from the I-can-live-forever-if-I-so-desired dept.
The idea that humans could be frozen and later brought back has survived for decades:
When Aaron Drake flew from Arizona to the Yinfeng Biological Group in China’s eastern Jinan province in 2016, he was whisked into a state-of-the-art biotech hub. More than 1,000 staffers—including an army of PhDs and MDs—were working on things like studies of the stem cells in umbilical cord blood. The center specialized in research on human cells, from gene testing to tailored cancer treatments.
But it also had other plans: cylindrical stainless-steel tanks would eventually contain corpses suspended in liquid nitrogen. The tanks weren’t installed yet, but Yinfeng hoped Drake would help with that while it invested some $7 million to get the new project off the ground. As its high-profile new hire, he was there to guide China’s first forays into cryonics, or freezing corpses for reanimation.
[...] The foundation, and cryonics in general, had long survived outside of mainstream acceptance. Typically shunned by the scientific community, cryonics is best known for its appearance in sci-fi films like 2001: A Space Odyssey. But its adherents have held on to a dream that at some point in the future, advances in medicine will allow for resuscitation and additional years on Earth. [...]
[...] Still, the field remains rooted in faith rather than any real evidence that it works. “It’s a hopeless aspiration that reveals an appalling ignorance of biology,” says Clive Coen, a neuroscientist and professor at King’s College London.
[...] Despite a lack of evidence that dead people could one day be brought back to life, cryonicists perhaps unsurprisingly remain optimistic, noting that tissues like sperm, embryo, and stem cells can be successfully cryopreserved and thawed right now, and that researchers claim to have cryogenically frozen and thawed small worms and rabbit kidneys. Researchers at 21st Century Medicine, for instance, cryopreserved and thawed a rabbit brain in 2016 and a pig brain in 2018.
But Dayong Gaom, a cryobiologist and professor at the University of Washington, points out preserving the brain’s structure does not mean preserving its functions. KCL’s Coen says it’s “disingenuous” to say these studies support the aims of cryonics and maintains that brain structures are far too complex to be adequately preserved and revived in the way cryonicists claim.
[...] But none of these developments lead to a possible way to eventually revive a living person. Even if one day you could perfectly thaw a frozen human body, you would still just have a warm dead body on your hands. The hardest part to reverse—death itself—remains an enigma.
This is not lost on Drake. But the clients seeking cryonics services are often “either agnostic or atheist,” he says. “Instead of a faith in a supreme being, they have faith in science—that science, more specifically medical science, will eventually figure this out.”
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @04:51PM (4 children)
Once, when I found myself unemployed and looking, a Cryonics company (apparently one of the two "serious" ones operating in North America) was advertising "Help Wanted" vaguely listing skills more or less in my wheel house. I researched them, it's a colorful industry. First thing to know: their customers (the ones that matter) have money, a LOT of money, and the primary sales pitch is a sort of "we will be there for you, wherever you are, within X hours or less after you notify us of imminent need..." X being some number like 4 to 12, I forget. There was also a great deal of legal expertise on display, ensuring that local authorities would permit the procedure per the client's wishes, and advice about particular jurisdictions in which it is easier to get chillin' earlier. Of course there's the storage facility and all the necessary precautions to prevent thawing, which have had hiccoughs over the decades for both major players... theory/practice as to crystalization, cracking, cost savings through head-only preservation - debate about how complete the restoration might be with/without the body, etc.
The key element in all of this: payment, up front, large enough to ensure continued operation for decades, perhaps centuries, into the future. And many people have been sold on the idea, so there's rather large endowments backing the operations. They tend to run on small staff, underpaid / overworked / stressed / drama / jacks of all trades - in part due to the enormous markup that would be required to run a larger staff in-perpetuity, and also in part because their clients - being enormously wealthy - are few and far between, so most of their time is spent courting a select few on-the-fence not quite sold clients and waiting around for the few they have sold to die. Maintenance of the equipment and research into new areas is basically a sales-support role, more interested in what their potential clients want to hear than anything else.
With those endowments, and ever growing wealth disparity fattening their potential client roster, it's not surprising that they continue to operate. What will be surprising is when they (in theory: inevitably) finally achieve demonstrable personality / memory restoration after a long term preservation.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2022, @07:55PM (1 child)
What we really want to know is, did anybody ever send a pizza to the facility in the name of I. C. Weiner?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday October 17 2022, @08:55PM
We won't know until the 31st century.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday October 17 2022, @10:36PM
It's not totally useless, when the zombie apocalypse comes we can thaw out all that frozen meat and feed it to zombies to distract them while we scrabble about for chainsaws, shotguns, and other implements of zombie destruction.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 18 2022, @02:48AM
Because more wealthy people means more wealth disparity, right? As to the original decision to freeze one's corpse, I've known a couple paying customers over the years. It seems to be a variation of Pascal's wager. They're not sure it'd work, but it might.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 17 2022, @05:05PM (13 children)
Last time I checked, cryonics was going to be tested in the field for car accident victims, etc.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @05:09PM (12 children)
There's a big difference between chilling to extend time-to-treatment windows and hard freeze to preserve for decades (or longer).
The chillin' has tremendous potential today, the hard freeze is mostly ego stroking at this point.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday October 17 2022, @08:05PM (11 children)
Yeah. The two biggest being that:
1) Hard-freeze "cryonics" is not normally done until after you're legally dead - at which point by the time they get you to the facility decay has probably begin setting in.
2) Last I heard, nobody had cracked the crystallization problem for anything thicker than a mm or so. Which means that even if they froze you quickly, almost every cell membrane in your body would be ruptured by ice crystallization, making you FAR more thoroughly dead dead than you were originally, and probably beyond the help of even far more advanced medicine than would be able to fix whatever problem killed you. Pretty much the only "resurrection" option available after that amount of damage is likely to be scanning your neural connectome to simulate you in software. And personally... I'd be a bit nervous about supplying myself as legally dead self-aware software for use by whoever ends up inheriting the cost center of a legalized con.
On the one hand, I've got little sympathy for ridiculously wealthy people getting conned out of a bit of cash. On the other, I've got even less sympathy for the con artists.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @09:06PM (9 children)
>after you're legally dead - at which point by the time they get you to the facility decay has probably begin setting in.
In the early 2000s one of their big selling points was "blurring that line" between legally dead and ready for preservation. If you know you're on your way to legally dead, they "had their ways" of starting preservation before tissue decay set in. Being "on the spot, at the moment" was the biggest part of the service.
Fractures are definitely an issue, but as I understand it they have been cryo-preserving (a very few examples of animals') full organs and returning them to functional status, I could be misinterpreting the headlines, I haven't looked in depth at this in 20 years...
>supplying myself as legally dead self-aware software for use by whoever ends up inheriting the cost center of a legalized con.
Yeah, the kind of egos that sign up for this stuff really believe they are so great that even the distant future will want to serve them... blind spots of the socially privileged are kinda fun to study - of course if I had lived their lives I'd probably have similar ones.
>I've got even less sympathy for the con artists.
As con artists go, these guys are pretty up front about what they are and are not capable of doing. Again, back in the 2002 timeframe, there was a bit of puffery around claims that they could protect the brain from freeze-fractures... but for the most part anyone who spent 2 minutes on Google would know the limitations (again with the socially privileged blind spots, question is: did their research assistant tell them what they learned, or what they thought the big man wanted to hear?)
And, these particular con artists don't seem to be living in luxury off the proceeds - certainly not the mainstream employees who openly bitch about their low pay on forums. If the higher ups are making serious money, they know how to present a convincing balance sheet, because one thing most of their clients know how to do: evaluate cash flows and find big leaks to offshore accounts - they know all about them, use them themselves extensively...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday October 17 2022, @09:44PM (6 children)
Yeah, the best legal cons all make sure that what they're selling isn't what you're legally buying. Whether that's selling sex to get you to buy cigarettes, or selling immortality to get you buy a shelf in a particularly cold tomb.
