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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?

#191

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.

You may find this organization (working on extending healthy human lifespan) interesting. https://www.levf.org/

I'm not involved with that organization, but I find their work very interesting.

As a backup plan, there's Alcor. https://www.alcor.org/

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#192
In my opinion at least clawing desperately for more time on this world is a pretty bad idea. Say there is nothing after death, then every such advancement in life extension will create even more dread of dying because you can lose eternal life (in the ideal case). I'd personally be much more scared to live knowing that at any point I can lose possibly millions of years of experiences by dying.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#193
post #10

Years ago when I was in medical school, I concluded to improve quality of life, no matter how finite, is a better endeavour than to prolong it. There's something tremendously philosophically satisfying to recognizing that death is just the recycling of life so that new life can happen.

So... you're _for_ cryopreservation? Because having it as a standard end-of-life option is the simplest way of cutting on unnecessary live prolonging procedures. You get sick, you enjoy the time you have, you get frozen. It's a win-win proposition from pretty much every point of view.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#194

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.

The goal of life isn't to live forever, but to create something that is. I'm not sure why someone would even try and live forever, to fulfill ambitions? Assuming someone is immortal, after 100 years they'd probably get bored of this world.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#195

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…

I'm absolutely shocked that more money and time is not spent researching how to cure death by aging. (Note that for those who discuss this semi-regularly, that's understood to be very different than seeking a cure for any particular age related disease, which usually we attempt to address when it's too late.). There are groups like https://www.levf.org/ doing some early work like Robust Mouse Rejuvenation (in mid-life for mice) to try to figure out how to help us all live much longer. https://www.levf.org/projects/robust-mouse-rejuvenation-stud...

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#196
post #67

So here is one of my current fav. conspiracy theories AND it involves Elon. Remember the first payload of his "Falcon Heavy" rocket - some tesla or other? Had a tailor's dummy in a space suit strapped in the front seat. That was a real person in the suit who had paid for the most effective, reliable and longest lasting cryogenic freeze available. No maintenance power required. Will continue to be frozen even if the e…

It's in heliocentric orbit, it's getting cooked by solar radiation every day, taking the full brunt of solar flares without a magnetosphere to protect it, etc. If there were a body in the suit, it would surely turn into beef jerky. Or perhaps soup, if the suit can keep the fluids in. All the DNA would be shattered beyond repair by intense gamma radiation. > but makes a certian amount more logical sense than a dummy i…

>If there were a body in the suit, it would surely turn into beef jerky.

This isn't necessarily a problem:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34060818

"And even if they could be bothered, the thawed would be a lab experiment, owned by whatever corporation pulled off the magic."

That feeling when you wake up from your secret space cryostasis, only to discover you're the living (?) embodiment of meat, now owned by Arby's.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#197
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If we don’t die we don’t evolve.

Sure we will, just not in the traditional natural-selection sense. In many ways humans have "beaten" evolution by finding medical means to allow "unfit" humans to live full lives, and often pass on their genes.

Evolution in the future could be via technical means, either through advancements in medicine, or with cybernetic implants. If humans could ever become intellectually & ethically pure enough to be trusted with genetic engineering ourselves, that's another form of self-made evolution.

> If we had many lives then each one would be less meaningful.

That's a very personal thing, and just an opinion. With changes in lifespan, attitudes change, purpose changes, and people change their outlook. Once upon a time, humans lived much shorter lives, with many/most not making it out of their 30s. Now life expectancy is in the 70s and 80s. And yet we don't look at this doubling of our lifespans and believe that all that extra time robs our lives of meaning. So why should that be the case if we could live to be 500?

> We’d at least need to put age limits on political participation.

Perhaps, but that should be a floating limit that gets adjusted upward with life expectancy. If people regularly lived to be 200, maybe 190-year-olds wouldn't be fit to serve, but a 100-year-old? Why not? And if we managed to push that to 400, those 190-year-olds would start to seem pretty relevant; it would be an injustice to deny them participation in the political system.

Regardless, our idea of society itself would need a huge overhaul even if our lifespans were doubled, let alone made effectively limitless. Political participation would likely be the least of our worries.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#198
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If we don’t die we don’t evolve.

Not as a species though. We just have to keep reproducing more of us that are good at staying alive and also reproducing to evolve. You and I theoretically could live forever in the same state, and still, our species would evolve via our offspring and theirs and so on.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

semi relevant user name ironically

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You may find this organization (working on extending healthy human lifespan) interesting. https://www.levf.org/ I'm not involved with that organization, but I find their work very interesting. As a backup plan, there's Alcor. https://www.alcor.org/

As much as I’d like to live forever, I couldn’t in good conscience monetarily support research that’s explicitly focused on extending the life span of the privileged (including me) when more resources are needed in finding how to lift up everyone else left behind today.
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