances of being successfully revived improve if you got cryopreserved while still alive?
- PaulHoule 12y ago
  See this http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html
- eudox 12y ago
  Active shutdown is certainly preferable, but to the best of my knowledge is only legal in Switzerland.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    That's not called 'active shutdown', that's called murder. Unless you're very ill then it is called euthanasia. Why invent new words when we have perfectly serviceable ones?
    - murbard2 12y ago
      Actually that would be called homicide. And why use other words? Because words are loaded with connotation that may not apply to the circumstance.
    - scarmig 12y ago
      If we're going to quibble about terminology, I'd point out that "assisted suicide" would come a lot closer than "murder" to describe that situation. Of course, in the POV of someone who believes in cryopreservation as a way to save lives, preventing it is almost tantamount to murder--probably falling somewhere above negligent homicide, since you'd actively be preventing someone from saving their own life. I say that as someone who thinks the cryo-folks are deeply delusional about their technology.
      - 12y ago
NhanH 12y ago
On the topic of cryopreservation, to borrow a question from Scott Aaronson [1]: have you signed up for cryopreservation? And regardless of your answer, how do you defend yourself against the charge of irrationality? On one hand, it seems like a different version of Pascal's wager - if you can afford it, the upside is potentially far more beneficial than the downside. On the other hand, well, it is crazy... I can think of one reason for not doing it (personally): I don't necessary want to live in a society that can perform my revival. Not to say that there's anything wrong with that society, they would just be so far away from me that I can't fathom how that would be like. [1]: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=455 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=455
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  I would argue that cryopreservation is the belief in the increasing rate of scientific progress (which can measured and proven), and that it is far more rational than the tens of millions of people who attend church every Saturday or Sunday in search of salvation for their soul. As /u/dublinben mentioned, I'd give my entire wealth to have the opportunity to live in the future.
  - cjbprime 12y ago
    > I would argue that cryopreservation is the belief in the increasing rate of scientific progress (which can measured and proven) The problem is that you aren't just depending on future improvements in revival technology, you're depending on the current state of today's preservation technology (at the point you die). And today's preservation technology doesn't have a lot of evidence suggesting that it can work to successfully preserve a kidney, much less a brain.
    - eudox 12y ago
      Since you specifically mentioned kidneys: >In the summer of 2005, where he was a keynote speaker at the annual Society for Cryobiology meeting, Fahy announced that Twenty-First Century Medicine had successfully cryopreserved a rabbit kidney at -130°C by vitrification and transplanted it into a rabbit after rewarming, with subsequent long-term life support by the vitrified-rewarmed kidney as the sole kidney. This research breakthrough was later published in the peer-reviewed journal Organogenesis.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Fahy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Fahy [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15094092 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15094092
simonebrunozzi 12y ago
Thanks Hal Finney. You've done some good in the world. Hope to see you alive again.
amalag 12y ago
He is legally dead, so good luck bringing him back to life.
- maaku 12y ago
  Yes, because legal definitions impose their validity on the universe.
  - Coincoin 12y ago
    I think he was referring to the legal clusterfuck that happens when someone who is legally dead isn't actually dead. http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/10/no-youre-still-deceased.html http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/10/no-youre-still-decease... http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/08/feds-say-legally-dead-is-slightly-alive.html http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/08/feds-say-legally-dead-...
    - amalag 12y ago
      No I think they are stupid to try to bring back the dead.
      - maaku 12y ago
        Ok I'll feed a troll. You know they are dead, how? I guess once someone is declared clinically dead, it's a futile effort right? Then how do you explain this: http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/dead-40-minutes-man/2013/05/14/id/504351/ http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/dead-40-minutes-man/2013/05/1...
        amalag 12y ago
        So they are going to resuscitate the fellow after freezing him for 50 years?
        maaku 12y ago
        Yes. The brain undergoes fewer changes during 50 years at liquid N2 temperature than 40 minutes at room temperature. Next question?
declan 12y ago
This is sad news, but less sad than a funeral and cremation would have been. I met Hal in the 1990s via the cypherpunks list, where a young Julian Assange was also hanging out. Hal went on to work for PGP Corp. in its glory days, and was involved in the early stages of Bitcoin as well. He is (not was!) the consummate cypherpunk and extropian. A lot of those discussions have been lost to time, but here's a note from Hal that I posted to Politech in 1999 where he warned against building surveillance backdoors in Internet standards: http://seclists.org/politech/1999/Oct/24 http://seclists.org/politech/1999/Oct/24 "If the IETF sets the precedent of acceding to the wishes of countries like the US and Europe, it may find itself forced to similarly honor the desires of less open societies." And here's Hal responding to one of my Wired articles by pointing out the absurdity of the MPAA's claims against Napster: http://extropians.weidai.com/extropians.1Q01/3833.html http://extropians.weidai.com/extropians.1Q01/3833.html "Looking at it over the history of Napster the amount would have to run well into the quadrillions. Surely this would be the largest legal claim in history! I wonder if the record companies can present this figure with a straight face." I'll miss Hal. At least there's a very slim, but non-zero, chance he'll log back on again.
ogig 12y ago
In this post[1] Hal Finney writes about ALS and his involvement with bitcoin. Recommended read: [1]: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0
haakon 12y ago
:-( If you haven't read his post "Bitcoin and me", now is a good time. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0
FiloSottile 12y ago
