5 ms·

Ideally, the process of cryonically preserving someone's brain would be like an extreme form of the stasis we hope to be able to put people in for long space vo

by beloch 11y ago

Ideally, the process of cryonically preserving someone's brain would be like an extreme form of the stasis we hope to be able to put people in for long space voyages. You might be legally dead by today's standards, but just asleep in practice. This is where things get incredibly weird for cryonics. Any competent practitioner is going to amass a large number of people who are legally dead today, but may be viewed as "just sleeping" in the future. Where is the boundary between these two states? At what point do these frozen brains transition from specimens with no rights to human beings? Say that, in the not too distant future, the technology is invented to resurrect the frozen. At this point, the cryonics company will have something clearly different from medical specimens in their tanks. However, what if the resurrection tech is prohibitively expensive? Even at cryogenic temperatures there is atomic movement and, necessarily, slow and subtle degradation. Some frozen "sleepers" might not survive long enough for resurrection to become affordable enough for them, assuming the assets they set aside for resurrection weren't wiped out by bad investments. Do these doomed sleepers have any rights? Will the cryonics company be obligated to revive them at a loss? What if the company goes bankrupt? Could people be brought back as indentured "heads in jars" and expected to work off their debt? Will brains frozen today even have any skills or knowledge the future will want? Cryonics raises a lot of questions for the present and, potentially, even more problems for the future to solve.

Mahn 11y ago
Perhaps I'm too cynical, but if I had to guess I'd say cryonics companies don't give a damn about future ethical and/or legal implications as long as it's a profitable business as it stands today. I very much doubt they have plan on what to do with the brains or bodies they preserve, though I'd love to be proven otherwise.
- mhartl 11y ago
  On the contrary, such concerns are of paramount importance to cryonics organizations. A good place to start is the Alcor Patient Care Trust [1]: At Alcor, patient storage costs are paid from the Patient Care Trust. This conservative funding arrangement is designed to cover the cost of patient storage solely from the income from the Trust, thereby assuring that such funding will continue indefinitely into the future. The irrevocable Patient Care Trust is included under Alcor's tax-exempt status, but nevertheless is a separate legal entity that provides liability protection for these assets. This arrangement is one of the reasons our members have confidence in Alcor. It doesn't do any good to use the most advanced techniques to get our members into cryopreservation unless we can keep them there, as well as build capital to eventually fund revival and reintegration. Ongoing care for cryopreservation patients is the number one element of our purpose in being cryonicists, and financial protection for the patients is a critical component of this. There is no use in starting this possibly centuries-long project, if we don't do centuries-long financial planning. Providing this kind of protection through a conservative, long-term view of storage costs is one of the main reasons why cryopreservation costs so much. [1]: http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >On the contrary, such concerns are of paramount importance to cryonics organizations. Legally. Not ethically. Most business owners in this "industry" could not care less.
    - deciplex 11y ago
      Do you have some reason for believing this, or are you just being cynical? (Not that I have any particular problem with cynicism, rather I'm honestly curious.) I know of some serious breaches of ethics early in the history of cryonics, however I know of nothing that would besmirch Alcor in particular at least. If there is something I'd like to know about it.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        I feel like I have legitimate reasons, from everything I know about humanity and history, to start from a cynical standpoint, especially regarding certain areas. E.g. mails that announce me that I won some lottery. Random people offering to sell me cheap "authentic" Rolex on the street. Attempts to bring down some government to bring "democracy" to a country. Cryonics.
    - rictic 11y ago
      [citation needed]
      - coldtea 11y ago
        How about you bring me the citations that show that they care about morality in such a line of work? Or do you think assuming everybody is moral in every line of business is a baseline for how the universe is and everything more cynical is some sort of extra-ordinary claim? If yes, then you'd be surprised. That's the corollary to what P. T. Barnum said, that "there's a sucker born every minute". What they do, is sell hope to rich people, working at the inside edges of pseudo-science.
        11y ago

by beloch 11y ago

Mahn 11y ago

Perhaps I'm too cynical, but if I had to guess I'd say cryonics companies don't give a damn about future ethical and/or legal implications as long as it's a profitable business as it stands today. I very much doubt they have plan on what to do with the brains or bodies they preserve, though I'd love to be proven otherwise.

mhartl 11y ago
On the contrary, such concerns are of paramount importance to cryonics organizations. A good place to start is the Alcor Patient Care Trust [1]: At Alcor, patient storage costs are paid from the Patient Care Trust. This conservative funding arrangement is designed to cover the cost of patient storage solely from the income from the Trust, thereby assuring that such funding will continue indefinitely into the future. The irrevocable Patient Care Trust is included under Alcor's tax-exempt status, but nevertheless is a separate legal entity that provides liability protection for these assets. This arrangement is one of the reasons our members have confidence in Alcor. It doesn't do any good to use the most advanced techniques to get our members into cryopreservation unless we can keep them there, as well as build capital to eventually fund revival and reintegration. Ongoing care for cryopreservation patients is the number one element of our purpose in being cryonicists, and financial protection for the patients is a critical component of this. There is no use in starting this possibly centuries-long project, if we don't do centuries-long financial planning. Providing this kind of protection through a conservative, long-term view of storage costs is one of the main reasons why cryopreservation costs so much. [1]: http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html
- coldtea 11y ago
  >On the contrary, such concerns are of paramount importance to cryonics organizations. Legally. Not ethically. Most business owners in this "industry" could not care less.
  - deciplex 11y ago
    Do you have some reason for believing this, or are you just being cynical? (Not that I have any particular problem with cynicism, rather I'm honestly curious.) I know of some serious breaches of ethics early in the history of cryonics, however I know of nothing that would besmirch Alcor in particular at least. If there is something I'd like to know about it.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      I feel like I have legitimate reasons, from everything I know about humanity and history, to start from a cynical standpoint, especially regarding certain areas. E.g. mails that announce me that I won some lottery. Random people offering to sell me cheap "authentic" Rolex on the street. Attempts to bring down some government to bring "democracy" to a country. Cryonics.
  - rictic 11y ago
    [citation needed]
    - coldtea 11y ago
      How about you bring me the citations that show that they care about morality in such a line of work? Or do you think assuming everybody is moral in every line of business is a baseline for how the universe is and everything more cynical is some sort of extra-ordinary claim? If yes, then you'd be surprised. That's the corollary to what P. T. Barnum said, that "there's a sucker born every minute". What they do, is sell hope to rich people, working at the inside edges of pseudo-science.
      - 11y ago