What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans? • Hacker News Board

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#441

Post by netsharc » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 12:44 PM UTC

brap wrote: post #384

Gatsky wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what I think is the most likely outcome is that we realise there are better ways to preserve the dead for reanimation, and nobody will ever bother working on how to salvage the crudely frozen/vitrified. I personally think the way forward is to derive the neural connectivity and transcriptional state map of the brain on a single cell level. This can be done today, albeit at great expense, on tissue that is chemical…

So is it really the same person you're reanimating, or is it someone/something that simulates that person perfectly to the outside world? I mean, suppose you could do that while the person is still alive. Assuming the reanimated person even has consciousness, then surely(?) the two won't share the same experience, like some hive-mind with two bodies. I don't think the original person being dead makes any difference.…

Recently I had a thought, that if you copied the contents of your brain onto an object that can the simulate it, or even a new brain, then the "new instance" of you will probably just think it's the real you, just that it's on a computer/in a different body now. If New You sees a picture of a partner that left you, or a pet that died when you were a child, it will feel the same sadness you would. And it would just go about the day like you would, with your internal thoughts, because what else would it do?

I think the way I see it now is, your mind is a black box to your current consciousness (with some interfaces to recall things), if you replaced this black box with a perfect simulation, your consciousness might not even notice it. Of course your consciouness has also been programmed since the day you were born, but wouldn't a perfect copy of your mind also copy the current consciouness? Either of you would wake up and think "Ah, I'm brap, and I'm currently in my bed, and yesterday I did x and felt y, and the day before... [iterate until there's nothing else to remember]."

If Original You remains alive, it does get weird, both of you will think "There's someone else with my own exact brain and memory, but I can't feel what s/he's currently feeling!".

There's an Apple movie that explores about what I've written, although I haven't watched it: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/mahersha...

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#442

Post by asveikau » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 12:44 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #24

abletonlive wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ask an oncologist if they feel that is the status quo. 20% of people who get chemotherapy get it within weeks of dying, as if suffering even more will prolong their life. Not all oncologists are like that but many feel harsh treatments which ruin a person's other healthy cells with tons of side effects is worth it for keeping a patient alive just a few months more.

I don't know much about oncology, but it strikes me that they probably don't know with certainty which of the 20% it will be. They have a limited number of interventions that put the patient through hell, and it sometimes works.

There's probably extreme cases with bad metastasis where it's very unlikely that they can be saved, and they can probably tell some of those. But I think not all the time.

Must be a very depressing job to observe this over the years.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#443

Post by hulitu » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 12:49 PM UTC

netsharc wrote: post #441

brap wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is it really the same person you're reanimating, or is it someone/something that simulates that person perfectly to the outside world? I mean, suppose you could do that while the person is still alive. Assuming the reanimated person even has consciousness, then surely(?) the two won't share the same experience, like some hive-mind with two bodies. I don't think the original person being dead makes any difference.…

Recently I had a thought, that if you copied the contents of your brain onto an object that can the simulate it, or even a new brain, then the "new instance" of you will probably just think it's the real you, just that it's on a computer/in a different body now. If New You sees a picture of a partner that left you, or a pet that died when you were a child, it will feel the same sadness you would. And it would just go…

That's what they did in Total Recall. It didn't work.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#444

Post by hulitu » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 12:50 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #431

brap wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is it really the same person you're reanimating, or is it someone/something that simulates that person perfectly to the outside world? I mean, suppose you could do that while the person is still alive. Assuming the reanimated person even has consciousness, then surely(?) the two won't share the same experience, like some hive-mind with two bodies. I don't think the original person being dead makes any difference.…

> is it someone/something that simulates that person perfectly to the outside world what difference does it make?

Did you ever used a simulator ?

The results depend on the models you use.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#445

Post by endtime » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 12:51 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #428

endtime wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brute forcing through everything-there-is-to-experience is not an enticing vision for the future at all, it's a grind. Speak for yourself, but please don't confuse that for a good argument for the death of others with a different perspective. (I don't think longevity advocates generally want to prevent suicide or force people to live forever if they don't want to.)

