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A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

nytimes.com

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Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#31

Post by NhanH »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #11
reasonattlm wrote: post #4

Some reading material for those interesting in the current state of cryonics development and research, starting with an overview and moving on. Modern cryopreservation aims for vitrification, not freezing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics http://alcor.org/sciencefaq.htm http://www.brainpreservation.org/competitors/ The evidence assembled to date provides a reasonable expectation that the fine structure of the b…

Not very satisfying from the continuity identity perspective; a copy of you is not you. Neither are you, you you from yesterday or the day before - conscious continuity is illusory. How do you know that your body isn't replaced with a new copy each night (thought experiment)? restoration of the original tissues...Advanced molecular nanotechnology and complete control over cellular biology You run into a Ship of These…

May be Buddhism got it right a few thousand years ago: the notion of self (ie your conscious) is just an illusion ;-)

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#32

Post by toomuchtodo »

sbilstein wrote: post #26
codecamper wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no worries. The human emulator uses just 1% of a 2050 EC2 mini compute instance.

The occasional stuttering is actually due to GC pauses.

That takes me back to Max Headroom!

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#33

Post by amalcon »

Cryonics is one of those things that's hard to evaluate.

On the face of it, it seems insane. You're essentially making a bet that someone will find something useful to do with a frozen brain -- and that your estate will be able to afford the procedure -- before the company you've entrusted your brain to either makes a mistake or collapses. Given the near-total lack of progress on the former front (there's been considerable progress in the freezing part, but almost none in finding a useful thing to do with a frozen brain), the odds seem phenomenally bad.

On the other hand, it does offer something to those who are still alive: the hope that your exstence could continue indefinitely, and that you might get to be with lost loved ones again. This is a valuable hope, so much so that it's built into most religions in some form or other. It's possible that the benefit of this hope makes the costs worth bearing.

For now, I've left cryonics in my "not for me, but I won't try to discourage anyone else" bucket.

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#34

Post by oneshot908 »

grondilu wrote: post #13
pekk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you're dead you'll miss out on all the cool stuff that's happening. It's bad enough we missed out on all the stuff that happened before we died.

You don't miss anything because you don't exist anymore. Missing things is considered a bad thing when you can experience the frustration of not being able to do things you would like to do. But if you don't exist, you can not experience this frustration, thus not being able to do stuff does not mean anything to you because nothing does. The only frustration you can feel is the idea that in the future you won't be ab…

Not even remotely accurate if quantum immortality is true, and I'm not saying it is, but we still have no idea WTF consciousness really is therefore no idea what happens to it when its CPU and memory are destroyed.

But do come back when you've figured this all out and you know how to create a new consciousness in any way except for the obvious way.

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#35

Post by pavlov »

grondilu wrote: post #8
primitivesuave wrote: post #5

Black Mirror (on Netflix) has a powerful interpretation on the implications of digital reanimation in Season 2 Episode 1, "Be Right Back", although the digital representation of the deceased human is created by an AI that reads all of the person's digital information (social media, emails, videos, etc) and emulates them.

There's a real world company that offers this service: https://www.eter9.com/

Is that a real company? The copy sounds like it could be a viral marketing campaign for a movie.

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#37

Post by fizixer »

amalcon wrote: post #33

Cryonics is one of those things that's hard to evaluate. On the face of it, it seems insane. You're essentially making a bet that someone will find something useful to do with a frozen brain -- and that your estate will be able to afford the procedure -- before the company you've entrusted your brain to either makes a mistake or collapses. Given the near-total lack of progress on the former front (there's been consid…

Surprisingly, the financial aspect of it is pretty manageable as explained by Max More (head of Alcor) [0].

Apparently if you have signed up for some kind of life-insurance, you simply pay your regular insurance fee, and direct them to give it to Alcor for your preservation if you die.

Or if you wish to pay in total, I've heard it's ~$80K for head only. And ~$200K for whole body.

Once I can afford any of the above options, cryonics would be my top "burial preference".

(Think about it, in the US, it's a fraction of the amount you get to spend in the final year of your life. You could choose to waste a lot of money during age 79-80 on a losing battle, or you could call it quits at 79, for which right-to-die needs to be legal, and spend a fraction on cryonics. Suffice to say, I'm a big advocate of right-to-die as well).

[0] (Warning: loud intro) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0xiX9mPB_s

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#38

Post by danbmil99 »

wfn wrote: post #30
eloff wrote: post #21

The implications of your identity being copied into a new, improved body and what that means when the original you is dead, or what happens when you get copied more than once, etc are explored in depth in Jasper Scott's excellent Dark Space series: http://www.jaspertscott.com/p/dark-space-v-avilon.html

Also see Greg Egan's short story, "The Extra" ( http://eidolon.net/?story=The%20Extra ) and others, e.g. "Closer" ( http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer )

Also see every f-in thing Greg Egan wrote. Then for fun try to google his image.

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#39

Post by JesperRavn »

lfam wrote: post #29
JesperRavn wrote: post #24

It's fascinating that this is so close to reality, at least in terms of preserving the information that encodes our memories and identities. Of course there is the issue of reviving the person, either biologically or digitally. As computing power grows, I don't see any barrier to simulating an entire human brain. Sure it will take time: according to this[0] and applying Moore's law, it will take about 60 years before…

Which Greg Egan story is that?

I can't remember (possibly not Greg Egan). In case someone else knows, the main plot is that the characters have to act as inhabitants of a primitive village, in a computer game/simulation.
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