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What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

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Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#181

Post by burnished »

tptacek wrote: post #114
kelnos wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and experimental things fail all the time. Doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying. Learning from failures is how progress is made. I'm skeptical of this cryonics stuff, but I can see the appeal: even if the chance of being eventually revived is a tiny fraction of 1%, if money isn't an issue, why not? If humanity doesn't destroy itself over the next century or two, it might be fun to see what the future is like.

Ok, but this is what people pursuing perpetual motion say, too. Meanwhile, the fundamentals of what's being attempted here are pretty implausible. Not all scientific advancements pattern match to the conventional journal article track on which most science is done today, but the oddball projects are signaling something. I don't like getting super deep into these threads, because my normal tendency will be to nerd out…

Do you mind going into a little more detail on the problems? The last I knew we had examples of smalls creatures freezing and thawing but it didn’t seem to scale up very well, and from what little I knew the problem seemed to be that freezing itself would damage cell walls (tiny chunks of ice poking calls through things all over your body), even if you managed to do it very fast and minimize the size of crystal formation.

But I learned all that a decade or two ago, so if you have a moment to update/correct me I’d be grateful.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#182

Post by picture »

bombcar wrote: post #155
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people storing popsicles don't necessarily need to have anything to do with the people who dream of someday unthawing them. Generally speaking the thing they have in common is the funding required to do the cryonic enterprise. > If some rich person wants to pay to keep an expensive freezer running for a specified amount of time after they die, that creates a sound business opportunity for someone who is willing…

Let’s skip the freezer and just launch the popsicles into deep space orbit behind mars or something. Once we can successfully Futurama the bodies we will easily be able to retrieve the frozen capsules.

Won't they get pelted by microastroids, molecularly pulped with ionizing radiation, cooked by various sources of heat? Popsicles usually don't last very long outside a freezer

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#183

Post by adastra22 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #175
wintorez wrote: post #168

Never understood the quest for immortality. We are the children of our time. When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. Don’t fear the reaper.

I for one would like a bit more time. 200? Maybe 500? No one likely wants to be immortal but 80 or so seems criminally short for what our abilities are and how long it takes for us to find our calling.

I want to be immortal. If I ever tire of existence and achieve terminal boredom, I'll just use technology to forget (temporarily or permanently) some memories and experience them again anew.

I'll see you all at the heat death of the universe.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#184

Post by xlii »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #174
wintorez wrote: post #168

Never understood the quest for immortality. We are the children of our time. When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. Don’t fear the reaper.

In case it's insightful, I've correspondingly never understood the common contentment with death. The world is an incredible place, and there's so much to experience and do. If I had the time there's hundreds of careers I could spend a lifetime in each trying to develop mastery. I think I could live a thousand lives with the people I care about and not be done. I've had to choose one life, and it's a nice one, but if…

For a counter thought: while I absolutely agree with you in terms of richness of life, I don’t think pursuing endless life is a sound idea.

As parent poster wrote, we like nostalgia, because we clutch to our experiences. We compare them instead of collecting it. On the other side the more we experience something the more we stall or get bored. Even with other people - with increase of lifespan we also increased number of divorces, lost connections etc. That doesn’t make us happier.

One could argue that we, as humans, suffer more today from out deteriorating bodies, than people in medieval time, when it was shorter, and that we suffer more psychologically due to increased influx of information, global conscience and artificial constructs we build every day.

Resources would also be an issue, so even if immortality would be obtainable it’d be either reserved for the richest or would divide people with almost impassable line splitting centuries of servitude and centuries of indulgence.

So to answer your question - why not? Because it’ll bring suffer to many on many levels except for a blessed few and we should focus first on making life great for everyone present before trying to make it infinitely longer.

Joking lightly (as subject is very deep) - it’s somewhat useful skill to know when to get off the stage.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#185

Post by b1zguy »

brnt wrote: post #171
wintorez wrote: post #168

Never understood the quest for immortality. We are the children of our time. When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. Don’t fear the reaper.

I've lived as a stranger in a strange land and I regret returning 'home', whatever that means. Sounds like cryo is right up my alley! If it only worked...