> "Speak for yourself" Whom do you think I am speaking for? > " please don't confuse that for a good argument for the death of others with a different perspective. " "I want everything" is a youthful perspective that adults grow out of by gaining things and realising that drowning in endless things isn't happiness, it's a hoarding disorder. People with a PetaByte storage array of media aren't the happiest film watche…

> Whom do you think I am speaking for?

I think you're speaking for "adults", given your next sentence.

> "I want everything" is a youthful perspective that adults grow out of...

Also:

> > "I don't think longevity advocates generally want to prevent suicide or force people to live forever if they don't want to."

> I suspect they are against suicide; why would someone who promotes longevity so much also be pro-dying-early?

I was ambiguous, sorry. I know for a fact that a great many of longevity advocates advocate legalized suicide. My "I think" was hedging against the fact that I haven't done a survey and don't have hard data. But I think you - understandably, given this is what you're doing - took it as idle, uninformed speculation.

My advice would be actually to read serious arguments in favor of longevity before forming opinions on them. Maybe start here: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/cryonics

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#446

Post by crubier » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 12:56 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #431

brap wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is it really the same person you're reanimating, or is it someone/something that simulates that person perfectly to the outside world? I mean, suppose you could do that while the person is still alive. Assuming the reanimated person even has consciousness, then surely(?) the two won't share the same experience, like some hive-mind with two bodies. I don't think the original person being dead makes any difference.…

> is it someone/something that simulates that person perfectly to the outside world what difference does it make?

Your experience ends.

Whether someone else who happens to have the same brain as you lives is almost irrelevant in that context.

Most people interested in cryo do this to prevent their experience from ending.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#447

Post by yreg » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 12:57 PM UTC

neuronic wrote: post #377

yreg wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This wisdom was already the topic of cartoons, books and movies 30+ years ago. If you attach 'Elon Musk' to a quote it immediately becomes relevant to some gullible people, it's truly amazing. To add some good mood, I stole a comment from reddit [1] which describes one of millions of media dealing with this question: > In The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series, immortality is fine if you're born that way. It's on…

1. The statement you quote is not the same idea.

2. Even if it was, it doesn't make the "wisdom" any less relevant. There's no shortage of relevant wisdom in Douglas Adams' writing.

3. I intentionally quoted Elon specifically, because it is a relevant reply to the parent comment about billionaires pouring money to longevity research.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#448

Post by ShredKazoo » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 12:58 PM UTC

Gatsky wrote: post #420

ShredKazoo wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>nobody will ever bother working on how to salvage the crudely frozen/vitrified. I disagree, I think salvaging them will be of tremendous historical interest. Imagine if we could bring back a peasant from the 1400s. Medieval scholars would be all over that.

Perhaps, I guess it depends on how much of the data we generate (tweets, video, blogs, text messages etc) survives into the future.

And how big/well-resourced history departments are in the future: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/10/20/in-the-future-everyone...

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#449

Post by endtime » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 1:06 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #411

endtime wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If aging is cured then the elderly could be fully productive.

At the cost of less elderly who'll miss out on being reproductive die to all the spots already being taken. Achieving immortality would be robbing from your descendants what your ancestors bestowed.

I was responding to a specific point to which your response seems irrelevant.

If my kids, or their kids, or their kids, etc. ever wanted me to die in order to "bestow" them with something...well, too bad. I wish my grandparents, and their parents, etc. were alive today.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#450

Post by Retric » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

stareatgoats wrote: post #378

Retric wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very first paragraph says: A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death which researchers claim share similar characteristics. When positive, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a lig…

Fair enough. Point taken. But how many have had the unpleasant experience? The first reference to such is a paper by Nancy bush and Bruce Greyson, which opens the study thus: "The great majority of near-death experiences (NDEs) reported publicly over the past four decades have been described as pleasant, even glorious. Almost unnoticed in the euphoria about them has been the sobering fact that not all NDEs are so aff…

The key wording here is:

> reported publicly

For various cultural reasons people rarely want to talk about negative NDE. This is why studies into the phenomenon that look for possible cases are more objective than interviewing people who come forth.

So a study like :”A 1975 study conducted by psychiatrist Raymond Moody, MD, PhD, on around 150 patients who all claimed to have witnessed an NDE stated that such an experience has nine steps.” Shows different results than the recent UK Clinical Trials Gateway where out of 465 patients none reported any visual memories.