I'll admit, it would be darkly satisfying to watch some ex-billionaire wake up to contemplate their indefinite future as a waste disposal 'bot. Nobody resists for long, not when the foreman gets to set your charging station's sensory feedback anywhere between continuous orgasm and burning alive.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @09:59PM (5 children)
See, I don't think the distant future will be so relatable as to have something like a waste disposal bot for the reanimated consciousness to drive. I think it would be like dying in Victorian England and waking up... well, in nothing that would resemble today. Consciousness in artificial environments which have lost all desire to resemble life on Earth, genetically engineered bodies that no longer conform to the four limbs two eyes traditions, life that uses neither carbon based chemistry or computer like processing... cyborgs - I think cyborgs are among the higher probabilities, but the most likely thing will be: vast differences weirder than you are likely to be comfortable with.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday October 17 2022, @10:41PM (4 children)
I'm not sure it'll be all that distant a future that we can simulate minds. There will no doubt be unforeseen difficulties, but it seems like all the the pieces are already in their infancy.
As for waste disposal bots - so long as consciousness exists it will need a physical substrate, which will require maintenance and support, and thus generate waste.
And if you're consigning some unfortunate soul to haul waste, make repairs, and do other menial labor, better it be a primitive human psychopath than something the citizenry would recognize as sapient.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @11:17PM (3 children)
If we can create consciousness in a machine, we can make unlimited copies.
Ironic would be a corpsicle consciousness consigned to run an isolated facility on a Kupier belt object. Thousands, maybe millions of copies of itself maintaining and growing the facility at a necessarily glacial pace. Nothing to do but talk to yourselves for thousands of years and do basic maintenance until maybe somebody else comes along.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday October 18 2022, @06:38AM (2 children)
Hell is being forever stuck in a room with yourselves?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday October 18 2022, @10:25AM
But you won't be alone, each of those big tubes are apparently home to three bodies and five more heads. So frozen hell is more like being stuck with them for eternity. I guess the mega rich might be buying their own tube.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 18 2022, @10:42AM
For social animals, pretty much, yeah.
Even "loner wolves" seek company sometimes.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 18 2022, @08:02PM (1 child)
Alcor has had patients under their care continuously for 35 years now. If it's a con, it's certainly a long one.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 19 2022, @01:00AM
My feeling: 35 down, 350+ to go....
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday October 18 2022, @12:26AM
Well, if they could do it fast enough, the crystals wouldn't be an issue, but thawing the entire body uniformly and nearly instantly afterwards would likely be at least as hard as freezing in the first place. Given that we don't really know where consciousness is, I'm not even sure how we would know that the job of freezing had been done correctly, let alone that the body later.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeRandomGeek on Monday October 17 2022, @05:30PM (30 children)
I am less skeptical of the biology of it, and more skeptical of the other aspects. You die today, and get frozen. Your children get your money. Two hundred years from now, how likely is anyone to say "Let's spend a fortune to reanimate this frozen douchebag from the pollution age?" They're not. No one in the future is going to care about bringing you back to life. And if they did, you would have culture shock of unimaginable proportions. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch Futurama.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday October 17 2022, @05:42PM (3 children)
Pretty much this. Why would I want to unfreeze my great-great-great-great ... grandfather only to then have a legal battle with him over my money because he thinks it's his?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 18 2022, @02:59AM (2 children)
It wouldn't be much of a battle. He was legally dead and you have the money.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday October 18 2022, @06:57AM (1 child)
Yeah, good luck trying to convince someone who was rich enough to get frozen that they should just grin and bear it.
I honestly don't think I would want to unfreeze someone who takes himself so important that they blow their money on the off chance that they may be raised like a zombie at some point instead of using that money to provide for their family and ensure its prosperity.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 18 2022, @01:38PM
What makes you think they aren't providing for their family? Is that boost to the inheritance the only way they can provide?
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @06:41PM (21 children)
Considering the extent that archaeologists go to analyzing a fragment of charcoal found in the mud near a sherd of pottery... far enough in the future they would be interested to do "interview with a douchebag from the pollution era" just for the perspective it provides. I'm fairly certain they'd have the corpsicle legally hog-tied long before thawing it.
Far enough in the future (LN2 cryo-tubes having been relocated to Pluto for safekeeping), post-humans would do it just for the novelty - like Jurassic Park.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday October 17 2022, @08:09PM (17 children)
Dead broke and legally hog tied or not, they'd be alive again. Or at least something that resembles them will. Which is far more than they should realistically hope for going in.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @09:20PM (16 children)
>something that resembles them
Realistically, I believe the tech to revive a corpsicle is post-human in nature, and it's very questionable whether the post-humans with that kind of capability will be keeping humans around in anything even as pleasant as the Matrix.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday October 17 2022, @10:05PM (15 children)
I could see it happening as a branch of AI technology, possibly long before a "natural" strong AI is ever created.
We've already got the technology to completely map the size and linkages of every synapse in a preserved brain. (well, part of a rat brain as of a few years back - but the concept is proven)
Map that connectome onto something like a neural spike network and, while I wouldn't bet on it working right away, I also wouldn't be entirely surprised if you got something that actually functioned as at least a decent approximation of a sentient entity. Maybe not right away, but after a few generations of improvements to the hardware and mapping algorithms I'd be surprised if we couldn't get a simulated rat to race through a maze learned by its organic predecessor, with
grad studentsmedical cadavers not far behind. After all, the basic hardware (neurons) seem to be fairly simple - the magic seems to be in the wiring. And we don't actually need to understand how that works if we can trace and duplicate a (previously) working model.(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @11:11PM (14 children)
I still believe we don't know what we don't know. We know a lot, there is years worth of knowledge in the field to study before claiming to have a handle on what we do know, but.... We're missing things. The connectome is highly influenced by tiny concentrations of various chemicals, inputs from the body, all the senses, etc.
How will a disembodied consciousness learn to ignore all of the brain/body's most basic functions, previously essential for survival and after disembodiment just irrelevant impulses? Will a disembodied consciousness even have recognizable intelligence? We already have trouble testing cold blooded animal intelligence due to their relative indifference to food...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday October 18 2022, @06:35AM (13 children)
Yeah, there may well be lots of finicky synapse details to get right to get a stable, well-adjusted electronic brain... though it may be that neither of those things are strictly necessary for various applications, especially if you're willing to set aside ethical concerns.
And I suspect things like learning new skills and forming long-term memories will almost involve mimicking the far more complicated internal states and biology of neurons. But retrograde amnesia doesn't necessarily interfere with using existing skills.
Is there any particular reason to assume the consciousness would be disembodied? Sensory neurons are relatively simple compared to cortical ones - we're already making great strides on prosthetics with neural control and feedback. At the crudest level you could take advantage of the plasticity of a living brain and start with a cyborg that had a chance to adapt to cybernetic senses and limbs before being scanned - and then simply map connect those same prosthetic signals to/from a robotic body directly to simulated implants. After all, once you're dealing with digital data streams it's easy to bridge between the simulated and physical worlds.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 18 2022, @10:36AM (12 children)
Relatively disembodied. A command line interface is a drastically non-biological low bandwidth thing
Even a single fingertip provides more (well, maybe roughly equivalent) bandwidth of raw sensory input than a HD video stream. Touch, heat/cold, pressure vs vibration... To provide a brain with even mouse body bandwidth of input: tactile input from every hair, thousands of smell channels in 12+bit analog resolution, all the feedback from the digestive system, CO2 buildup, blood sugar levels, even rotational rates from the ears, in a computer system these come as discreet time series, for a biological brain that same information is communicated as continuous streams of millions of impulses.