Can you please elaborate on why your regret returning home?

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#186

Post by Loic »

ggm wrote: post #180

I would love to know how this is handled in other parts of the world. Particularly the regulatory side because this is a potential health nightmare for OH&S if not the water table and the neighbourhood. The escrow requirements for maintainance of state would be interesting too. Who exactly benefits from the spend? Is this contestable by a future generation? In effect, does the corpse become property? Perpetual fundin…

We have this in Germany, in the Ruhr area. If they do not pump water non-stop, the complete area would be flooded[0].

This is because coal mining has been bringing the complete cities below the natural level of the water table. Costs are taken care of by a foundation.

[0]: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewigkeitskosten

Sadly no English version but some pictures.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#187

Post by radu_floricica »

wintorez wrote: post #168

Never understood the quest for immortality. We are the children of our time. When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. Don’t fear the reaper.

I've heard this sentiment occasionally and I've actually done some introspection about it. What's the earliest time of human history I'd have to be born in, to feel alien in our times? There's actually a surprising answer to this, and it's not even subjective: there is a lot more difference between my grandparent's house in the countryside 40 years ago and current times, than to pretty much any agricultural period. No running water, outhouse was... out, no TV. And in _their_ childhood it was even more barebones: no electricity, phone or radio, nor cars or trains or asphalt.

So... would my grandparents feel alienated now? Hell no! My surviving grandma is complaining about constant pain and ailing vision, not that things are too strange. She needs somebody else to call me or show her pictures I send on whatsapp because she can't physically use a phone anymore, not because she can't adapt to it.

There is some truth in what you're saying, but it's due to something we don't like to talk or think about: dementia. Not just Alzheimer, but dozens of ways the aging brain is deteriorating. Fix that, and suddenly you'll find out that old people aren't children anymore, and are perfectly capable of adapting to the new.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#188

Post by kelnos »

wintorez wrote: post #168

Never understood the quest for immortality. We are the children of our time. When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. Don’t fear the reaper.

That's just an opinion, formed over centuries of humans trying to make peace with their mortality, because they believed it was inevitable. There's no inherent truth to your words; it's just a philosophy.

I'm not really afraid of dying, per se, but as a sci-fi buff, I am deeply sad that there are amazing technological advancements that I will never get to see. Even if the world 300 years from now (assuming humans still exist by then) looks nothing like what any sci-fi author could have envisioned, it still bums me out that I won't get to see what that ends up being like. (And yes, I've considered the possibility that things could be much much worse than now in 300 years, at least for humans.) My only worry about this is that if I were "asleep" for 300 years, that "stranger in a strange land" bit could be very real, and I don't know that humans are well-equipped psychologically to deal with that kind of... dislocation.

I'm not religious, and don't believe in an afterlife, reincarnation, or of anything after we die. So if I want to see the future, in any shape or form, life extension is the only way. I doubt medicine will solve aging and mortality in my lifetime, so even a moonshot like cryonics would likely be my only hope -- even such a remote hope -- of seeing the future. Not sure I'd actually go for it, though, but I get the appeal.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#189

Post by dcow »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #174
wintorez wrote: post #168

Never understood the quest for immortality. We are the children of our time. When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. Don’t fear the reaper.

In case it's insightful, I've correspondingly never understood the common contentment with death. The world is an incredible place, and there's so much to experience and do. If I had the time there's hundreds of careers I could spend a lifetime in each trying to develop mastery. I think I could live a thousand lives with the people I care about and not be done. I've had to choose one life, and it's a nice one, but if…

If we don’t die we don’t evolve. If we had many lives then each one would be less meaningful. I do feel the pull on my heartstrings in your comment (wouldn’t that be wonderful), but an engineer will expand to fit as much time as you give them. We’d at least need to put age limits on political participation.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#190

Post by TylerLives »

wintorez wrote: post #168

Never understood the quest for immortality. We are the children of our time. When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. Don’t fear the reaper.

You're right that we're not "built" for immortality, but I see no reason why we couldn't adapt over time. The other issue is that aging is really really bad and reduces quality of life much more than nostalgia.
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