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Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

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Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#71

Post by saalweachter »

ef4 wrote: post #57
s_q_b wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's to say that the choice to survive in the distant future is desirable? Everyone you know and love will have been long dead, and any society with both the means and will to revive you may have undesirable objectives in mind, e.g. a life of slavery or military conscription. From a global perspective, what are the potential impacts on the species of an eternal elite, obsessed with life extension, creating an ever-g…

> Who's to say that the choice to survive in the distant future is desirable? Each individual for themselves, obviously. > Everyone you know and love will have been long dead This obviously contradicts the original assumption that you might actually get revived. Because if you can, so can others. > may have undesirable objectives in mind, e.g. a life of slavery or military conscription I find it hard to believe that…

I would personally expect "everyone you know and love" to be the reason any of us schmucks have a hope of being revived.

Even if there is no economic or scientific reason to revive a frozen, preserved person, there could still be sentimental reasons. If my grandfather were frozen and reviveable, and not dead and buried, I would want to revive him. If it were remotely within my financial means, I would save for decades, mortgage or sell everything I own, take on any debt I could trick people into lending me, if it technologically possible to bring a parent back to life.

It is not difficult to imagine a chain of un-freezing in some distant future. Children unfreeze parents; parents unfreeze grandparents; grandparents unfreeze great-grandparents. As long as there is some tenuous connection between the preserved and the living, at some price point a living old friend or third cousin will want to revive the preserved. Add in the odd charity for the few friendless frozen and it is not hard to imagine any frozen person eventually being revived, technology permitting.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#72

Post by drcode »

eudox wrote: post #15
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?

Active shutdown is certainly preferable, but to the best of my knowledge is only legal in Switzerland.

I wonder how long until a cryopreservation startup sets up an office on a cruise ship or some other place so they can offer active shutdown to their customers.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#73

Post by codezero »

raverbashing wrote: post #46
toomuchtodo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that cryopreservation is the belief in the increasing rate of scientific progress (which can measured and proven), and that it is far more rational than the tens of millions of people who attend church every Saturday or Sunday in search of salvation for their soul. As /u/dublinben mentioned, I'd give my entire wealth to have the opportunity to live in the future.

On the other hand, you'll be living in the future, and probably unemployable since things will have evolved so much. Maybe everybody speaks something else other than English and even communicating is a pain (even with good translation resources) You'll know nobody. All the things that you know by "home" are gone. It'll probably be cool for the first weeks, then an absolute drag.

I think it'd be less of a drag than being nonexistent.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#74

Post by kryptiskt »

rbanffy wrote: post #26
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 o…

You may wake up a stunted and brain-damaged version of yourself that is aware enough to know what it is missing.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#75

Post by scintill76 »

dghughes wrote: post #60

Funny how the mind plays tricks I read that as cryptopreservation.

Maybe he has been uploaded into the Bitcoin blockchain to be preserved by virtue of the tens of thousands of independent copies maintained all over the world. On a more serious note, I expect to see tributes to Hal embedded in the blockchain.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#76

Post by michaelkeenan »

ericb wrote: post #4

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

If there were no government or Friendly AGI doing it for everyone, I imagine it would chain backward through time: those still alive who are friends and family of the cryo-preserved would resurrect them. Then, those people would know older cryo-preserved people, and would resurrect them. (Unless, I suppose, the cost were exorbitant and the cryo-resurrected didn't have the means. But this is a future, post-death, probably post-singularity world; it'd probably be a society of abundance.)

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#77

Post by toomuchtodo »

cjbprime wrote: post #45
toomuchtodo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that cryopreservation is the belief in the increasing rate of scientific progress (which can measured and proven), and that it is far more rational than the tens of millions of people who attend church every Saturday or Sunday in search of salvation for their soul. As /u/dublinben mentioned, I'd give my entire wealth to have the opportunity to live in the future.

> I would argue that cryopreservation is the belief in the increasing rate of scientific progress (which can measured and proven) The problem is that you aren't just depending on future improvements in revival technology, you're depending on the current state of today's preservation technology (at the point you die). And today's preservation technology doesn't have a lot of evidence suggesting that it can work to suc…

> The problem is that you aren't just depending on future improvements in revival technology, you're depending on the current state of today's preservation technology (at the point you die).

When the other option is straight ol' Death, I'm not losing much by playing the long game on science coming through at sophisticated cellular repair mechanisms/protocols. I'm definitely ahead of people getting buried or cremated.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#78

Post by rdl »

Hal Finney was one of the best people on the cypherpunks list -- wrote frequently, great developer, involved in some of the most interesting products of the past 30 years. He was also remarkably friendly and civil, even more amazing in a place like the cypherpunks list. A really great person, and will be missed. (but hopefully only for a few decades until the reverse-cryopreservation thing is worked out...)

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#79

Post by tonysuper »

sliverstorm wrote: post #65
blake8086 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a post on the front page right now http://www.gentweb.co.uk/wirerecorder.htm about re-constructing some old wire recordings just to listen to the past. Imagine the opportunity to bring the person themselves back, instead of just audio. I think if technology advances sufficiently that it is "easy" and "cheap" enough, people will resurrect cryo-preserved patients just because it suits them to do so. If I had a…

You would only do it while it remained novel, though. When two or three people are cryopreserved, novelty is enough, but what about when thousands or millions are?

Then you do it out of a sense of duty to the past.

People spend ages carefully preserving forks and other trinkets from the 1700s. Surely an entire person would be worth equal care, and a group of people more so.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#80

Post by jacquesm »

scarmig wrote: post #66
jacquesm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not called 'active shutdown', that's called murder. Unless you're very ill then it is called euthanasia. Why invent new words when we have perfectly serviceable ones?

If we're going to quibble about terminology, I'd point out that "assisted suicide" would come a lot closer than "murder" to describe that situation. Of course, in the POV of someone who believes in cryopreservation as a way to save lives, preventing it is almost tantamount to murder--probably falling somewhere above negligent homicide, since you'd actively be preventing someone from saving their own life. I say that…

If you kill someone after they paid you a lot of money to preserve your corpse the courts might not agree with the assisted suicide bit if your body was still functional. They'd more than likely call it murder too.

I'm a firm believer in the preservation bit, I don't think it will scale and I totally do not believe in the resurrection bit. It's a bit like performing a magical trick where you smash somebody's watch in act one and you still haven't figured out how to do part two.

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