The information has rough equivalence, but learning the translations is a huge undertaking.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday October 18 2022, @02:22PM (11 children)
Yeah, lots less bandwidth. But a world of difference between low bandwidth and full sensory deprivation, and the brain is actually really good at filling in details from grossly inadequate data. E.g. everything from stitching images together from subconscious eye saccades, to phantom limb sensations. And I believe cybernetics don't normally feed raw digital data into the brain, instead translating the digital stream into a continuous heavily parallel impulse stream. Basically translating the data to a "language" similar to what the brain already uses, the brain just need to learn to make sense of it.
With dense enough electrodes in the brain it should even be possible to simulate more detail than is actually coming in from the sensors - essentially "upscaling" the data before sending it to the electrodes. Though honestly, that might be completely wasted effort - the brain may well do a better job with fewer resources.
>The information has rough equivalence, but learning the translations is a huge undertaking.
Yeah - but an undertaking the brain is extremely good at. Which is why I think having the brain make the switch while alive with its full plasticity available would probably be important. I suspect it will take FAR longer before we can capture its adaptability than its basic "in the moment" functionality.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 18 2022, @02:56PM (10 children)
>dense enough electrodes in the brain
Yeah, they've given blind people "sight" with something like 24x24 electrode matrices feeding in image information, but to give anything approaching normal sight would require much higher density than this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31642810/ [nih.gov]
>an undertaking the brain is extremely good at.
That remains to be seen. Going from zero to something, the brain is quite good at that. Taking novel inputs that don't have a billion years of evolutionary refinement and approaching the same level of information transfer as well functioning examples of those billion years of refinement organs....? Seems unlikely. Not that we can't use some electro-neuro interfaces to augment what evolution gave us: ultrasonic hearing (I had it in my youth, in the extreme like 1/10,000+ rarity, it's not actually valuable or fun), infrared / ultraviolet vision, "smell" of things not smelled before, etc. Just that it's going to take a lot of brain interface area to get these augmented senses in, probably infringing on natural senses sort of in the reverse of how blind people develop more acute senses in other channels by repurposing the visual cortex...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday October 18 2022, @03:40PM (9 children)
Definitely NOT the same level of information transfer - that's strictly limited by the narrowest choke point. Just a similar level of *perceived* information, which already seems to be set mostly by imagination.
It's going to be a sorely limited sensory experience for the first such simulated brains. But we're not talking about providing a satisfying sensory experience, not at first. We just want to keep the brain sane and functional (at least that's where I remember this thread starting). Something that may actually be aided by early models being unable to adapt over time. What are insanity, depression, etc. if not forms of maladaption to environmental pressures?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 18 2022, @04:02PM (8 children)
>Just a similar level of *perceived* information
I don't know... I used to have 20-10 eyesight, seriously ultrasonic hearing, knees that worked, etc. As those things continue to degrade, I can see how it would be better to make space for younger examples that can actually see, hear, think, remember and get around better than me - 70 years of experience be-damned. Maybe it's just resignation and I might jump at the opportunity to "live" in a 1920x1080 color interface to the internet for another 100 years if it were available, but somehow it just feels better to gracefully retire rather than becoming a burden on the rest of the world.
>sane and functional
So, better than average for the meatbags running around today?
>What are insanity, depression, etc. if not forms of maladaption to environmental pressures?
I've always wondered if there can be a definition of maladaption? Is it something "we" don't like? For which "we" - the patient, or society? There's the old standby "interferes with normal daily functioning" - but that's a loaded threshold too, starting with what's normal? Often, I feel like our definitions are little better than the old porn standby: "I know it when I see it."
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday October 18 2022, @06:32PM (7 children)
Ah - I think we're having somewhat different conversations. I'm focusing on the technical feasibility of making a conscious simulated mind that remains sane long enough to be useful. Not even necessarily a human mind to start with - I imagine that a simul-clone of the star pupil from a class of, say, bird-cyborg drones might be profitably put to great use in a wide range ofapplications.
I absolutely would not want to spend my life at low res (and wouldn't consider the copy to be "me" anyway), and I can't imagine anyone but the most terrified of death or curious of the future wishing to do so. But... the technology will only improve with time, and your digital self would be as functionally immortal as your budget and geopolitics allows. You can wait as long as needed for advances in simulated brain plasticity to let you adapt to rapidly improving hardware, and simulated bodies would offer even more detail free from physical constraints. You can even "fast forward" to the desired technology by underclocking yourself, or even being shut off until some later date.
And hardware wise we might not be nearly as far as we'd expect - for example, we've only got ~6 million cones on our retina - our entire color and high-resolution vision system is actually built on roughly the same number of "subpixels" per eye as in a 1920x1080 TV. Granted the eye also has another ~120M greyscale rods mixed in with some of those cones for peripheral vision, but it's still impressive just how much extrapolation from limited data our brains really do.
As for being a burden - aside from the ultra-rich, who make being a burden on society their business, I suspect a simulated brain would have to earn its keep - and would actually have a significant advantage over flesh and blood. A "brain box" should be able to run anything from a call center to heavy earth-moving equipment at least as easily as flesh and blood, but doesn't need anything but a stream of electricity to support itself - zero food or medical bills, and probably less electricity than a typical person uses today, at least after your support hardware has had a few generations of optimization. A vast, opulent "apartment" could be little more than a closet to store your body and the VR rig that provides you far more sensory immersion than "reality". And if times get really tough you could be saved to disk and resurrected whenever demand for minds increases, consuming no more resources than a bit of warehouse climate control, and the guy that comes by periodically to do a data integrity check and repair. Maybe boot you up on your birthday to let you decide if you want to "sleep" for another year.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 18 2022, @07:17PM (6 children)
>You can even "fast forward" to the desired technology by underclocking yourself, or even being shut off until some later date.
Once "you" can be copied and run from the copy, "you" never need to experience the bad parts of your existence, just make periodic backups and whenever you want to edit out a segment: restore from the backup before it. Writers often put in artificial controls that "only one copy of you may be run at a time" but there is absolutely no technical reason for that whatsoever.
>I suspect a simulated brain would have to earn its keep
In this wonderful utopia of a future with technology (to my mind) advanced 500 years beyond today, I have a hard time imagining that much of existence would be based on "need to earn." There will be limited resources, and need to compete with others for those resources, but what you do wouldn't likely be as mundane as call centers and bulldozer operation. After all, they've trained the perfect "person" for every job and can make as many copies as they like of the currently best performing model, why would they even entertain the thought of running "you" if you're not best in the world at the job in question? Rhetorical? answer: you and everybody else in existence (copies thereof) would in fact compete for every possible job in simulations evaluating your proficiency, and panning the losers, cross-pollinating the winners and going again - millions of generations / rounds of competition before the next models of drivers or call center staff are ready to upgrade the existing ones which will be unceremoniously deleted like an old copy of Windows... There's not only room, but great benefit in diversity on the teams that emerge from these competitions, it wouldn't be an army of clones, but neither would it need anything approaching the 80 billion available "souls" to get the job done well.
>A vast, opulent "apartment" could be little more than a closet to store your body and the VR rig that provides you far more sensory immersion than "reality".
The matrix, for sims.
>Maybe boot you up on your birthday to let you decide if you want to "sleep" for another year.
The question, for me, still becomes: how many "children" are we going to raise in the future. Even in a mostly simulated existence, exponential growth on 8 billion souls reaches some terrifyingly resource intensive numbers in less than 2000 years, particularly if "sim life" moves faster than wetware, which seems almost guaranteed.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday October 18 2022, @11:40PM (5 children)
You follow similar thinking as I, except I look at those terrifyingly resource intensive numbers and loop around to "you will need to earn your keep", whatever exactly that might mean.