It's fascinating, and personally a bit disturbing, to read about his death as an announcement of cryopreservation ("being cryopreserved now") instead of the sad news it is anyway ("died today"). Also the discussion here revolves around he coming back, not he leaving. Maybe it impresses me because he seemed so hopeful to be able to choose life in his post back then when he was diagnosed: "I may even still be able to write code, and my dream is to contribute to open source software projects even from within an immobile body. That will be a life very much worth living." http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ab/dying_outside/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ab/dying_outside/ I guess one can argue it is a good thing about cryonics, less mourning, more hope. Anyway, I'd like to write down a regular epitaph: Hal Finney (May 4, 1956 – August 28, 2014), second PGP developer after Zimmerman, first Bitcoin recipient, cypherpunk who wrote code.
- pron 12y ago
  > I guess one can argue it is a good thing about cryonics, less mourning, more hope. Not more so than in some other religions with their own versions of an afterlife. It all depends on your faith.
  - Retric 12y ago
    I find it interesting that cryonics and the singularity are both 'modern' religions with that are vary similar in tone to many past religions. They both seems reasonable on the surface, but don't really work if you dig down into the details. Much like all that new age QM BS uses a few of the right words without much substance.
    - pron 12y ago
      Interesting -- yes; surprising -- not at all. After all, religions (whether true or not (there's only one true religion but I'm not going to tell you what it is)) serve the same deep human psychological needs. What I find curious about most versions of an afterlife is this: they all describe life without death, and some (including singularity) describe a pure spiritual (non-corporal) existence. Each of these things on its own -- let alone together -- makes that existence in the afterlife distinctly non human. Whatever we're reborn as, it's no longer human, but somehow it's not only us, but us as we'd want to exist. Note how religions that believe in reincarnation are different in that respect: they promise a constant re-birth but always in (at least hopefully) human form.
strlen 12y ago
Here's an interesting discussion results about near-term studies on inducing hypothermia was a way to save gun shot victims from brain death: The article -- http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129623.000-gunshot-victims-to-be-suspended-between-life-and-death.html#.U_-QTB9aCpf http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129623.000-gunshot-v... HN discussion with some insightful commentary -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7477801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7477801
aerovistae 12y ago
The thing I don't understand is how circulating cryoprotectant chemicals through the brain doesn't destroy the tissue. How could anything other than blood safely circulate through the brain?
- 3am 12y ago
  As long as pressure, osmotic balance, pH, etc are in balance then it's not going to cause cellular trauma per se. Regardless of the fluid medium, a bigger problem is absence of oxygen is going to start the process of autolysis after cell death. Neurons are particularly vulnerable, which how people can become brain dead within 5-10 minutes under normal circumstances. The even bigger problem is cellular damage from the freezing process. Proponents of this sort of thing would say the "cryoprotectant" chemicals vitrify, so the massive small scale trauma from ice crystal formation is prevented. I'm not sure anything has ever been reanimated after this process, nor do I foresee a technology capable of allowing it. Finally, and maybe the biggest problem, it is hard to see technological cure for advanced ALS. It is a structure problem with demyelination causing the symptoms. Even if you could correct the underlying source of myelin cell death/inflammation, it's very difficult to imagine a restoration process that results in viable life. Anyway, probably more than you wanted to hear. This is just kind of sad, and reminds me this is a young forum on the whole that probably isn't too in tune with their own mortality (this is not directed at anyone, so I'd prefer nobody respond personally to it). He is dead, he lived well, there will be nobody else quite like him. edit: fyi, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_substitute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_substitute (though again, this differs because the cryopreserving fluid is selected because of its properties when freezing)
  - reasonattlm 12y ago
    Remyelination cell therapies for ALS are very much a viable work in progress today. They will exist within the next decade. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stemcr.2014.04.005 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stemcr.2014.04.005 Some people are working on organ preservation by vitrification and restoration. Not there yet, but promising work. There is no reason to think that this is impossible: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15094092 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15094092 As to technologies capable of restoring the cryopreserved, there are any number of works that propose very detailed descriptions of how it can be done with molecular nanotechnology. http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/2009/09/10/revival-of-cryonics-patients-literature/ http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/2009/09/10/revival-of-c...
jdnier 12y ago
Ancillary to the sad news, for a fictional treatment of cryopreservation (circa 1993) -- one that I couldn't help think about as I read that email/release -- Gregory Benford's novel, Chiller, works through many of the thought-provoking implications. http://www.gregorybenford.com/product/chiller/ http://www.gregorybenford.com/product/chiller/
- ajb 12y ago
  Bujold's Cryoburn may also be of interest: http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133948/1439133948.htm?blurb http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133948/1439133948.htm...
- geoelectric 12y ago
  Halperin's The First Immortal is damned near a written infomercial for Alcor, but is still a pretty interesting book in its own right in terms of exploring various cryonics scenarios. Edit: looks like it's available freely online: http://coins.ha.com/information/tfi.s http://coins.ha.com/information/tfi.s
- onan_barbarian 12y ago
  Attanasio's Solis also covers this topic without optimism; the protagonist's brain is used in a mining machine IIRC.
staunch 12y ago
I'm sad for him that we haven't progressed far enough to treat him. I'm glad he has a shot in the future.
dghughes 12y ago
Funny how the mind plays tricks I read that as cryptopreservation.
- scintill76 12y ago
  Maybe he has been uploaded into the Bitcoin blockchain to be preserved by virtue of the tens of thousands of independent copies maintained all over the world. On a more serious note, I expect to see tributes to Hal embedded in the blockchain.
donohoe 12y ago
Hey Hal, when you Google all of this and stumble across this old page I hope you find this note and get in touch for a drink. I'd love to hear your story!
