7 ms·

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

by ericb 12y ago

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.

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

by 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.