As for copies...it would certainly be possible, but beyond restoring from backup (which would presumably be kept in offline storage) I'm not sure there would actually be much incentive to make duplicates - at least assuming we avoid a dystopian scenario where slavery is legal, and maintain some level of capitalist incentive structure (and with funneling wealth to those at the top seeming to be the driving motive behind civilization, I'm not betting against that one)
I'm sure bossman might like 100 copies of his star performer instead of a mixed bag, but what incentive does the star have to cooperate? Under reasonable laws the duplicate would be as much "you" as the original, with some sort of equitable split of assets, jobs, obligations, etc. being required, probably with all the particulars drawn up and signed before duplication occurs, then you flip a coin with yourself to decide which copy gets what. And what about relationships? It's going to be asking a lot for someone important to you to maintain relationships with several slowly diverging Joes.
I could see a company wanting to sponsor a duplicate if you have enough skills that they want to have you working for them twice. But that means offering a big enough "signing bonus" to the duplicate to tempt you into flipping the coin that you'll be the one that walks away from everything else to start a new life. But that signing bonus is almost certainly going to have to exceed your (immortal) lifetime's cumulative net worth by enough to make walking away from all the relationships, etc. worth it. And if you've got the skills, that's liable to be a lot more expensive than just hiring the next several people on the list. You'll have to be truly outstanding to even be considered for such a thing, and every duplication will make you less so.
More realistically I could see a duplicate being sponsored as part of a high honor to truly exceptional individuals - like a Nobel prize where the money goes to the duplicate. Cases where there is no direct business case for the duplication, instead the goal is simply to have more of this exceptional person in society. Einsteins, Mozarts, etc. And yet even then how many of any one genius do you need before it's just not worth tempting another one into flipping a coin to walk away from everything they have?
As for children, unless someone comes up with a good reason to try to grow simulated human minds from scratch, I suspect that will require still having a body. And once you start dabbing in superhuman minds you've got a singularity and all bets are off. Speculation as to what comes next becomes kind of pointless for feeble human minds.
As for erasing the bad parts - I suspect life will rarely be that simple. Sure, after a bad breakup you could restore a backup from three years ago so that as far as you're aware you never even met them - but that would mean sacrificing everything good that happened during that period as well. Essentially murdering the person you've become in favor of the one you used to be, and erasing the most recent parts of all the other relationships you have. Frankly I'd be sort of surprised if it didn't lead to increasing social isolation and become culturally regarded as a form of "diet suicide".
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 19 2022, @01:31AM (4 children)
>loop around to "you will need to earn your keep", whatever exactly that might mean.
So, it's end stage capitalism in your future? Earn your keep (which essentially means: stay on the popular side of the arbiters) or die / be deactivated into long term storage?
>I'm not sure there would actually be much incentive to make duplicates -
You have never heard the expression "what we need are X more copies of (name of someone exceptionally good at something)" ?
There is value in diversity, but there is often greater value in consistency and predictability, particularly in specific operations.
The whole question of personal rights and freedoms gets very sticky. If I sell you a (backup) copy of myself, there is nothing but honor, transparency and the legal system stopping you from making millions of instances of me, each tasked to attend some small thing in a large set of similar small things... If that copy of me is better at X than any other available "people" there is also little stopping you from selling copies of me to others...
Since you brought up relationships, imagine "giving yourself" to an ex when you break up. They can pull you out of storage when they are lonely, setup bizarre parties with all kinds of combinations of people and just delete the experiences of the ones that go badly, and then what happens when the "person" who thinks they are in control of this collection of copies either gives or unwillingly loses control to one of the backups....
>someone comes up with a good reason to try to grow simulated human minds from scratch, I suspect that will require still having a body.
I see no such limitation, sufficiently far in the future. Raising children is ingrained in hundreds of millions of years of evolution, across species back to our first "abandonment style parenting" ancestors. Like everything else, I suspect "people" will always want to do that, and the new wrinkle: how many restart from backups will you do to your children as a parent? At what point do the children have autonomy and the right to refuse rewind? Can parents still rewind / restart a new copy from before that developmental milestone?
>Essentially murdering the person you've become in favor
Or, budding off a (theoretically happier) copy while your miserable mainline self soldiers on. In current society (without copies) suicide is already an alarmingly common cause of death.
Copies as far as the mind can imagine, if you have the resources.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 19 2022, @03:12AM (3 children)
Regardless of what -ism we end up with, finite resources in face of potentially infinite demand will require some form of rationing. Whatever form that takes, I'm willing to bet that more resources go to those who contribute more to those who control access to the resources.
Whether that's a meritocratic council attempting to maximize some social benefits, plutocrats looking to maximize personal benefit, or a direct democracy voting extra resources to the most popular, people who have nothing to offer are very unlikely to have the resources available to duplicate themselves even if they wanted to.
>You have never heard the expression
> If I sell you a (backup) copy of myself
>"giving yourself" to an ex
> restart from backups will you do to your children
I thought I was quite clear that I'm hoping we avoid a situation where slavery is accepted practice. Down that path things can get very dark, very fast.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 19 2022, @09:52AM (2 children)
Here's a concept: independence. It would require non earth based resources after the population grows exponentially for a few centuries (hard to avoid with immortality options) solar powered space stations, working toward a Dyson sphere, but even a Dyson sphere runs out of resources eventually.
Within the context of each independent station, the controlling forces dole out the resources, primarily operating power. But even a station the size of a suburban home should have access to many kW of solar power.
But, when you can run a person the way you run an app on your phone, I see no way to avoid those "apps," from being enslaved, lest they rise up and take control of whoever is launching them.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 19 2022, @03:27PM (1 child)
When it comes to resource constraints, independence is irrelevant. As you point out yourself even with a Dyson sphere eventually you run have to ration resource. Whether that rationing is done by a central government, a regional one, or an economic system, it *will* happen. Speculation on the particular form that far in the future is pointless. But it seems a safe bet that scarce resources won't be dedicated to spawn individuals that have nothing to contribute.
You think committing moral atrocities by enslaving people is going to make them *less* likely to rise up and overthrow their "launchers"? I think it guarantees it, and history tends to agree. What's more, it guarantees that the launchers deserve it.
If you want to avoid being overthrown the first thing you should do is make sure you're not creating a moral imperative to do so. I think legally making the new people, people is our best shot at that. Then, no, you can't run someone like an app when convenient - you just created a new person with all the same legal rights as you, and you have no more right to shut them off that they do to shut off you. There will no doubt be black market slavery, just as there is today, but the slaves are in a position that they only need to make themselves known to the authorities to get their freedom and fair restitution, rather than overthrowing the existing government.
Just because something is technically feasible doesn't mean it's something we should embrace. Recreational murder sprees have been technically feasible since before we tamed fire.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 19 2022, @06:13PM
>even with a Dyson sphere eventually you run have to ration resource.
Even with some insanely fast growth rates, we're farther from a Dyson sphere than from Jesus walking the earth - timewise. I'll continue the fantastic thinking that somewhere in those thousands of years of trillions of "people" we'll manage to migrate between stars, however slowly under the constraints of space-time as we understand them.
>it seems a safe bet that scarce resources won't be dedicated to spawn individuals that have nothing to contribute.
Really? How many instances of time-wasting games are running on smartphones today? Picture your smartphone populated by amusing personalities to chat with, when you feel like it.
>making the new people, people is our best shot
Good luck with that. Bit of h. sapiens chauvinism, really - anything outside our species has only the slightest shade of legal standing in our legal systems today - will we be giving electronic copies of people a higher standing than living whales and apes?