- harshreality 12y ago
  Google? Is Alcor selling cryopreservation of companies now?
  - donohoe 12y ago
    I guess I meant it as a verb :)
rdl 12y ago
Hal Finney was one of the best people on the cypherpunks list -- wrote frequently, great developer, involved in some of the most interesting products of the past 30 years. He was also remarkably friendly and civil, even more amazing in a place like the cypherpunks list. A really great person, and will be missed. (but hopefully only for a few decades until the reverse-cryopreservation thing is worked out...)
pron 12y ago
I didn't know Hal Finney, but condolences to his family. Comparing different religions' various flavors of afterlife is very interesting, but perhaps this isn't the right forum for it (though maybe it is; I don't know). One thing is certain, though: cryonics's promise of an afterlife is definitely the most materially expensive of all religions -- on average, that is (some Christians spent what probably amounts to more than the cost of cryopreservation to expunge their sins). It is also the most strictly transactional since Catholicism prior to the reformation. The burial practice itself, however, bears a lot of resemblance to ancient Egyptian religion, and probably some other religions of antiquity.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 12y ago
  It's just a commoditization. Religion will charge what they think they buyer will be able to afford, cryopreservation companies charge what they think it should cost to get the problem pushed beyond their own lifetimes. It's a scam, but a very clever one, just like religion. The only mitigating factor to me is that the participants here go in eyes wide open rather than that they are sucked in as defenceless children.
  - pron 12y ago
    I think religion (and I include cryonics in that category for the purpose of this discussion) is far from being a scam as it most certainly provides immediate benefits that cannot be dismissed. I'm sure it makes people happy to pay a high price for effectively convincing themselves that their death is merely temporary, thus hopefully alleviating what may be a very burdensome dread. That money would otherwise be spent on alcohol, drugs or therapy, and may not be as effective.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      A common element in scams is that they make promises they can't deliver on and relieve people of their funds.
bryanstrawser 12y ago
I knew Hal back in the early days of remailing (94-96) where he ran several remailers and I had one nestled within the hidden confines of Indiana University (the gondolin remailer). He will be missed.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
WalterBright 12y ago
Hal was one year ahead of me, and the next dorm room over at Caltech. Hal was scary smart - but you had to get to know him for a while before you'd find that out. He was completely unpretentious, just a regular guy. And a great person - I never knew anyone who had anything but good things to say about Hal. It was a privilege to know Hal.
owenversteeg 12y ago
Black bar anyone? I think he is very worthy of one. Either way I just set my topcolor to 000000. Seems it doesn't take hex triplets.
- shocks 12y ago
  Maybe an ice blue.
cowmix 12y ago
Any time cryogenics comes up I'm reminded of this story from This American Life: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/354/mistakes-were-made http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/354/m...
Schwolop 12y ago
Hal Finney (May 4, 1956 – August 28, 2014 [probably])
letstryagain 12y ago
Hal Finney's ALS Ice Bucket challenge
jaekwon 12y ago
Oh, now I understand mummies.
ryan-c 12y ago
I'm surprised nobody has made the point that "death" is not a binary thing - it is a progression. If we consider a scale where "1" is alive (breathing, heart beating, higher brain functions working, etc) and "0" is when your brain has been unambiguously destroyed, we have a probability distribution of whether a person can be returned to "1". At one time if someone left "1" (e.g. heart stopped), that was pretty much it. Now we can often recover someone whose heart has been stopped for several minutes with little to no long term damage through medical intervention. A cryonic procedure pushes a person to a place on the scale where the probability distribution provided by current technology is a big fat zero. There is some hope that as technology advances that probability distribution will look favorable to the those frozen. We're pretty much just guessing about that last part though.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  It's good you're raising this point. There's the concept of information-theoretic death [0] that is the "0" extreme you mentioned. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death
  - ryan-c 12y ago
    Wikipedia's article on clinical death[0] seems to go into a lot of the boundaries involved and is worth a read. I have read about information-theoretic death before but forgotten the term. I first heard about Alcor quite along time ago (10-15 years), and have considered signing up, but haven't so far. As much as I'd love to cheat death I can't get over the feeling that having myself frozen would be a selfish and arrogant act. I worry that the world will continue to struggle with limited resources and wonder how people will feel if the technology to revive cryopreserved people becomes available but it's a struggle to provide the unambiguously living with food, water and shelter. That said, I find it difficult to fault those who choose to try to escape mortality. I would be interested to hear how people justify it from a resource allocation perspective. Perhaps we'll figure out how to do mind uploading and solve the problem that way? That's a whole other rabbit hole though, and there's plenty of potential for that to suck[1]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death 1. http://www.tomscott.com/life/ http://www.tomscott.com/life/
morpheous 12y ago
Sad, and in a way beautiful (I hope that's not an inappropriate word to use), at the same time. This man lived his life to the full, and faced the end of his life (as he has known it), with the courage of an adventurer. I must admit i had never heard of the man himself, although I do know of bitcoin. But I am humbled by how he is smiling in all of his pictures, despite his physical body slowly giving up on him; his wife constantly by his side, through thick and thin. I get the impression that Hal would have been a genuinely nice man to know. His life and the way he has faced his challenges head on is (should be) an inspiration to all.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Seeing people going all "cryonics is another religion" saddens me in a way. It's a tragedy that we've learned to accept mortality to the point that as a species we're not only unwilling to try and fix it, we're calling those few who try nutcases. Even if current cryonics won't work, how about focusing on trying to find another, better way to fix death, instead of throwing the towel and sneering?

