Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

lists.extropy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 273 posts

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#21

Post by darkmighty »

cousin_it wrote: post #8
ericb wrote: post #4

I'm curious--in these cryopreservation arrangements, what is done to incentivize future people to resurrect you? Anyone know?

Well, you make a contract and pay money to the company that cryopreserves you. They could screw you over after you die, but that would be bad for their reputation and they could be sued.

Well their reputation will only come into play once the first sucessful resucitations are shown (or shown possible), which is far into the future. This risk-reward disconnect is dangerous.

Funny enough, he worked on Bitcoin, which may pave ways to Autonomous Corporations. In some time perhaps you could set a an autonomous corporation managing some funds in low-risk while delegating the surplus to payments conditioned on a "proof of conservation" of the body.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#22

Post by joshmarlow »

jngreenlee wrote: post #14
dublinben wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I think most inquisitive folks and Sci-Fi nerds would pay anything to travel into the future (beyond a single lifetime).

If conciseness is in fact just an internal feeling/feedback loop, the revived you will feel as though this was achieved, but is the benefit to your present mind-state somewhat lost?

Assuming consciousness is an internal state (nothing mystical or metaphysical), isn't this the same thing as a long nap? Ie, is the fact that the you after a nap feels like a continuation of yourself of no benefit to the you before a nap?

Of course, the analogy isn't perfect since brain activity does not cease during a nap, but consciousness does.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#24

Post by reasonattlm »

mef wrote: post #6

Interesting that someone would choose to be cryopreserved somewhere where there's no legal assisted suicide. Wouldn't your chances of being successfully revived improve if you got cryopreserved while still alive?

The cost of this would have been much greater, and present organizations are not really set up to transport people already cryopreserved, so doing it ad hoc would be especially expensive. Transport when it does happen tends to be a packaged in dry ice type of deal, with final procedures happening on site on arrival, potentially a day or two later in the case of long distances. Alcor recommends that those who can predict their end of life date with any accuracy move to be close to their HQ. A good cryopreservation, all other factors being equal, is all about time to fully vitrified for important tissues. Regulation makes that enormously difficult on one hand, but transport is also a real logistics hurdle.

Also, in Finney's case the condition he suffered allowed for more self-willed timing in these matters than is usually the case. It isn't a pleasant thing to have to do to yourself by any means, but that is what it comes to when it is government employees who are the people who decide on every aspect of your life, not you. One recommendation from people in the cryonics industry in the past has been that when you are on the final downward spiral to stop eating and drinking so as to time the end yourself and thus ensure much better odds of a good preservation, organized and timely. Very rational, as the time from death to vitrification is so very critical, but again something forced upon people by uncaring bureaucrats and laws that prevent self-determination in end of life decisions.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#25

Post by declan »

This is sad news, but less sad than a funeral and cremation would have been. I met Hal in the 1990s via the cypherpunks list, where a young Julian Assange was also hanging out. Hal went on to work for PGP Corp. in its glory days, and was involved in the early stages of Bitcoin as well. He is (not was!) the consummate cypherpunk and extropian.

A lot of those discussions have been lost to time, but here's a note from Hal that I posted to Politech in 1999 where he warned against building surveillance backdoors in Internet standards:

http://seclists.org/politech/1999/Oct/24 "If the IETF sets the precedent of acceding to the wishes of countries like the US and Europe, it may find itself forced to similarly honor the desires of less open societies."

And here's Hal responding to one of my Wired articles by pointing out the absurdity of the MPAA's claims against Napster:

http://extropians.weidai.com/extropians.1Q01/3833.html "Looking at it over the history of Napster the amount would have to run well into the quadrillions. Surely this would be the largest legal claim in history! I wonder if the record companies can present this figure with a straight face."

I'll miss Hal. At least there's a very slim, but non-zero, chance he'll log back on again.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#26

Post by rbanffy »

NhanH wrote: post #7

On the topic of cryopreservation, to borrow a question from Scott Aaronson [1]: have you signed up for cryopreservation? And regardless of your answer, how do you defend yourself against the charge of irrationality? On one hand, it seems like a different version of Pascal's wager - if you can afford it, the upside is potentially far more beneficial than the downside. On the other hand, well, it is crazy... I can thin…

Considering death is inevitable, cryopreservation just before you cease to function is, quite possibly, the best rational choice you can make. Of course, it's a bit selfish, as the resources you commit to it are substantial and your offspring could benefit from them.

Betting your final moments on specific advances of technology is also not an easy decision. Plus, you may wake up in a world you don't like.

OTOH, the other option is not to wake up at all.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#28

Post by Houshalter »

jngreenlee wrote: post #14
dublinben wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I think most inquisitive folks and Sci-Fi nerds would pay anything to travel into the future (beyond a single lifetime).

If conciseness is in fact just an internal feeling/feedback loop, the revived you will feel as though this was achieved, but is the benefit to your present mind-state somewhat lost?

You can say that for any attempt to make plans for the future.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#29

Post by eudox »

joshmarlow wrote: post #22
jngreenlee wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If conciseness is in fact just an internal feeling/feedback loop, the revived you will feel as though this was achieved, but is the benefit to your present mind-state somewhat lost?

Assuming consciousness is an internal state (nothing mystical or metaphysical), isn't this the same thing as a long nap? Ie, is the fact that the you after a nap feels like a continuation of yourself of no benefit to the you before a nap ? Of course, the analogy isn't perfect since brain activity does not cease during a nap, but consciousness does.

People have come back from minutes of electrocerebral silence with intact memories and personalities.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#30

Post by declan »

NhanH wrote: post #7

On the topic of cryopreservation, to borrow a question from Scott Aaronson [1]: have you signed up for cryopreservation? And regardless of your answer, how do you defend yourself against the charge of irrationality? On one hand, it seems like a different version of Pascal's wager - if you can afford it, the upside is potentially far more beneficial than the downside. On the other hand, well, it is crazy... I can thin…

>if you can afford it, the upside is potentially far more beneficial than the downside

I looked into this in some detail a while ago, and I recall Alcor indicated that many of its members opt for life insurance (with Alcor as a beneficiary) to cover the cost of cryopreservation. That's something like $75K to cryopreserve your head, and $150K for whole-body cryospreservation.

I suspect the mean age of HN readers skews toward late 20s or early 30s, meaning that they'd likely pay something like I updated my will last year with the help of a SF bay area attorney who told me she's done cryopreservation wills/trusts for a bunch of high-profile tech execs (she did not, of course, name names). Email me if you want her info.

Post reply on HN