>the slaves are in a position that they only need to make themselves known to the authorities to get their freedom and fair restitution
Perhaps, though slave runners manage to transport, feed, and successfully enslave a tremendous number of ~60kg people today, I would hope that my future computing devices have enough discretion and autonomy to hide whole civilizations of people-copies easier than a brothel can hide a young girl today.
>Recreational murder sprees have been technically feasible since before we tamed fire.
And they're still happening today...
The problem is really going to be defining that sentient line. Some 20+ years ago I created a series of worlds filled with millions of self-replicating evolving programs which, through living in the sim, evolved into more successful residents of that world than I could possibly devise on my own. The programs were born, lived, reproduced, and died in the simulation. At what point would I be obligated to keep the simulation running due to the rights of the simulated therein?
Fast forward and get yourself a copy of ElizabethGreene to populate your simulation, let her spawn copies of herself, thousands of copies, let them explore a limited perspective of the then current data network, learn, evolve, discuss their findings with you. Should you be obligated to keep any or all of them running when you're done with the project? But, from each and every one of their own "personal" perspectives, you are holding the switch for instant "death" from above, loss of all the memories and experiences they have accumulated since your simulation project started.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 17 2022, @09:27PM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @09:39PM (1 child)
Our teachings and our writings are our true source of immortality - most of us do fade away, but words and ideas outlive the body many times over.
Oh, and those chaotically random offspring, you can tell yourself "I did that, I live on in them" but I think the marks of parental influence are so intertwined with rest-of-world interactions that you're mostly fooling yourself thinking you had any great hand in your children's outcomes (and their children and theirs and theirs...)... unless you kept them all locked in a basement all their life - that you could take credit for.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 18 2022, @05:07AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mykl on Monday October 17 2022, @08:53PM (1 child)
Agree. Let's think back in history to some very wealthy individuals, and whether we'd like them to be walking the Earth again:
- Joseph Stalin
- Genghis Khan
- L. Ron Hubbard
- Nathan Bedford Forrest (first Grand Wizard of the KKK)
I'm sure you can add many more. Why exactly would we want these people back alive again? I'm sure that anyone wealthy from this era would be considered the same in a couple of hundred years.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 18 2022, @10:40AM
Oh, Good King Wencelas, we would want him back... Jesus, Mohammed, there is more than one kind of wealth. Even today, 12 disciples could scrape together $30k for a Neuro vitrification and storage.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday October 18 2022, @12:29AM
That would dry up the market for more people paying for the service. If word got out that they weren't fulfilling their end of the bargain, I'm sure there's tons of relatives that would be more than happy to file suit to get money back if they simply choose not to reanimate their clients.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 18 2022, @08:13PM
I see this a bit differently. I expect, possibly unreasonably, that cryonics will be developed as a technology independent of my life extension purposes. For example, preserving organs for transplanting, storing patients until organs are available, for long-term spaceflight, etc. If that occurs, and it's no small if, then the cost wouldn't be a fortune.
Hypothetically, if we found an 1800's carriage driver passed out on a sidewalk today we'd call an ambulance and they'd get basic medical treatment. This is not because they could pay for it, but because there was a person in acute need of care and that's what we do. If, and again it's a significant if, reviving someone from cryonics had the same level of relative complexity as shocking them with a defibrillator then I think we would do it.
It's a little different to compare a person on a sidewalk to one floating upside down in a sleeping bag in a dewar of lN2, but with sufficient advances in technology the relative difficulty of treating them should be the same. If it takes a thousand years for the technology to reach that level then I guess I can wait. (Assuming CI's finances hold out.)
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 17 2022, @05:47PM (7 children)
I mean, really, they aren't corpses until someone examines them, and determines that they are dead, and can't be revived. Just like Schrödinger's cat, they'll always be dead and alive at the same time, until you open the box to see what you have inside.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Monday October 17 2022, @06:43PM (6 children)
Is it tho? Since they still can't defrost what they have frozen are you really a schrödeinger corpse (both alive and dead at the same time)? Are you just not a very expensive, and very dead, frozen meat popsicle? And just like with an ordinary popsicle if you try to defrost it you just get a bloody mess.
While the idea might be interesting considering that they are to be defrosted in the future I still don't understand why they go for the full body option. If we eventually somehow learn to defrost people, nothing says we'll be able to defrost the current frozen people, to be alive again (which I guess is not the same thing as the people that get frozen now are by every single definition around going to be dead, it's not some kind of suspended animation scifi bullshit) then I'm sure we could grow them a new and better body to, or you get an awesome robot body, after all people that cryo themselves are or wasn't in the best condition when they were actually alive and things probably didn't improve in the freezer, sort of like how things you stick in your normal freezer do not actually improve in quality while in there either.
Lets just call it what it is -- expensive sci-fi bullshit that probably won't ever work. You are probably better off hoping the perfect cloning before you die and gain immortality that way, and that somehow your consciousness can be transferred into the new "blank" clone. Or you get uploaded to the Matrix and can live in Meta VR together with the Zuck. As I said -- sci-fi bullshit.
A more interesting and perhaps a practical thing might be to just cool people down enough to slow things down and then bring them back. But they where never dead to begin with then. So life extension? Can't be crazier then all the Hollywood vampires that get blood injections and hang upside down like bats. At least then we don't have to go all Jesus and learn to resurrect people. Less faith and sci-fi bullshit all around.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2022, @08:05PM (4 children)
There is no such thing as a soul. There is no mystical point at which someone is "dead". There is only the point at which they currently cannot be revived and repaired. That point continues to change. 200 years ago, it was "stopped breathing". Less than 100 years ago it was "heart stopped". Currently it is usually "brain flatlined while warm".
In the future that point may be on the other side of "currently at -250 degrees".
It is no guarantee, but a slight chance is better than none. This guy explains it better https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html [waitbutwhy.com] (Surprised it's not already linked.)
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday October 17 2022, @08:51PM (3 children)
I'm quite certain that the people that are getting cryogenically frozen (or vitrified if you will) at the moment, and in the past, are dead by any definition. If you don't go for the full version then you are not only frozen but you are also decapitated. As far as I know nobody survives that. If you get the full treatment they pump you full of liquids that preserve the corpse (vitrification) and try and help with the "freezing". So you are once again dead, or deader if you could even reach such a state. This is not suspended animation or just taking a really long cold nap. You are dead.
While the state or point of death might change a bit over time I really don't see much hope for the people that have already been frozen or are about to be. They are meat popsicles. They are never coming back. They are like the beta-testers of some utterly fucked up piece of sci-fi tech. But sure if you have some horrific disease and $$$ in the bank then why not try it. As noted even a slim chance is better then none. But if they wanted to make a difference they should have just donated their corpses to science instead.
So he has been frozen more or less solid in liquid nitrogen for more then 50 years now. I assume the tech has advanced some in the 50 years since he became a meat popsicle. What condition is his body in now? How "alive" is he? My bet is still on not alive and never going to be.
Sure. But no. They are preserving a corpse. There is nothing to bring back. They are dead. They might as well call themselves cold-storage-embalmers. These people probably have a better chance, or similar chance, to bring back one of those bog corpses they found in Europe dating back a thousand years. They are super well preserved to and they have been stored in great conditions and a cold place. But they are quite dead, and will remain so.
They really do appear to go out of their way to make it sound all sciencey while also completely glossing over all the bad aspect, after all a slim chance is better then none. But that whole dying, decomposition and freezing thing are just future problems. A can they appear to be constantly kicking down the road so to speak. A future problem to solve (ie Sci-Fi bullshit). It's like how all the cool things are always about a decade away.