300 points by mlinksva 12y ago

So rare to hear about this kind of thing so "present tense" And is it just me or is it just a little bit funny to hear about an ALS patient getting frozen cryogenically right as the ice bucket challenge sweeps the globe... I dare say he's truly taken the ultimate ice bucket challenge!

GFischer 12y ago
I didn't know who he was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(cypherpunk) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(cypherpunk) "Hal Finney (May 4, 1956 – August 28, 2014) was a developer for PGP Corporation, and was the second developer hired after Phil Zimmerman. In his early career, he is credited as lead developer on several console games" "In January 2009, Finney was the Bitcoin network's first recipient transaction."

ericb 12y ago

I'm curious--in these cryopreservation arrangements, what is done to incentivize future people to resurrect you? Anyone know?

cousin_it 12y ago
Well, you make a contract and pay money to the company that cryopreserves you. They could screw you over after you die, but that would be bad for their reputation and they could be sued.
- lincolnq 12y ago
  Yeah - more specifically, it's a nonprofit whose mission statement includes the mission to eventually restore to health all its patients. So, if you believe that nonprofits are generally going to at least try to achieve the thing they were created for, it would be surprising if they didn't try. http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/mission.htm http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/mission.htm
- darkmighty 12y ago
  Well their reputation will only come into play once the first sucessful resucitations are shown (or shown possible), which is far into the future. This risk-reward disconnect is dangerous. Funny enough, he worked on Bitcoin, which may pave ways to Autonomous Corporations. In some time perhaps you could set a an autonomous corporation managing some funds in low-risk while delegating the surplus to payments conditioned on a "proof of conservation" of the body.
- maaku 12y ago
  Not to mention that people working at Alcor are also members and believers in cryonics. They wouldn't screw you over because they wouldn't want anyone screwing them over when it's their time.
  - ericb 12y ago
    Not sure cryo-preservation employees are all "believers." http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ted-williams-frozen-head-batting-practice-cryogenics-lab-book-article-1.381985 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ted-williams-frozen...
    - maaku 12y ago
      The other side of the story: http://www.alcor.org/press/response.html http://www.alcor.org/press/response.html (Unless your point was that Larry Johnson isn't a believer, in which case touche. But he parted with Alcor a long, long time ago.)
zheshishei 12y ago
A legally binding contract might do it. Or, there might be some fund that accrues interest over time to pay for the procedure. If neither of those options exist, then I suppose the first people to be revived would be in the name of science ("Let's do it just to prove that we can.") Then, I suppose anyone who's revived after that would be useful from a anthropological/historical perspective. Imagine having firsthand sources from different time periods.
- rblatz 12y ago
  A contract is only as good as your ability to enforce it. Who will be enforcing it on your behalf?
  - zheshishei 12y ago
    Of course. One possible source could be a family lawyer or descendants. I could imagine this being a viable method within 100 years, but beyond that, it might not be so reliable. The first method (contracts) is dependent upon people. The second method (money) is dependent upon your currency remaining relevant as well as finding some way of managing the fund. People and money are both fallible, but I included them for completeness. I personally think that the last two reasons are much more likely if we're talking about hundreds (or thousands) of years. At those intervals though, a more relevant question might be, "who would store and maintain the bodies?"
lt 12y ago
http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq01.html#patients http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq01.html#patients
eudox 12y ago
By the time we have the technology to revive cryopatients, that question will likely be "why not?".
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  Maybe reviving will be easy, but IMO the real hangup is power costs. Keeping someone in cryo has regular upkeep costs. That complicates matters a lot.
  - eudox 12y ago
    Liquid Nitrogen is one of the cheapest fluids on the planet. Dewars are refilled every week. If the supply of LN was cut, the LN on each dewar would take months to evaporate -- And the patients are stored upside-down, so the head is the last thing to reach thermal equilibrium. There is no electricity involved.
    - DonHopkins 12y ago
      A friend of mine who works for Alcor once converted somebody from full body to head only. They used a chain saw.
      - eudox 12y ago
        IIRC, that was in 1983, when three TransTime patients were transferred to Alcor thanks to donations. There's a very interesting article written about it: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/postmortemexamination.html http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/postmortemexamination.html
  - dtech 12y ago
    I think you pay for those upfront. Similar to how todays Nobel prize money is still payed from money grown from Nobel's assets at the time of his death.
    - im3w1l 12y ago
blake8086 12y ago
There is a post on the front page right now http://www.gentweb.co.uk/wirerecorder.htm http://www.gentweb.co.uk/wirerecorder.htm about re-constructing some old wire recordings just to listen to the past. Imagine the opportunity to bring the person themselves back, instead of just audio. I think if technology advances sufficiently that it is "easy" and "cheap" enough, people will resurrect cryo-preserved patients just because it suits them to do so. If I had a button I could push that would bring someone who died in 1800 back to life, I would push it. I believe I'm not the only person who feels this way, either.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  You would only do it while it remained novel, though. When two or three people are cryopreserved, novelty is enough, but what about when thousands or millions are?
