41–50 of 123 posts
I don't think cryopreservation is that likely to work. Even its proponents are not that confident in it. I've collected some estimates: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ajn1LpstEUO_dE0...
When you're healthy, living forever sounds great. When you've experienced a few minor illnesses and a bit of short-lived pain, such as a broken limb or two, living forever still sounds great. I had a (thankfully temporary) condition that resulted in chronic pain for about a year. It wasn't terrible pain, but pain that never goes away wears you down in a way that horrible, but short-lived, pain simply doesn't. After a…
But that's just a thought experiment. No cryonicist expects to be revived in anything less than fully regenerated (or uploaded) condition. Reanimating into a painful and incurable half-life is unlikely, as you probably could not revive someone to begin with if you didn't have the ability to prevent that.
Anyone remotely interested in cryonics should go read about it on LessWrong[1], instead of reading the same ol' ambivalent/pro-death comments. The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Keep in mind that…
> The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Or you think it's dumb and fruitless and a waste of money. We don't have any way of predicting the expected value of cryopreservation. It could be that after…
And FWIW, Alcor and Cryonics Institute don't require power for storage; they require deliveries of liquid nitrogen. I don't think either facility has much earthquake/tsunami risk, either.
[1] Personally, I would want to be > 99% sure about this before completely giving up on cryonics.
Anyone remotely interested in cryonics should go read about it on LessWrong[1], instead of reading the same ol' ambivalent/pro-death comments. The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Keep in mind that…
> The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Or you think it's dumb and fruitless and a waste of money. We don't have any way of predicting the expected value of cryopreservation. It could be that after…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
By "death", I assume you mean senescence: the natural biomolecular attrition that inexorably leads to organismal death absent of outside causes. It is true that turtles can live for almost 200 years and some plants can live for thousands of years. If we are essentially, biochemically the same, we could in theory overcome our biochemical "bugs" to achieve negligible senescence. So, we'd live forever. Unfortunately, th…
Continuing on this point, it might be a hell of a lot easier to create an artificial brain (or at least AI as clever as a human) than reverse engineer a biological system "designed" to expire.
So why create a synthetic if you can convert an organic? Probably more likely than us creating a 'real' A.I. anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Or you think it's dumb and fruitless and a waste of money. We don't have any way of predicting the expected value of cryopreservation. It could be that after…
How can you say that cryonics working is "probably pretty unlikely" if "we have no way of predicting the expected value of cryopreservation". You can give probabilities to the events that would make cryonics fail and come up with an expected value.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Or you think it's dumb and fruitless and a waste of money. We don't have any way of predicting the expected value of cryopreservation. It could be that after…
That's a reasonable concern, but at this meta level there are two things going in cryonics' favor: there's a good chance you're overconfident about its non-utility[1], and there's a chance that your reanimation comes much earlier than expected, so the cumulative risks don't add up to much. And FWIW, Alcor and Cryonics Institute don't require power for storage; they require deliveries of liquid nitrogen. I don't think…
That same logic can be used to justify spending inordinate resources on any sort of snake oil. Why should cryonics be special?
Anyone remotely interested in cryonics should go read about it on LessWrong[1], instead of reading the same ol' ambivalent/pro-death comments. The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Keep in mind that…
> The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Or you think it's dumb and fruitless and a waste of money. We don't have any way of predicting the expected value of cryopreservation. It could be that after…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Or you think it's dumb and fruitless and a waste of money. We don't have any way of predicting the expected value of cryopreservation. It could be that after…
If there's a non-zero chance that you will be returned to life at some point in the future, then however unlikely that chance is worth 25k. It is a lottery; the cost is small compared to the payoff and it rationalises hope.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can completely understand why extending their lives was not desirable to them. I think its presumed that life extension would also come with improved health. What kills you is decline due to chronic conditions. Target that and stop the declined and you gain both long-life, and healthy life.
There are a lot of things that can cause chronic pain without threatening your life. We would have to learn how fix all of these non-life-threatening things in addition to what causes death, or everlasting life will lead to everlasting pain with absolute certainty.