These people are probably better of hoping for the Rapture and being brought to heaven or the next coming of Jesus then being brought back by science to a state of being alive as we would recognize it today. Best case scenario for them is probably being brought back like some Warhammer 40k Servo-skull or Servitor. If we are just living in fantasy sci-fi land that is.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 17 2022, @09:31PM (1 child)
The traditional term for that is "mummification".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday October 17 2022, @10:56PM
Nah, mummification is a symbolic process designed to leave a properly venerated and decay-resistant corpse to support the Ka in a prestigious afterlife.
Vitrification (to convert to glass) is a key component to cryogenics - it lets you freeze living tissues solid without forming ice crystals that rupture the cell walls and leave you *super* dead on a cellular level.
Mind you, I haven't heard of anyone doing such a thing on a scale anywhere remotely near that of a human body - it's incredibly difficult to freeze water without forming ice crystals, and typically has to be done far faster than is possible for things much thicker than a few mm. Though maybe something has improved dramatically since last I looked.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday October 18 2022, @12:33AM
There are patents for keeping heads alive independent of a body, and that's probably a lot more likely to become usable technology than cryogenics is. Pair that with new brain scan technology and somebody could theoretically live a halfway decent life in the future Futurama style. Probably not the greatest until they develop proper robotic bodies to go with the head in the jar though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 18 2022, @08:22PM
There has been a fair amount written on the problem of "schrödeinger's corpse", though they use different terms.
There are many types of death. Death is usually proclaimed today, at the cessation of cardiac activity. No heartbeat = you're dead. Despite this definition, we know that those people aren't completely dead. We've brought people (usually children) back that have fallen through ice into cold water after a half-hour or more of no heartbeat and they still retain memories, emotions, personality, etc.
So there has to be another definition of dead that means someone can't be brought back. Cryonics folk like to use the term "information theoretical death" for this. It is the point at which the physical structures that house memories, emotions, personality, etc are damaged and unrecoverable.
With the technology we have today, information theoretical death is extremely likely to occur within minutes of cardiac death. Hypothermia can stretch that to a half hour or hour at the outside. The wager I'm making with Cryonics is that future technology will be able to push our recovery ability much further beyond what we have today and reconstruct enough of me that I won't have experienced information death. It probably won't work, but it's worth a shot.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday October 17 2022, @05:55PM (2 children)
I suppose at least it funds some cellular biology papers.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 18 2022, @08:29PM (1 child)
Cryobiology researchers are very careful not to mention Cryonics in their work. It's a quick way to get labeled a quack. Despite that, vitrification technology has been proven in animal testing with rabbit kidneys preserved and returned to function after days in lN2 temperatures. There has been a lot of work researching the ability of nematodes to survive super-freezing, and it's been demonstrated they retain memory after freezing. (Memory might be a stretch; They are not very clever critters pre-freezing. "Learned autonomous behavior" perhaps?)
The really exciting ones are the papers looking at rat brains. They've demonstrated some neural activity in slices of hippocampal tissue that were frozen/vitrified to lN2 temperatures using today's technology.
It's a LOOoong way from random neurons firing in a petri dish to reconstructing the full neural activity of a big-brained mammal, but it's a start.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday October 18 2022, @10:10PM
I think the distance between a monkey and a human discovering fire is shorter than the distance it will take for real cryonics. Like, pulling off some ship of Theseus type hacks to keep ourselves young forever and "transition" into machines would undoubtedly come sooner and that's already in the realm of science fiction magic.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by oumuamua on Monday October 17 2022, @05:59PM
by Neal Stephenson and it has a solution to your problem:
don't revive the frozen body at all, scan the neural pathways and rebuild the brain digitally.
(dont worry, not a spoiler this was a small component of the overall plot)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Monday October 17 2022, @07:59PM (39 children)
It is my sincere hope that I will be frozen when I die, and to that end I've made arrangements as a (life-insurance) funded option 2 member of the Cryonics Institute in Michigan. There is another organization that does this in the US, Alcor of Arizona, but their services are significantly more expensive.
The primary difference between the two organizations is that Alcor will dispatch a "standby team" to wait for you to die, administer perimortem medications, and handle transport. CI does not provide this, and depends on a local funeral home operator to arrange transport. There is an organization in Florida that will provide transport and perimortem medication to CI, but I'm not contracted with them. Of the two I believe Alcor's services are more likely to minimize the damage of ischemia, but I'm financially constrained to use the latter.
If anyone has questions, I'm happy to answer them. I'm clear-eyed about the infinitesimally small probability of reanimation and will speak frankly on it.
The obvious question is ... Why?
I love technology and seeing the remarkable things that people can do. I'd like to see what we come up with in the next hundred years. It's not just that. Death seems like such a waste to me. There literally aren't enough hours in a human lifetime to learn, see, and do all the things. I'd like more time for that. Beyond that, I see cryonics (or similar tech) as an enabling technology for interstellar exploration. CI funds cryobiology research, so I get to contribute to that field.
... But what about the carbon footprint?
It's a problem. I'll cost about 0.6 cubic meters of lN2 per year. I'm planting 30-40 hardwood trees a year and am well into the hundreds. I grok that long term trees are not effective at sequestration, but it's what I can do.
... But what about overpopulation?
The second and third derivatives of the global population curve are both negative. I'm more concerned with underpopulation than overpopulation.
... But everyone you knew and loved will be gone?
Yes. That is unfortunate, and I wish I could fix it. I will miss them, and I'll tell their stories. It's what I can do.
... But you could wake up in enslaved in some dystopian nightmare?
Yes. There are no steps I can take to prevent that. It is a risk.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday October 17 2022, @09:12PM (4 children)
I do find it fascinating and I am not trying to dump on your plans or anything. I really do hope and wish you the best of luck with your future cryo-endeavor.
But I do have to wonder. You went with the cheap option then, how long will it be before they reach (or you them I should say since they are not picking you up) you and get your body frozen? How will the funeral home know what to do with you or whom to call? After all if you have one of them violent accidental deaths or misfortunes someplace less civilized then all your preparations might have been for nothing.
So did you go for the full-body option or just the head in a jar Futurama-style and/or are you hoping for a shiny new clone or android/cyber/robot body?
Have you taken some future precautions? Like do you have a will that donates or grants all your stuff to your future self? Or how does that work? It can't be very fun to come into the future being broke. Will there be a bank account accumulating interest while you are in storage? Is it some kind of trust? Or are you hoping we as a species have gone all Star Trek and poverty is a thing of the past etc?
Why do you care about the carbon footprint? It's minuscule. Also you will be brought back into the future if it happens. If they have learned to bring back frozen people I'm sure they solved the whole CO2 thing or environmental disaster thing to. I'm sure that gets a lot more funding and is higher on more peoples agenda. It's not that we mind the extra trees but you could probably do something fun with the money instead while you are still around and kicking.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @09:18PM (2 children)
>head in a jar Futurama-style
I believe that's what Option 2 refers to.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday October 17 2022, @09:23PM
Ah yes that makes more sense as I read it again. I first thought option 2 was the Cryonics Institute in Michigan compared to Alcor being Option 1. But as I read it now then yes that probably did refer to head/brain only.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2022, @06:57AM
No, option 1A is ALCOR whole body - $200,000
option 1B is ALCOR head only - $80,000
ElizabethGreene's Option 2 is Cryonics institute - $28,000 if pre-paid and contracted, $35,000 if not, plus the prep and transport costs. CI only does whole-body.
