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Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

medrxiv.org

31–40 of 110 posts

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#31
post #4

When it comes to cryopreservation the thing I find infeasible is the idea a provider would bother with the preservation, under the incentives of capitalism. If someone pays millions of dollars to a company that promises to freeze their corpse for 200 years, the company can simply freeze the corpse for a decade or two, take the millions of dollars as dividends and executive bonuses, then declare bankruptcy. The dead c…

These aren’t companies doing the patient storage. It is non profits setup and run by people who are signed up themselves.

It's basically the same thing. What's stopping them from eventually losing interest or the non profit getting hijacked. I personally think the whole thing is a huge waste of money and i can imagine some guys in 50 years will think so too.

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#32
post #4

When it comes to cryopreservation the thing I find infeasible is the idea a provider would bother with the preservation, under the incentives of capitalism. If someone pays millions of dollars to a company that promises to freeze their corpse for 200 years, the company can simply freeze the corpse for a decade or two, take the millions of dollars as dividends and executive bonuses, then declare bankruptcy. The dead c…

Yeah, even the living can't collect much from a bankrupt corporation.

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#33
post #4

When it comes to cryopreservation the thing I find infeasible is the idea a provider would bother with the preservation, under the incentives of capitalism. If someone pays millions of dollars to a company that promises to freeze their corpse for 200 years, the company can simply freeze the corpse for a decade or two, take the millions of dollars as dividends and executive bonuses, then declare bankruptcy. The dead c…

There's a news story about such a company where they basically throw the bodies in a chest freezer, or stuffed many of them together in one unit, etc. Nightmare fuel... I have doubts that such a company could keep the power on for the next 200 years, with an increasingly unstable planet (climatically and politically). Maybe sending your body in a lead coffin into the coldness of space is a better preservation method,…

If that's the case why aren't we doing more to encourage them?

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#34

I thought about death the other day and how maybe it's akin to the feeling of going under before a surgery. When you go under and then wake up some hours later, often you feel like no time has passed at all. What if death is just that same feeling or lack thereof for Millenia, an infinite amount of time, but at some point from your perspective, you wake up instantly far in the future. Like a photon travelling for mil…

Somewhat along that line of thinking, I've wondered if my visual perspective was similar to a 3D game engine camera. And if upon death, it switched to a new entity.

Like a shooter spectator mode or like reincarnation with extra steps?

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#35

I thought about death the other day and how maybe it's akin to the feeling of going under before a surgery. When you go under and then wake up some hours later, often you feel like no time has passed at all. What if death is just that same feeling or lack thereof for Millenia, an infinite amount of time, but at some point from your perspective, you wake up instantly far in the future. Like a photon travelling for mil…

Somewhat along that line of thinking, I've wondered if my visual perspective was similar to a 3D game engine camera. And if upon death, it switched to a new entity.

You are the object the camera is bound to, which is elligible for collection when it become unreachable, allowing at some point in time for new allocations to be made with the amount of space you occupied during your life.

Do note that if nothing is done with this space -ever- then your data is not zeroed out, yet you don't exist anymore ?

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not your fault.

Its obviously not my 'fault'. But it's pretty close to a death I could have prevented for a while if I wasnt pretending to be busy probably. I remember when she said her dad was going to go instead and I thought "uhh, I don't think that's going to work.. I should just go" but I didn't really like her that much at that point and figured it would just be a lame wasted hike, not that the dude would die.

Life is full of moments like that. For example on your way to work that same morning, had you left your house 30 seconds later than you did, someone might have had to wait at an intersection longer than they otherwise would have, causing them to narrowly miss being in an accident further down the road instead of being hit. Butterfly effect and all that. You can’t predict the future.

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#37
post #21
post #5

> Conclusions and Relevance: US physicians assigned a median 25.5% probability to preservation retaining neural information under ideal conditions in a manner potentially compatible with future patient revival. The majority support for pre-mortem anticoagulation and substantial support for pre-cardiac arrest initiation indicate that many physicians would consider accommodating patient requests for preservation-enhanc…

That's a way higher number than I expected.

I worry that there's a selection bias: physicians who even bothered to respond to a survey on this topic.

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#38

I thought about death the other day and how maybe it's akin to the feeling of going under before a surgery. When you go under and then wake up some hours later, often you feel like no time has passed at all. What if death is just that same feeling or lack thereof for Millenia, an infinite amount of time, but at some point from your perspective, you wake up instantly far in the future. Like a photon travelling for mil…

[dead]

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#39

I thought about death the other day and how maybe it's akin to the feeling of going under before a surgery. When you go under and then wake up some hours later, often you feel like no time has passed at all. What if death is just that same feeling or lack thereof for Millenia, an infinite amount of time, but at some point from your perspective, you wake up instantly far in the future. Like a photon travelling for mil…

It's impossible to experience nothing. Spooky

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#40
post #4

When it comes to cryopreservation the thing I find infeasible is the idea a provider would bother with the preservation, under the incentives of capitalism. If someone pays millions of dollars to a company that promises to freeze their corpse for 200 years, the company can simply freeze the corpse for a decade or two, take the millions of dollars as dividends and executive bonuses, then declare bankruptcy. The dead c…

One way to mitigate that would be to put the money in a trust which pays the preservation company a monthly dividend. If the trust stops paying, the company can sue it. If the company goes out of business despite its ongoing revenue, the trust can try to find someone else to take over the storage. We already have trusts that manage wealth for multiple generations.
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