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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?

#331

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…

Yeah! And it would also elreduce ones stress level quite a bit, with a lot of "you need to do X before you are too old for it" no longer being a problem as well as all the emotional damage of people you know dying all the time, especially as you grow old.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#332
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm absolutely shocked that more money and time is not spent researching how to cure death by aging. Faced with their own mortality, a bunch of aging billionaires and multimillionaires tend to pour money into longevity research. I'd be very upset if governments increased spending on fighting senescence today, instead of lower-hanging fruit .

When Elon was asked why longetivity research didn't pick his interest as worthy of an investment, he said: >It is important for us to die because most of the time people don't change their mind, they just die. If you live forever, we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed.

I'd argue he doesn't care about ageing because he's 51.

What till he's 75 and see if he still holds that view.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#333
post #240

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…

The notion that immortality is a good idea fades with age. Youth is more important, because as you age opportunities and options vanish and ailments and limitations arise. If you can give me immortality, health and my youth, I may reconsider.

Pretty much everyone who is getting frozen want youth rather than prolonged old age, they think a cure for aging will eventually happen.

I'd certainly rather live 100 years with a 20 year old body than 200 years with a 90 year old one.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would actively pay to fight such a movement. The world is full, yes it can be fuller but we are seriously cracking whole ecosystem and one of main reason is simply the amount of people living on this planet. If you prolong life say 2x it means Earth has 2x the population long term just due to this. Lets focus on serious issues hindering our growth as a race and not some vanity fears of few rich and powerful who thi…

You cite "Stalin bad" but Stalin only killed about 40,000/week for 30 years. You're talking of personally paying to support the deaths of everyone at the current world-wide all-cause death rate of 1,000,000/week, forever . Surely in some way that makes your plans infinitely worse than Stalin's? Imagine all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, all the veil of mourning and tears, the darkness your plans will cloud the su…

Exactly - this obsession with planets it toxic, you see it all the time. People just consider Earth as the only available finite resource and thus take some problems as unsolvable and a lot of suffering as normal and unavoidable.

All the while the are almost endless resources and options how to solve these issues waiting in the solar system!

Its like hauling old people to the mountains to die because your village can't support them. We got over that & we should should get over our current terrestrial problems as well by moving on and expanding out of our cradle.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#335
post #302

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…

There's are a point in death. So if you fix death, then you also have to fix the problems that death fixes.

Why would there necessarily be a point to death?

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#336

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've lived a modern day life of comfort, opportunities and experiences unimaginable compared to even my grandparents (all deceased now). I've been to places and had opportunities to try things which they never did. Compared to my grandma who cooked during food rationing and had to save sugar rations to make a cake, who lived a frugal life of 'make do and mend', I have the spare money and first world surroundings to indulge any ordinary luxury[1] on a whim - meal at a restaurant, new clothes, ticket to a show, buy a household goods item or entertaining gadget, holiday abroad in a hotel on a couple of day's notice, all no problem. I've travelled more than she ever did, owned more things than she ever did, experienced many kinds of novelty and variety that she never did.

Is that enough? Can I go now? Isn't that enough? I still have possibly 3-4 decades of life left to average life expectancy, and for what - to grind through more experiences? Even though I've already had vastly more than most humans who ever lived? I have no great purpose to achieve, there's nothing I can do which millions of others can't do. The main reason to go on living is because dying would hurt others unnecessarily. Brute forcing through everything-there-is-to-experience is not an enticing vision for the future at all, it's a grind.

> "but if it wasn't for some limit forced upon me, if it was really my choice, then there's a lot more I'd like to do."

It seems common that people who become rich enough to do anything end up depressed doing nothing. Taking the forcing function out seems to make people miserable rather than happy. Even people who said beforehand that they had lots they'd like to do often seem to lose motivation to actually do any of it.

[1] there's a phrase.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#337
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would not only be for the rich. Healthcare cost are incredibly expensive especially later in live so governments have a strong inventive to provide it for everyone. Also people wont have to retire anymore (also great for government) The most expensive part about it would probably be research, but since every person on the planet is a potential user and there a big savings in Healthcare and Pension i don't see cost…

Access to “high end” care (which I suppose would be one) is already high cost which is not that accessible even with technology presence. As of 2019 1/3 of world’s population doesn’t have access to clean drinking water. Would they be glad that instead of clean water and sanitary conditions they were granted endless life? It’s nice to focus on optimistic outcomes but except for genius scientists world is full of mobst…

Dictator could pay more for it but would probably be to paranoid to actually do it until its proven technologically. So my bet would be on the Noble Prize winner because of curiosity and good connections to the people working on the technology.

If the technology first emerges you could probably get it quite cheaply because its not proven yet. Afterwards there will be a scarity due to everyone wanting it which will drive prices up. In the long run it becomes a free commodity due to being a net saving for governments.

But even if the rich and ruthless get it first, that doesnt matter much in the long run. Medical improvements tend to get cheaper with time. The incentives are there to provide it to everyone. And especially so in a democracy.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#338
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.

If you're actually worried about evolution you'll want to bring back eugenics. Current selective pressures are quite relaxed, leading to an increase in deleterious mutations and rising future healthcare costs.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#340
post #315
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m amazed that people who argue against immortality often assume it will come with a frail body and an aged brain. Why? To me, the most basic form of immortality is achieved by reversal of aging, including a brain. Your body is just a machine, it’s pretty obvious it can be repaired, even if we don’t know how yet.

> even if we don’t know how yet How would you fix your brain? Its capacity is obviously limited, and tinkering with plasticity almost certainly will have unexpected and undesirable consequences. You simply won't be the same person.

I'm not the same person I was a couple of decades ago and will be a different person in a couple of decades. I'm happy with this.
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