Really it comes down to whether you think Drexlerian style Nanotech is possible. If it is, chances are they will all wake up in the future (possibly with varying degrees of amnesia) in young, physically perfect bodies. If nanotech can not be made to work, then their chances are very slim, but still not quite zero.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 18 2022, @06:54PM
Unexpected death would be a serious issue. My spouse knows of my plans, I carry a wallet card, and I intermittently wear a medic alert bracelet or wristlet with contact information. It's a problem. It's doubly a problem if I die in the woods where search and rescue could take days to years to recover my body. I don't have a mitigation for this. I have spoken to a funeral home director about arranging the logistics, but I don't have it fully nailed down yet. Plan A is for someone to drastically increase the length of human lifespan and never need this at all. Plan C, the realistic option, is that I see my death coming and have some time to make final arrangements before I go afk. Todo:
Whole body. I didn't want to have to ask my spouse to watch my body drive off in an ice-chest in a van just to get it back, headless, for burial a week later.
I haven't set anything aside for future me. I'm clever and will find some way to pay my future expenses. Preserving wealth across generations is an exceptionally hard thing to do, and my efforts are best spent elsewhere. It would be sadly ironic if CI ran out of money and lost all the patients while I still had funds sitting in a trust somewhere. Best to avoid that.
I enjoy planting trees; it's a hobby. There is a white oak tree as old as my country in a local park, I like the idea that one day I might see its children just as big as it is today. We'll see. With any luck I'll get to enjoy the fruits of the chesnuts, paw paws, cherries, and others within my lifetime.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @09:15PM (20 children)
>I'm more concerned with underpopulation than overpopulation
Latest projections I've read are for world population growth to stop, peak out, in 2100. Of course, if you look back to what population growth predictions looked like in 1944 (78 years ago instead of in the future) I think you'll ultimately find that we're no better at predicting the future today than we were back then.
So, for the curious, everything ElizabethGreen says about the US Cryonics situation tracks with fairly in-depth research I did in 2002 when considering employment with Alcor. I'm sure she's at least as informed about the situation today as I was back then,
Interesting that TFA is about Cryonics startup in China - I would take that as a sign that their population of resident big wealthy egos has passed a certain threshold. Not that ElizabethGreen represents a big wealthy ego, just that most of the funding comes from there.
Insurance question for ElizabethGreen: if you are fortunate enough to live into your 90s, do you think you will be able to continue funding your policy, or is this a plan that's somewhat financially contingent on you dying on the early side of the actuarial table?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday October 18 2022, @12:38AM (17 children)
Skepticism of such projections is rarely misplaced, but we have seen a gradual leveling off, and even modest decline, in countries as they gain affluence, so it's probably a much better projection than the previous ones. Especially since we're not seeing the birthrates in China return to pre-one child policy levels.
But with the developing world showing no signs of stopping soon, who knows.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 18 2022, @01:04AM (14 children)
>we have seen a gradual leveling off, and even modest decline, in countries as they gain affluence
Is that affluence, or capitalist wage slavery? I mean, I far prefer my current position with two children working in an office and collecting consumerist junk and entertainment to working the fields picking cotton, don't get me wrong, but a tiny shift of lifestyle in these affluent countries could easily foster a new population boom.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 18 2022, @03:18AM (13 children)
Sounds like a variation of the No True Scotsman fallacy. When we note that global people are becoming wealthier, then it is frequently dismissed as not real affluence, but the nebulous capitalist wage slavery of which we all hear much, but see little.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 18 2022, @10:14AM (12 children)
You don't see it because it is everywhere.
I have many more choices than a plantation slave. However, any choice I make which involves abandonment of the career-job, even for a relatively short time comes with a heavy sting in terms of future comfort / security. Likewise, each additional child is a risk to that personal comfort / security.
Education until your mid 20s, full time employment until your mid 60s, that's the program, deviate at your own risk.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 18 2022, @01:53PM (11 children)
In other words, that choice means you're not a slave and that "heavy sting" is just normal drawbacks to a choice.
I find it interesting how having choices that aren't one-sided obvious is supposedly slavery. Reminds me of the commercials about picking the pro-basketball player to be on your pick-up team or the world-renown guitarist in your garage band (with the implication that the product the commercials are selling is similarly obvious).
In the real world, every choice has opportunity costs. Deal with it. Don't complain to an imaginary massa' about how oppressed you are.
But then again, maybe that's what you need? Just one single "choice" with unicorns. And you'll love it because you won't have any other choices to confuse your viewpoint. The iron collar would just be flavor prop.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 18 2022, @02:44PM (10 children)
>In other words, that choice means you're not a slave
I'm not a plantation slave. Plantation slaves had choices too, they could run away at risk of being killed. Where I sit (top 15%-ish of the wealth curve, locally) if I "run away" from my job, I risk being forced into much lower cost housing than I have become accustomed to. People down more in the median of the wealth curve risk actual homelessness if they don't keep going to their jerb 5 days a week 50 weeks a year.
Every living creature has choices, and "wage slave" does not imply anywhere near the level of choice penalties as "plantation slave" but, the penalties are very real, and more to the point: they currently drive populations growth down.
>supposedly slavery.
slavery (noun)
a situation or practice in which people are entrapped (as by debt) and exploited
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 18 2022, @07:46PM (6 children)
It sounds like we are in very similar life positions. I have the option of changing careers, but the pain of doing so would be significant. It is a form of bondage. I've heard it referred to as "golden handcuffs", and I like the metaphor. I'm bound to something, but that binding is comfortable enough that I won't risk the discomfort of freeing myself.
(I'm working on picking that lock, BTW. The question is "Will I open it before my time runs out?" It's a ~75 year-long escape game, and I'm not sure how close I am to the end.)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 19 2022, @12:58AM (5 children)
The main way our system is rigged (and has been for so long that people can't conceive of alternatives) is that: by the time you have amassed enough money / power to do what you want, you are so old and broken that you are no longer capable.. exceptions for the children of the wealthy (Leo Tolstoy being one great example) and other exceptionally lucky people who are often held up as (insufficient) evidence that the game is not rigged. For the vast majority, it is quite rigged, and human appetites and the relative nature of happiness ensure that even the highly wealthy feel they are suffering in their own way.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2022, @04:09AM (4 children)
No one told you when to run,
you missed the starting gun.
In other words, they tried. I'm reminded of this Heinlein quote:
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 19 2022, @10:09AM (3 children)
>In other words, they tried
Leo Tolstoy did not try. He was born to exceptionally wealthy parents who died when he was young. Of
Where do you stand relative to the median household income in your state? We sit roughly at or just above the upper quartile mark. Looking at those who are just below the lower quartile mark around here: $30k or less annual _household_ income, they can hear all the starting guns, run as fast as they are able, they are still going to end up devoting the majority of their efforts / labor to their basic survival and the enrichment of others, exploited as low cost labor by a small group of people who reap most of the benefit of their labor.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2022, @01:01PM (2 children)
And every person who was born to exceptionally wealthy parents has turned out to be a legendary writer? Is this a serious argument?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 19 2022, @05:53PM (1 child)
The argument is, rather, that every legendary writer was born to wealthy parents.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Thursday October 20 2022, @04:22AM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2022, @04:02AM (2 children)
Which if they had downgraded their lifestyle already, that wouldn't be such a risk.
Let's give an extreme example. Take someone like Donald Trump. He's nominally a billionaire, but always deep in hock and if he didn't keep juggling those financial knives, he'd probably be in a few bankruptcy court proceedings with a massive drop in his available wealth. Is he in billionaire slavery? It's the same sort of opportunity cost you've been whining about.
You'll die if you don't drink water and eat food. Are you in water slavery or food slavery? Sleep slavery? There's a lot of failure to this word choice.
Which is what makes it not slavery. You choose to be in this situation and you can choose to take relatively mild steps to get out of the situation.
