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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?

#561

Post by saalweachter »

GaylordTuring wrote: post #427
sangnoir wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What lower hanging fruit are governments currently spending on? I meant what lower hanging fruits governments ought to spend on. However, since you asked, here are some of the things governments are currently spending on, but could bear improvement: eradicating preventable diseases, ensuring kids get good nutrition, better tracking, and hopefully prevention of e. coli/salmonella outbreaks, funding basic research in…

Those things are nice, but individually they each only have an expected value of maybe a couple of extra years of living time. Contrast that to curing ageing that would put that number in the hundreds or thousands.

Honestly I'm not sure those numbers are compelling enough.

We, like, know how to solve some of those other problems. Sure, there's politics and bureaucracy and complications and the opportunity for corruption, but you can assign a p close to 1 we could get it done in an arbitrary timeframe.

Meanwhile, what's the probability that dumping a particular amount of money into aging is going to pay off? Even taking a thousand years you need a p>0.002 to make it worth diverting money from the safe bet of getting a couple of years off the other things.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#562

Post by epicureanideal »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #465
sangnoir wrote: post #232

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 .

Not sure about anyone else but if I was a billionaire researching it I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone if possible.

Seems like some are fairly open about it. I recall hearing about some trying blood transfusions for example.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#563

Post by kubanczyk »

neuronic wrote: post #518
kubanczyk wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you use the word "consciousness" as a thought stopper. A though experiment: Imagine I have no consciousness, but I can run circles around you, outperform you, outpredict you, game you, have a better intuition (gasp), or be more creative (gasp squared). What's left of the magic now?

Interesting point, this is why I love these discussions so first of all thank you. When we strip away all of these aspects from 'the magic' it gets really interesting to think about what's left. And this is always where it becomes hard to articulate for me. Would you describe yourself as a robot performing a set of finite predetermined tasks? A system merely responding to pattern recognition? Are we just a more compl…

> it becomes hard to articulate

I read you. What I find helpful is not to trust my own internal perspective on how I think I think. Things become much clearer when I consider more neutral ground, yes, ants, chatgpts, rocks, etc.

So, yes, I still wonder what would be the advantage of a conscious ant, besides hubris.

> Are we just a more complex version of ants

The same evolution caused humans and ants, that's all. Oak is not a version of orca.

> emergent behavior

This time it's a canonical thought stopper, on the level of "idiopathic disease".

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#565

Post by dredmorbius »

tptacek wrote: post #535
dredmorbius wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone requests no replies, regardless of the merits, the best thing to do is probably to simply walk away. Even if you're otherwise apologising. HN's comment-collapse feature may help with this. I frequently use that to avoid "final word" temptation myself.

I'm not apologizing. This is a public space, and nobody has the privilege of demanding that anyone else not respond to them. If 'kragen wants to reach out and communicate something more complicated than that thought to me, I'm all ears. I recommend email for that, in this specific case. That's all. No drama, but good to be clear about norms.

What you were specifically doing doesn't much matter, though "responding sympathetically" might be a closer fit.

From my own experience in online interactions, what I've observed is that if I've managed to antagonise someone, no response seems to be the best response, including apologies. Again, regardless of who's in the right or wrong.

(If there's some other offense against yourself, you might address that separately and directed at others.)

But what I've seen across decades, fora, and people, is that once a nerve is hot and inflamed, it's best left alone for a good long while.

That's what I was trying to convey.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#566

Post by tptacek »

dredmorbius wrote: post #565
tptacek wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not apologizing. This is a public space, and nobody has the privilege of demanding that anyone else not respond to them. If 'kragen wants to reach out and communicate something more complicated than that thought to me, I'm all ears. I recommend email for that, in this specific case. That's all. No drama, but good to be clear about norms.

What you were specifically doing doesn't much matter, though "responding sympathetically" might be a closer fit. From my own experience in online interactions, what I've observed is that if I've managed to antagonise someone, no response seems to be the best response, including apologies. Again, regardless of who's in the right or wrong. (If there's some other offense against yourself, you might address that separate…

Sure, that makes sense.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#567

Post by dredmorbius »

tptacek wrote: post #566
dredmorbius wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you were specifically doing doesn't much matter, though "responding sympathetically" might be a closer fit. From my own experience in online interactions, what I've observed is that if I've managed to antagonise someone, no response seems to be the best response, including apologies. Again, regardless of who's in the right or wrong. (If there's some other offense against yourself, you might address that separate…

Sure, that makes sense.

Thanks.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#568

Post by adastra22 »

terminal_d wrote: post #550
adastra22 wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advocating that others should not be allowed to live is beyond rude.

Nipping a fantasy =/= killing people Asking people to "take the quick way out", though, IS asking someone to kill himself for having an opinion you don't seem to like.

Ok you very much misunderstood. I was saying that nobody would be forced to live forever: assisted suicide would always be an option for those who tore of life.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#569

Post by OkayPhysicist »

epicureanideal wrote: post #288
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.

The opposite could also be true though. Longer lifespans permit more people gaining education, working more years, saving more money with a longer term vision, and rising to be a new economic upper class. Short lifespans make that a very difficult to coordinate multi generational project. There are also solutions like term limits, or generational tenure limits or something that could help reduce any negative effects…

I generally agree with you, except for the view on class mobility. If we defeat aging altogether, I strongly suspect society to stratify aggressively between those that can afford it and those who can't, and worse, a class of immortal wealth to form. Today, maintaining generational wealth requires A) balancing relatively small family sizes to keep the exponential growth of family members relatively inline with the exponential growth of well-managed wealth against dying off because no one had kids and B) a mostly continuous line of responsible investors. In a future where dying of old age isn't a problem, A becomes much easier and B) is eliminated entirely. It's all the problems of generational wealth with none of the saving graces.

On the whole I think it's worth it, but it will definitely exasperate the problems already inherent to our economic system.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#570

Post by rewgs »

smaddox wrote: post #34
RajT88 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That scorn seems earned. Little progress has been made on raising the dead in 50 years. I mean, CPR has gotten better for sure. But that's just for people who are mostly dead. Not going to work on people who are all-the-way-dead. Anyone claiming high chances of resurrection in some sci-fi future are just blathing.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. Scientists have successfully sliced, imaged, and analyzed (i.e. determined the connectome for) the entire brain of very small animal, the common fruit fly, Drosophila. We're still a long way from turning that into a virtual simulation of the creature, but it's a significant step towards it.

The idea of eventually creating a virtual simulation of the human brain, or even human body, modeling environmental variables and all, totally fascinates me. Are there any sources you’d recommend for someone looking to learn more about this?
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