Live data from Hacker News

What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

bigthink.com

551–560 of 599 posts

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#551
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might have done the world a service. Immortality combined with winner takes all capitalism will just lead to an entrenched race of god emperors that won’t be removed ever except by society wide violence, basically like medieval kingdoms or dynastic empires. Market economies have helped limit that a bit(wealth inheritances still have a problem), but one of the unstated backstops of that system is that eventually the r…

The ends justify the monkey wrenches, eh?

If the other ends are live under immortal elites who never give up power, then kinda yea. That's was a lot of the reasoning behind peasants taking up arms against monarchies

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#552

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…

I’ve found learning harder as I age. I can still do it, but I don’t think we’re as elastic as we are at 5, or 18. I’m guessing but I think it’s both internal changes and the sheer product of an expanded mental landscape. We have more to consider than a freshman. I think focusing really hard and making changes is easier when you have less on your plate. In a few years, an 18 year old can transform the trajectory of th…

That mental calcification, if it's so universal, seems like it's probably partly physiological in nature. It's the sort of thing that could be changed, in time, if people wanted to make themselves more or less neuroplastic.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#553
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living 1000 years wouldn't necessarily imply resistance to change. I'm not sure why you think that it would.

I subjectively disagree from observation. Change in viewpoints, lifestyle or behavior become exceedingly rare the older people get. Also, the youth is always incapable, stupid and wrong. It's so much of a phenomenon that I wouldn't dare blaming anyone for this. It almost seems to be part of normal development. People just tend to become more mentally rigid with age and they have a perfect justification ready for you:…

Everyone has brain damage that accumulates over the course of your life. A 50-year old has a lot fewer brain cells than a 20-year old; I wonder what would happen if you regrew them?

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#554
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we do know is that being fit and exercising with some semblance of healthy eating helps people live a lot longer. No, abstaining from things like alcohol and smoking mostly does that. Exercise and healthy eating markedly improves quality of life at old age, but it doesn’t extend it by huge amounts.

See people don't want to even believe healthy eating and exercise long life expectancy! For what it's worth obesity accounts for about 5-10 year shortening. Not dissimilar to smoking.

Obesity is something else than median ( = control group) living.

Sport is good for you. Extreme sports markedly cuts short average life expectancy and late quality of life. With your logic, that makes sports bad.

Edit: actually, I guess it depends on where you live. In America, obesity probably is the median..

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-lif…

One shouldn't put money into "curing death by aging" without fixing society first; while birth rates exceed death rates, the world fills up and drains natural resources etc etc. There's a ton of problems that need resolving if living longer is to be a thing.

The main reason to attempt to stop aging is to prevent other illnesses from taking effect.

People who are physically young are at a much lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes/Alzheimer's, etc. Stopping/reversing the aging process kind of fixes the root cause of a lot of those diseases.

We're probably not far off from that reality, either. Then we move onto more controversial questions, e.g. Do physically healthy people have the right to end their own lives? Not everyone want to live to be 300 years old, especially those who have lost most of their family and friends over those years.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One shouldn't put money into "curing death by aging" without fixing society first; while birth rates exceed death rates, the world fills up and drains natural resources etc etc. There's a ton of problems that need resolving if living longer is to be a thing.

The main reason to attempt to stop aging is to prevent other illnesses from taking effect. People who are physically young are at a much lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes/Alzheimer's, etc. Stopping/reversing the aging process kind of fixes the root cause of a lot of those diseases. We're probably not far off from that reality, either. Then we move onto more controversial questions, e.g. D…

I've never understood the "not wanting to live 300 years" sentiment.

I've experienced extreme loss, but continue to expreience new connections, knowledge, etc. There's simply no small limit to what a human can experience, and hundreds of years is paltry compared to when it would take to even be on the verge of boredom/emptiness, if such a verge could actually ever be reached.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#557
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space on earth is finite. And even if add more hypotheticals like us becoming an interstellar species (actually I'd wager that's less unlikely than overcoming aging), in absence of aging exponential breeding would eventually outpace even the fastest space frontier colonization imaginable.

Yeah, and if you go from 100 year lifespan to 300 years and survive the societal collapse, would you be happy then? What about in 300 years? Eventually all the atoms we know and love will decay and "disappear."

Give me a few million years of life and I'll still have billions more to think about what to do in the event of a heat death of the universe.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the solution is to have the equivalent of a mass genocide in old people? I would much, much, much rather be alive in a fucked up world than dead in a nice world.

> I would much, much, much rather be alive in a fucked up world than dead in a nice world. You don't know that. You think that is the case, but (I) you don't know what death is like, so you cannot realistically claim it is worse than anything (II) until you qualify 'fucked up' then this is a pointless claim, since your version of 'fucked up' may not be that bad compared to what is in the realm of possibility.

Death is worse, we do know that - outside of religious afterlifes, having continued brain patterns is preferable to non-existence.

It's incredibly more likely that continued existence will be no worse than the world today, which is quite nice. Even if it becomes torturous existence beats non-existence.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#559
post #384
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.…

Really interesting discussion! Reminds me of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#560
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-lif…

Imagine if they succeeded. Instant breakdown of society. So by induction, perhaps someone makes sure they don't.

Society won't break down. Societies of the high longevity future are almost certain to look back at the current age and balk in confusion at the number of people afraid of living longer the same way we balk at things like human sacrifice.
Post reply on HN