  - tonysuper 12y ago
    Then you do it out of a sense of duty to the past. People spend ages carefully preserving forks and other trinkets from the 1700s. Surely an entire person would be worth equal care, and a group of people more so.
    - meepmorp 12y ago
      > People spend ages carefully preserving forks and other trinkets from the 1700s. Surely an entire person would be worth equal care, and a group of people more so. Trinkets from a bygone era don't require medical care, housing, and feeding. Note, too, that historical preservation goes only so far - there's plenty of places where old buildings are torn down to make way for new ones. I have trouble seeing where frozen corpses are markedly more attractive to refurbish.
      - danielweber 12y ago
        Trinkets also don't have agency. What if someone wouldn't want to be brought back to life? Trying another way, let's say the technology is created to bring Finney back, but it would only keep him alive for 4 hours, and after that there would be no chance of him ever returning. Would it be violating his beliefs for future-folk to bring him back for those 4 hours just because they want to hear what he has to say?
nazgulnarsil 12y ago
Once we've defeated death, reviving people who were preserved is the next logical step after saving everyone currently alive. Saving everyone who was not cryopreserved might not be possible, but will also be worth a shot.
- tzs 12y ago
  > Once we've defeated death, reviving people who were preserved is the next logical step after saving everyone currently alive ...unless defeating death leads to a huge overpopulation problem and severe restrictions on producing new children. Then there will likely be a lot of popular opposition to reviving them. A revived frozen person first will need to have the condition that killed them dealt with. Then they will need training to be able to function at a basic level in society [1]. If we haven't got to a guaranteed basic income system or some other system that gets rid of the need for people to have jobs or live off welfare, there will probably be very few jobs that the revived person can be trained for. Other than exceptional circumstances, such as reviving someone who would have knowledge of historical interest, it is hard to see how reviving a frozen person would be better for the future people than letting someone have a child. I think Larry Niven's stories have it right--a given frozen person is far more likely to be broken up for transplant material than be revived whole in most potential future societies. [1] I'm assuming it will take us a fairly long time to get to the defeated death stage, and so it will be a very different world that the person is revived into.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- gress 12y ago
  Once we've defeated death, the incentive will be to reduce the population sharply and strictly control reproduction. Adding new people from amongst the dead will be the last thing on anyone's minds.
michaelkeenan 12y ago
If there were no government or Friendly AGI doing it for everyone, I imagine it would chain backward through time: those still alive who are friends and family of the cryo-preserved would resurrect them. Then, those people would know older cryo-preserved people, and would resurrect them. (Unless, I suppose, the cost were exorbitant and the cryo-resurrected didn't have the means. But this is a future, post-death, probably post-singularity world; it'd probably be a society of abundance.)
jbarham 12y ago
Well there is the old joke about the COBOL programmer who was cryogenically frozen: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/alex/cobol.html http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/alex/cobol.html
SeoxyS 12y ago
Self-interest. In order to preserve the continued success of the Alcor company. In order for people to continue buying cryogenic services, the company would have to be able to demonstrate that it's actually doing what it claims to do (keep the bodies frozen and stable). As soon as that stops, nobody would ever trust them with any business, ever. And as soon as revival is possible, it becomes the cheapest option, versus incurring the ongoing costs of preservation.

cousin_it 12y ago

In 2009, he described his experience with ALS in a poignant post titled "Dying Outside": http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ab/dying_outside/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ab/dying_outside/ . I'm very sad to see him go.

mef 12y ago

Interesting that someone would choose to be cryopreserved somewhere where there's no legal assisted suicide. Wouldn't your chances of being successfully revived improve if you got cryopreserved while still alive?

PaulHoule 12y ago
See this http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html
eudox 12y ago
Active shutdown is certainly preferable, but to the best of my knowledge is only legal in Switzerland.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  That's not called 'active shutdown', that's called murder. Unless you're very ill then it is called euthanasia. Why invent new words when we have perfectly serviceable ones?
  - murbard2 12y ago
    Actually that would be called homicide. And why use other words? Because words are loaded with connotation that may not apply to the circumstance.
  - scarmig 12y ago
    If we're going to quibble about terminology, I'd point out that "assisted suicide" would come a lot closer than "murder" to describe that situation. Of course, in the POV of someone who believes in cryopreservation as a way to save lives, preventing it is almost tantamount to murder--probably falling somewhere above negligent homicide, since you'd actively be preventing someone from saving their own life. I say that as someone who thinks the cryo-folks are deeply delusional about their technology.
    - 12y ago

