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Hal Finney being cryopreserved now
101–110 of 273 posts
Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now
#102I'm curious--in these cryopreservation arrangements, what is done to incentivize future people to resurrect you? Anyone know?
By the time we have the technology to revive cryopatients, that question will likely be "why not?".
> By the time we have the technology to revive cryopatients, that question will likely be "why not?".
It's a big leap of faith to think we'll ever be able to revive frozen dead people. Early applications of cryonics didn't take the tissue destruction of freezing into account. What other problems are being completely missed in the process?
And that's to say nothing of the problems related to reviving a dead person and fixing the causes of their death in a timely manner. Even granting a relatively uninterrupted progress of technology, it's a big assumption that such things are possible.
Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
A ship is subject to the laws and regulations of the country in which it is registered, even when it is not operating in that country's waters.
Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now
#104Earlier 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.
A huge portion of the workforce will be unemployable in our lifetimes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
By the time the technology comes around the revive the cryopreserved, the rest of technological advancement will change the dynamic of human interaction so much we cannot estimate what the world will be like, but we can assume that with technology advanced enough to repair the damage from the freezing process, you would probably be entering a world of almost any possibility.
Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now
#105It's fascinating, and personally a bit disturbing, to read about his death as an announcement of cryopreservation ("being cryopreserved now") instead of the sad news it is anyway ("died today"). Also the discussion here revolves around he coming back, not he leaving. Maybe it impresses me because he seemed so hopeful to be able to choose life in his post back then when he was diagnosed: "I may even still be able to w…
> I guess one can argue it is a good thing about cryonics, less mourning, more hope. Not more so than in some other religions with their own versions of an afterlife. It all depends on your faith.
I find it interesting that cryonics and the singularity are both 'modern' religions with that are vary similar in tone to many past religions. They both seems reasonable on the surface, but don't really work if you dig down into the details. Much like all that new age QM BS uses a few of the right words without much substance.
Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Since you specifically mentioned kidneys: >In the summer of 2005, where he was a keynote speaker at the annual Society for Cryobiology meeting, Fahy announced that Twenty-First Century Medicine had successfully cryopreserved a rabbit kidney at -130°C by vitrification and transplanted it into a rabbit after rewarming, with subsequent long-term life support by the vitrified-rewarmed kidney as the sole kidney. This rese…
That's exciting, thank you for the correction. (Happen to know whether they've done any larger organs?)
Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Active shutdown is certainly preferable, but to the best of my knowledge is only legal in Switzerland.
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?
>That's not called 'active shutdown', that's called murder
Well, it's not really called anything much at the moment as no one does it but certainly not all killing is called murder. You kill enemies with bombs, that's heroic service, civilians with bombs it's collateral damage, kill patients trying to save them medically then it's an unfortunate result, kill deliberately in a manner banned by your government then it's murder. For me suspending someone to save them would be closest to heroic service.
Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
By the time we have the technology to revive cryopatients, that question will likely be "why not?".
> By the time we have the technology to revive cryopatients, that question will likely be "why not?". It's a big leap of faith to think we'll ever be able to revive frozen dead people. Early applications of cryonics didn't take the tissue destruction of freezing into account. What other problems are being completely missed in the process? And that's to say nothing of the problems related to reviving a dead person and…
>Early applications of cryonics didn't take the tissue destruction of freezing into account. What other problems are being completely missed in the process?
Literally everyone knows about ice formation. Robert Ettinger wrote about it in his cryonics book before it ever happened. Cryoprotectants have been used since the first real (ie non-cosmetic) cryopreservations.
>reviving a dead person and fixing the causes of their death
Cancer (for example) is nothing compared to reviving a vitrified human. Absolutely nothing. By the time you have the biological machinery to repair the kind of damage that thermal stress fractures, residual ice and cryoprotectant toxicity causes, cancer will be a curiosity in the bookshelves of history.
If the person died due to some kind of brain aneurysm, then sure, you probably can't fix that, but then again you're talking about a situation where there's really no structure to preserve in the first place.
Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now
#109I didn't know Hal Finney, but condolences to his family. Comparing different religions' various flavors of afterlife is very interesting, but perhaps this isn't the right forum for it (though maybe it is; I don't know). One thing is certain, though: cryonics's promise of an afterlife is definitely the most materially expensive of all religions -- on average, that is (some Christians spent what probably amounts to mor…
It's just a commoditization. Religion will charge what they think they buyer will be able to afford, cryopreservation companies charge what they think it should cost to get the problem pushed beyond their own lifetimes.
It's a scam, but a very clever one, just like religion. The only mitigating factor to me is that the participants here go in eyes wide open rather than that they are sucked in as defenceless children.
Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now
#110Earlier 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?
Words have meaning. When we hit the edge of technology those meanings tends to be obscure or wrong and so we need a new word. Murder is so final, while this is more akind to shutting down a computer that you hope to be able to start up again. Hence active shutdown being a more appropriate idea.
> Murder is so final, while this is more akind to shutting down a computer that you hope to be able to start up again. Hence active shutdown being a more appropriate idea.
The flaw in the analogy is that there's fairly widespread experience in restarting computers after shutdown, as well as a wealth of knowledge about how fix the computer if it doesn't come back up. None of that holds for cryonics and human death.