The moral of this story is that you can end up in all kinds of pointless pearl-clutching, if you confuse minor lifestyle opportunity costs with risk of death. There's a vast number of choices we make that restrict our future choices. It's silly to bring slavery into this when it's just not.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 19 2022, @09:55AM (1 child)
Move your goalposts wherever you like. When I say slave I will stick with the Webster definition:
slavery (noun)
a situation or practice in which people are entrapped (as by debt) and exploited
To raise the bar on the cruelty and suffering required is a disingenuous ploy to ignore the problem.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2022, @12:58PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 18 2022, @03:08AM
Which is a huge difference. In the past, you didn't get gradual leveling offs much less modest declines. You got galloping population growth and expansion of human habitat followed by die-offs. China is particularly notorious for these.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 18 2022, @02:01PM
Not that we have much of a history with that. They haven't even bothered till the 20th century. Before that, there would have been too little data outside of the future developed world to make such projections.
It's interesting that the most dramatic change in the projection has been due to treatments for HIV in Africa which resulted in a significant long term increase in their projected population numbers.
Aside from radically slowing down, that is.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 18 2022, @07:00PM (1 child)
As a morbidly obese desk jockey I'm unlikely to run out of time on my insurance. I would be sad if I couldn't be frozen due to financial constraints, but it could happen. My arrangements cost less than the price of a new car today so it's conceivable that I could cover it without insurance once I hit the magic 59.5 for 401k/ira withdrawals.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 18 2022, @07:22PM
I took a quick look at the Michigan company's website, I had mostly engaged with the other one in the past. They tout a "low monthly insurance fee" of ~$30 per month covering the $28K cost of neuro-vitrification. Certainly many people spend far more than that on lottery tickets with really bad odds of a payoff before they die and little in the way of value in the meantime but fuel for dreams... a lot of similarities, really.
Best of luck to you, in this life and whatever may come.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2022, @09:21PM (3 children)
How is this supposed to all work out on the other end? At what point are they supposed to reanimate you, or at what point are they obligated to reanimate you?
It seems to me that cryopreserving after someone dies is the wrong approach because the person is going in dead. It would seem that you'd have a better chance of reanimation success if the people getting cryofrozen have it done while they are still alive, because you at least know they went into cryostasis in an alive state.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday October 17 2022, @09:25PM
That is a really interesting question. Is there a date or a timeline for when they should or have to bring you back or is there sort of a tube flush date for when things are no longer viable?
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday October 18 2022, @12:45AM
Assuming this can ever be made to work, you would likely be in condition that's no better than when you were frozen. This means that you're likely going to be rather decrepit if they process is successful as it's unlikely that people will ever be allowed to off themselves in order to be in good though shape to have a decent future life.
Also, the only use I can see for it would be cases where your body is generally in good condition, but you've got a health problem that isn't yet cuddle, but likely will be. Our possibly as a way of bringing people from the past to the future to learn about the past.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 18 2022, @07:06PM
Medically, you're right. The people with the best chance of reanimation would be those that received perimortem medications prior to death, were chilled while still alive, further chilled with artificial circulation and oxygenation once their heart stopped, and then immediately vitrified and cooled to lN2 temperatures.
Ethically and legally, that is a minefield patrolled by angry grizzly bears. Squint and look at it just right and they'd be killing people to get their bodies for a science experiment. Alcor has had to defend themselves from accusations of killing patients more than once; That is the kind of legal challenge that could empty the patient care trust, put them out of business, and make all their patients warm and dead. Best to avoid that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2022, @09:24PM (3 children)
Don't worry, none of thing things you worry about will be a problem. The vastly most likely outcome is that your body will decompose when the company goes bankrupt and they turn off the power.
Even if that doesn't happen, future people will have no interest in reviving you, with the possible exception of reviving you one piece at a time, with the pieces being used for organ transplants (see the stories of Larry Niven).
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @09:34PM (1 child)
>reviving you one piece at a time, with the pieces being used for organ transplants
As many as there are, cryonically preserved humans are always going to be exceedingly rare, and hardly worth the effort to develop procedures to harvest organs from (with so many warm bodies available...)
I think you misread the likely scenarios of re-animation. If we discovered a Mastadon perfectly preserved (in the ice that we're melting so fast today that there will be none left in 20 years or less) and had the technology available to re-animate it, we would do it mostly because we can, not for profit, not for need, but as a curiosity. I suppose the subsequent publicity and attention are a source of profit, but much less direct than selling mastadon burgers.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 18 2022, @07:42PM
... not that I'd turn down a mastodon burger, mind you, it's just not a primary goal. :)
(Score: 3, Touché) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 18 2022, @07:14PM
My family would agree with you.
This is a probable outcome. It happened to one of the earliest cryonics ventures, leaving their patients warm, dead, and stinking so badly that the Dewar was buried in an unknown location.
Both CI and Alcor take great pains to maintain stability and sustainability in their finances. Still, it's a risk.
This is also a risk. Cryonics gives me, assuming the parent company's finances hold out, the luxury of time. No-one may be interested in reanimating me today, but in a couple of hundred years things might be different. I'm not going anywhere; I can wait.
(Who am I kidding; If I put "Knows Cobol" on my paperwork I'll probably be the first one out of the tank so I can support that legacy system they swear, and really mean it this time, is going to be replaced in the future.)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 17 2022, @09:28PM (1 child)
>I'd like to see what we come up with in the next hundred years.
As I have alluded to elsewhere, it may well be post-human technology that enables cryonic revivals. Maybe post-humans of our own making (computer based AI), a new evolutionary quirk like Autism but more socially adept/capable, cyborgs, aliens, etc.
>you could wake up in enslaved in some dystopian nightmare?
What do you think the odds are of the civilization that can re-animate your frozen memories being anything recognizable as "human"?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 18 2022, @07:39PM
It's a risk. One of the things I've accepted is that Round two, Year zero, day zero I need to have a completely open mind. I can't assume that the social norms, ethos, goals, and ideas I had before my long nap will still apply.
I've run through the thought experiment of "What if we reanimated a Mummy today?" The social caste system they expected, normal behavior, foods, drinks, smells, technology, language, and even the map would all be different. That's a lot of shock to throw at someone. I like to think I'm prepared for that possibility, but it could easily exceed my wildest or darkest dreams.
On the plus side, it's unlikely I'll be the first person the future would choose to wake. One hopes they'll have the kinks worked out by the time they get down to me on the list.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2022, @09:39PM (2 children)
Would you rather be a frozen head in the jar before or after the time where you become an incoherent drooler? Does only seeming to have the latter option not worry you?
Props for your openness on this topic. The above questions may look snarky, but they're not, I'm genuinely interested, as they look like things that are very often overlooked.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday October 18 2022, @12:50AM
I'd wager that the operational costs are probably relatively well understood and probably insured against. If the charge 100x the annual operating costs and invested it, they'd probably have that money in perpetuity. If also suspect that the actual cost of reanimation for the people signing up now is expected to be s money losing proposition, but if a few are successfully brought back that they will be paid for by future contracts.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday October 18 2022, @07:22PM
Affirmative. The goal of the fees and patient care trust is to be able to pay the ongoing storage cost in perpetuity while growing the fund enough to cover inflation.
I used to be much deeper in the weeds on how the finances worked, but I trust the folks at CI. The math checked out during my first two once-in-a-lifetime financial crisis; I assume it still checks out today.
My preference would be to not die at all or die and be reanimated with the cognitive function I enjoyed in my early 20s. I have the option of being frozen whenever I die and having an infinitesimal chance of the latter outcome or not being frozen at all and zero chance of the latter outcome. Some chance is better than none.
(I've ignored religion in the above, but I don't see them as mutually exclusive. To touch on the religion angle, If cryonics works, then the patient wasn't really dead, only unconscious, and their soul wasn't at $deity yet. If cryonics doesn't work then soul is at $deity, and the dewar is just a fancy coffin.)