NhanH 12y ago

On the topic of cryopreservation, to borrow a question from Scott Aaronson [1]: have you signed up for cryopreservation? And regardless of your answer, how do you defend yourself against the charge of irrationality? On one hand, it seems like a different version of Pascal's wager - if you can afford it, the upside is potentially far more beneficial than the downside. On the other hand, well, it is crazy... I can think of one reason for not doing it (personally): I don't necessary want to live in a society that can perform my revival. Not to say that there's anything wrong with that society, they would just be so far away from me that I can't fathom how that would be like. [1]: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=455 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=455

toomuchtodo 12y ago
I would argue that cryopreservation is the belief in the increasing rate of scientific progress (which can measured and proven), and that it is far more rational than the tens of millions of people who attend church every Saturday or Sunday in search of salvation for their soul. As /u/dublinben mentioned, I'd give my entire wealth to have the opportunity to live in the future.
- cjbprime 12y ago
  > I would argue that cryopreservation is the belief in the increasing rate of scientific progress (which can measured and proven) The problem is that you aren't just depending on future improvements in revival technology, you're depending on the current state of today's preservation technology (at the point you die). And today's preservation technology doesn't have a lot of evidence suggesting that it can work to successfully preserve a kidney, much less a brain.
  - eudox 12y ago
    Since you specifically mentioned kidneys: >In the summer of 2005, where he was a keynote speaker at the annual Society for Cryobiology meeting, Fahy announced that Twenty-First Century Medicine had successfully cryopreserved a rabbit kidney at -130°C by vitrification and transplanted it into a rabbit after rewarming, with subsequent long-term life support by the vitrified-rewarmed kidney as the sole kidney. This research breakthrough was later published in the peer-reviewed journal Organogenesis.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Fahy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Fahy [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15094092 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15094092

simonebrunozzi 12y ago

Thanks Hal Finney. You've done some good in the world. Hope to see you alive again.

amalag 12y ago

He is legally dead, so good luck bringing him back to life.

maaku 12y ago
Yes, because legal definitions impose their validity on the universe.
- Coincoin 12y ago
  I think he was referring to the legal clusterfuck that happens when someone who is legally dead isn't actually dead. http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/10/no-youre-still-deceased.html http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/10/no-youre-still-decease... http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/08/feds-say-legally-dead-is-slightly-alive.html http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/08/feds-say-legally-dead-...
  - amalag 12y ago
    No I think they are stupid to try to bring back the dead.
    - maaku 12y ago
      Ok I'll feed a troll. You know they are dead, how? I guess once someone is declared clinically dead, it's a futile effort right? Then how do you explain this: http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/dead-40-minutes-man/2013/05/14/id/504351/ http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/dead-40-minutes-man/2013/05/1...
      - amalag 12y ago
        So they are going to resuscitate the fellow after freezing him for 50 years?
        maaku 12y ago
        Yes. The brain undergoes fewer changes during 50 years at liquid N2 temperature than 40 minutes at room temperature. Next question?

declan 12y ago

This is sad news, but less sad than a funeral and cremation would have been. I met Hal in the 1990s via the cypherpunks list, where a young Julian Assange was also hanging out. Hal went on to work for PGP Corp. in its glory days, and was involved in the early stages of Bitcoin as well. He is (not was!) the consummate cypherpunk and extropian. A lot of those discussions have been lost to time, but here's a note from Hal that I posted to Politech in 1999 where he warned against building surveillance backdoors in Internet standards: http://seclists.org/politech/1999/Oct/24 http://seclists.org/politech/1999/Oct/24 "If the IETF sets the precedent of acceding to the wishes of countries like the US and Europe, it may find itself forced to similarly honor the desires of less open societies." And here's Hal responding to one of my Wired articles by pointing out the absurdity of the MPAA's claims against Napster: http://extropians.weidai.com/extropians.1Q01/3833.html http://extropians.weidai.com/extropians.1Q01/3833.html "Looking at it over the history of Napster the amount would have to run well into the quadrillions. Surely this would be the largest legal claim in history! I wonder if the record companies can present this figure with a straight face." I'll miss Hal. At least there's a very slim, but non-zero, chance he'll log back on again.

ogig 12y ago

In this post[1] Hal Finney writes about ALS and his involvement with bitcoin. Recommended read: [1]: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0

haakon 12y ago

:-( If you haven't read his post "Bitcoin and me", now is a good time. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0

FiloSottile 12y ago

It's fascinating, and personally a bit disturbing, to read about his death as an announcement of cryopreservation ("being cryopreserved now") instead of the sad news it is anyway ("died today"). Also the discussion here revolves around he coming back, not he leaving. Maybe it impresses me because he seemed so hopeful to be able to choose life in his post back then when he was diagnosed: "I may even still be able to write code, and my dream is to contribute to open source software projects even from within an immobile body. That will be a life very much worth living." http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ab/dying_outside/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ab/dying_outside/ I guess one can argue it is a good thing about cryonics, less mourning, more hope. Anyway, I'd like to write down a regular epitaph: Hal Finney (May 4, 1956 – August 28, 2014), second PGP developer after Zimmerman, first Bitcoin recipient, cypherpunk who wrote code.

