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What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

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221–230 of 599 posts

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#222

Cryonic preservation might or might not be possible, this is clearly a difficult process but we're never going to find out without trying. Dead people have no use for money, doing this kind of research is not a waste, in my opinion, even if it is very unlikely to work at this stage.

> Dead people have no use for money, doing this kind of research is not a waste, in my opinion, even if it is very unlikely to work at this stage. Umm, people still alive have use for money. The money could go towards helping the lives of the living, so it absolutely is a waste.

Also it was their money before they died. Who are you to say what they should or shouldn't do with it?

There is absolutely benefit in doing this type of research even if there is only a small chance that it ends up working.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#223

How long before SpaceX starts up a service to dump these into a lunar lava tube for hyper-long term storage?

They're relatively warm places so are conjectured to make a nice(ish) place for the quick rather than the dead.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_lava_tube

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#224
As someone that has frozen cells down many times successfully, I don’t think this will ever work for bodies.

If you could save your DNA and a few cells and be cloned at a later date is that good enough for you? No memories but the same code. Is that still “you”? It’s like being an identical twin of yourself.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#225
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.

> recognizing

You're not recognizing anything you're deluding yourself to accept the incredible loss that is death.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#226
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.

This is the mindset of most of the medical field so basically you bought into the status quo. Nothing profound about that. Those that are interested in longevity reject such notions because it leads to very little research in how to prolong life, or see death as a disease worth curing.

Perhaps the disease worth curing even more is the mindset that rejects longevity.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#227
post #70

I find the whole concept hilarious. There's an implicit assumption that someone in the future will be bothered to resurrect a frozen body, then resurrect them from death (since they already died before being popsicle-ified). And even if they could be bothered, the thawed would be a lab experiment, owned by whatever corporation pulled off the magic. And if magically they came out of the ordeal functional and free, the…

Ha, interesting, a while ago I was thinking about a solution to this very problem. Everyone seems to focusing on the freezing part, but not what happens with the timeframe until you are unfrozen and beyond. Because in addition to nobody wanting to unfreeze you, you also would have no money and would basically be “poor” 500 years from now. On top of that there needs to be a long term storage facility which is somehow…

This is a solved problem. Money goes in a trust in a state that has no law against perpetuities like South Dakota. Then pull it 200 years later as a bajillionaire, and you have an end run around capitalism.

Also Benjamin Franklin pulled of something like this from 1790-1990 "2,000 be divided equally between Boston and Philadelphia for use as loans for young apprentices" https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/21/us/from-ben-franklin-a-gi...

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's an implicit assumption that someone in the future will be bothered to resurrect a frozen body I imagine that mad scientists, in general, suffer from a lack of test subjects. I'm pretty sure the future will find something to do with frozen humans who signed up to be resurrected.

Yes. They will defrost and bury them. Unless things have gotten really bad, in which case they'll defrost and eat them. One thing they won't bother to do, is defrost and re-animate them, because why?

Wouldn’t we if we had some prehistoric people in ice and had the technology? The whole world would want to watch.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#229

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…

Infant mortality is quite different: we know that infants are supposed to live. Extending life is the opposite: death is the normal, even unavoidable end. The comparison is misplaced.

> I could spend a lifetime in each trying to develop mastery

No, you couldn't. You would still be your aged brain, not capable of learning hundreds of professions, and your frail body, not capable of replacing its cells any longer. It requires more than a better way to heat up a corpse to extend life.

I'll leave you with this (paraphrase of a) quote: millions long for immortality, but don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One potential limitation of cryogenics is that the radio isotopes in your own body will eventually cause too much damage to your DNA since natural repair processes will be offline as well. Obviously the radiation environment in space is much worse.

This absence of evidence is proof of a need for genuine study.
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