pron 12y ago
> I guess one can argue it is a good thing about cryonics, less mourning, more hope. Not more so than in some other religions with their own versions of an afterlife. It all depends on your faith.
- Retric 12y ago
  I find it interesting that cryonics and the singularity are both 'modern' religions with that are vary similar in tone to many past religions. They both seems reasonable on the surface, but don't really work if you dig down into the details. Much like all that new age QM BS uses a few of the right words without much substance.
  - pron 12y ago
    Interesting -- yes; surprising -- not at all. After all, religions (whether true or not (there's only one true religion but I'm not going to tell you what it is)) serve the same deep human psychological needs. What I find curious about most versions of an afterlife is this: they all describe life without death, and some (including singularity) describe a pure spiritual (non-corporal) existence. Each of these things on its own -- let alone together -- makes that existence in the afterlife distinctly non human. Whatever we're reborn as, it's no longer human, but somehow it's not only us, but us as we'd want to exist. Note how religions that believe in reincarnation are different in that respect: they promise a constant re-birth but always in (at least hopefully) human form.

strlen 12y ago

Here's an interesting discussion results about near-term studies on inducing hypothermia was a way to save gun shot victims from brain death: The article -- http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129623.000-gunshot-victims-to-be-suspended-between-life-and-death.html#.U_-QTB9aCpf http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129623.000-gunshot-v... HN discussion with some insightful commentary -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7477801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7477801

aerovistae 12y ago

The thing I don't understand is how circulating cryoprotectant chemicals through the brain doesn't destroy the tissue. How could anything other than blood safely circulate through the brain?

3am 12y ago
As long as pressure, osmotic balance, pH, etc are in balance then it's not going to cause cellular trauma per se. Regardless of the fluid medium, a bigger problem is absence of oxygen is going to start the process of autolysis after cell death. Neurons are particularly vulnerable, which how people can become brain dead within 5-10 minutes under normal circumstances. The even bigger problem is cellular damage from the freezing process. Proponents of this sort of thing would say the "cryoprotectant" chemicals vitrify, so the massive small scale trauma from ice crystal formation is prevented. I'm not sure anything has ever been reanimated after this process, nor do I foresee a technology capable of allowing it. Finally, and maybe the biggest problem, it is hard to see technological cure for advanced ALS. It is a structure problem with demyelination causing the symptoms. Even if you could correct the underlying source of myelin cell death/inflammation, it's very difficult to imagine a restoration process that results in viable life. Anyway, probably more than you wanted to hear. This is just kind of sad, and reminds me this is a young forum on the whole that probably isn't too in tune with their own mortality (this is not directed at anyone, so I'd prefer nobody respond personally to it). He is dead, he lived well, there will be nobody else quite like him. edit: fyi, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_substitute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_substitute (though again, this differs because the cryopreserving fluid is selected because of its properties when freezing)
- reasonattlm 12y ago
  Remyelination cell therapies for ALS are very much a viable work in progress today. They will exist within the next decade. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stemcr.2014.04.005 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stemcr.2014.04.005 Some people are working on organ preservation by vitrification and restoration. Not there yet, but promising work. There is no reason to think that this is impossible: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15094092 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15094092 As to technologies capable of restoring the cryopreserved, there are any number of works that propose very detailed descriptions of how it can be done with molecular nanotechnology. http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/2009/09/10/revival-of-cryonics-patients-literature/ http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/2009/09/10/revival-of-c...

jdnier 12y ago

Ancillary to the sad news, for a fictional treatment of cryopreservation (circa 1993) -- one that I couldn't help think about as I read that email/release -- Gregory Benford's novel, Chiller, works through many of the thought-provoking implications. http://www.gregorybenford.com/product/chiller/ http://www.gregorybenford.com/product/chiller/

ajb 12y ago
Bujold's Cryoburn may also be of interest: http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133948/1439133948.htm?blurb http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133948/1439133948.htm...
geoelectric 12y ago
Halperin's The First Immortal is damned near a written infomercial for Alcor, but is still a pretty interesting book in its own right in terms of exploring various cryonics scenarios. Edit: looks like it's available freely online: http://coins.ha.com/information/tfi.s http://coins.ha.com/information/tfi.s
onan_barbarian 12y ago
Attanasio's Solis also covers this topic without optimism; the protagonist's brain is used in a mining machine IIRC.

staunch 12y ago

I'm sad for him that we haven't progressed far enough to treat him. I'm glad he has a shot in the future.

dghughes 12y ago

Funny how the mind plays tricks I read that as cryptopreservation.

scintill76 12y ago
Maybe he has been uploaded into the Bitcoin blockchain to be preserved by virtue of the tens of thousands of independent copies maintained all over the world. On a more serious note, I expect to see tributes to Hal embedded in the blockchain.

donohoe 12y ago

Hey Hal, when you Google all of this and stumble across this old page I hope you find this note and get in touch for a drink. I'd love to hear your story!

harshreality 12y ago
Google? Is Alcor selling cryopreservation of companies now?
- donohoe 12y ago
  I guess I meant it as a verb :)

rdl 12y ago

Hal Finney was one of the best people on the cypherpunks list -- wrote frequently, great developer, involved in some of the most interesting products of the past 30 years. He was also remarkably friendly and civil, even more amazing in a place like the cypherpunks list. A really great person, and will be missed. (but hopefully only for a few decades until the reverse-cryopreservation thing is worked out...)

pron 12y ago

I didn't know Hal Finney, but condolences to his family. Comparing different religions' various flavors of afterlife is very interesting, but perhaps this isn't the right forum for it (though maybe it is; I don't know). One thing is certain, though: cryonics's promise of an afterlife is definitely the most materially expensive of all religions -- on average, that is (some Christians spent what probably amounts to more than the cost of cryopreservation to expunge their sins). It is also the most strictly transactional since Catholicism prior to the reformation. The burial practice itself, however, bears a lot of resemblance to ancient Egyptian religion, and probably some other religions of antiquity.

deleted 12y ago
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jacquesm 12y ago
It's just a commoditization. Religion will charge what they think they buyer will be able to afford, cryopreservation companies charge what they think it should cost to get the problem pushed beyond their own lifetimes. It's a scam, but a very clever one, just like religion. The only mitigating factor to me is that the participants here go in eyes wide open rather than that they are sucked in as defenceless children.
- pron 12y ago
  I think religion (and I include cryonics in that category for the purpose of this discussion) is far from being a scam as it most certainly provides immediate benefits that cannot be dismissed. I'm sure it makes people happy to pay a high price for effectively convincing themselves that their death is merely temporary, thus hopefully alleviating what may be a very burdensome dread. That money would otherwise be spent on alcohol, drugs or therapy, and may not be as effective.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    A common element in scams is that they make promises they can't deliver on and relieve people of their funds.

bryanstrawser 12y ago

I knew Hal back in the early days of remailing (94-96) where he ran several remailers and I had one nestled within the hidden confines of Indiana University (the gondolin remailer). He will be missed.

deleted 12y ago

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WalterBright 12y ago

Hal was one year ahead of me, and the next dorm room over at Caltech. Hal was scary smart - but you had to get to know him for a while before you'd find that out. He was completely unpretentious, just a regular guy. And a great person - I never knew anyone who had anything but good things to say about Hal. It was a privilege to know Hal.

owenversteeg 12y ago

Black bar anyone? I think he is very worthy of one. Either way I just set my topcolor to 000000. Seems it doesn't take hex triplets.

shocks 12y ago
Maybe an ice blue.

cowmix 12y ago

Any time cryogenics comes up I'm reminded of this story from This American Life: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/354/mistakes-were-made http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/354/m...

Schwolop 12y ago

Hal Finney (May 4, 1956 – August 28, 2014 [probably])

letstryagain 12y ago

Hal Finney's ALS Ice Bucket challenge

jaekwon 12y ago

Oh, now I understand mummies.

ryan-c 12y ago

I'm surprised nobody has made the point that "death" is not a binary thing - it is a progression. If we consider a scale where "1" is alive (breathing, heart beating, higher brain functions working, etc) and "0" is when your brain has been unambiguously destroyed, we have a probability distribution of whether a person can be returned to "1". At one time if someone left "1" (e.g. heart stopped), that was pretty much it. Now we can often recover someone whose heart has been stopped for several minutes with little to no long term damage through medical intervention. A cryonic procedure pushes a person to a place on the scale where the probability distribution provided by current technology is a big fat zero. There is some hope that as technology advances that probability distribution will look favorable to the those frozen. We're pretty much just guessing about that last part though.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
It's good you're raising this point. There's the concept of information-theoretic death [0] that is the "0" extreme you mentioned. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death
- ryan-c 12y ago
  Wikipedia's article on clinical death[0] seems to go into a lot of the boundaries involved and is worth a read. I have read about information-theoretic death before but forgotten the term. I first heard about Alcor quite along time ago (10-15 years), and have considered signing up, but haven't so far. As much as I'd love to cheat death I can't get over the feeling that having myself frozen would be a selfish and arrogant act. I worry that the world will continue to struggle with limited resources and wonder how people will feel if the technology to revive cryopreserved people becomes available but it's a struggle to provide the unambiguously living with food, water and shelter. That said, I find it difficult to fault those who choose to try to escape mortality. I would be interested to hear how people justify it from a resource allocation perspective. Perhaps we'll figure out how to do mind uploading and solve the problem that way? That's a whole other rabbit hole though, and there's plenty of potential for that to suck[1]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death 1. http://www.tomscott.com/life/ http://www.tomscott.com/life/

morpheous 12y ago

Sad, and in a way beautiful (I hope that's not an inappropriate word to use), at the same time. This man lived his life to the full, and faced the end of his life (as he has known it), with the courage of an adventurer. I must admit i had never heard of the man himself, although I do know of bitcoin. But I am humbled by how he is smiling in all of his pictures, despite his physical body slowly giving up on him; his wife constantly by his side, through thick and thin. I get the impression that Hal would have been a genuinely nice man to know. His life and the way he has faced his challenges head on is (should be) an inspiration to all.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Seeing people going all "cryonics is another religion" saddens me in a way. It's a tragedy that we've learned to accept mortality to the point that as a species we're not only unwilling to try and fix it, we're calling those few who try nutcases. Even if current cryonics won't work, how about focusing on trying to find another, better way to fix death, instead of throwing the towel and sneering?