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As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it?

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Re: As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it?

#51

Post by evgen »

thret wrote: post #48
dpark wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only good reasons (that I can think of right now) not to sign up are if (1) you can't afford the ~$50/month or whatever your life insurance premiums + member dues would be, or (2) you rely on the financial support of people who are strongly anti-cryonics. Or you think it's dumb and fruitless and a waste of money. We don't have any way of predicting the expected value of cryopreservation. It could be that after…

If there's a non-zero chance that you will be returned to life at some point in the future, then however unlikely that chance is worth 25k. It is a lottery; the cost is small compared to the payoff and it rationalises hope.

Sounds a lot like Pascal's wager; small cost, high benefit, equally ridiculous probability of a payoff...

Re: As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it?

#52

Post by jpulgarin »

nknight wrote: post #47
mmaro wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a reasonable concern, but at this meta level there are two things going in cryonics' favor: there's a good chance you're overconfident about its non-utility[1], and there's a chance that your reanimation comes much earlier than expected, so the cumulative risks don't add up to much. And FWIW, Alcor and Cryonics Institute don't require power for storage; they require deliveries of liquid nitrogen. I don't think…

> Personally, I would want to be > 99% sure about this before completely giving up on cryonics. That same logic can be used to justify spending inordinate resources on any sort of snake oil. Why should cryonics be special?

You don't know what logic he used, only his conclusion.

Perhaps the logic is:

* If something is agreed to have a chance of extending my life for thousands of years by more than 5% of people whose thinking I respect and

* it costs less than 200k and

* there are no obvious people who are profiting from this then

* I want to be >99% sure about it not being viable before giving up on it.

Re: As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it?

#53

Post by lsparrish »

davidu wrote: post #7
cydonian_monk wrote: post #5

It's not the lack of cryo arrangements that's the problem. (I've considered cryo myself, but I'm not impressed with the likelyhood of success. Too many fracturing events, not to mention the likely extreme costs of recovery post-freezer. But if you're looking for more life, it's your only potential option.) The problem is that we haven't been focusing enough on the real issue: Death. Finding ways to extend human life…

I hadn't considered my greatest fear, but now I recognize it: Finding ways to extend human life indefinitely should be our generation's "Space Race." We already suffer from over-population and pollution. Death is a key piece of the demographic shift, and just about every other anthropological process related to the change and evolution of culture and society. Living longer would not increase our society's capability…

We already have a solution to overpopulation: birth control. Longer lived people have more memories and skills, so of course our capacity would increase -- if not counteracted by neurological senescence. The trick is to regenerate the person to a youthful state, where they can be productive and creative yet retain their knowledge and skills. I don't expect it to be easy, but people in cryostasis can afford to wait a while.

Re: As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it?

#54

Post by [deleted] »

ams6110 wrote: post #13
cydonian_monk wrote: post #5

It's not the lack of cryo arrangements that's the problem. (I've considered cryo myself, but I'm not impressed with the likelyhood of success. Too many fracturing events, not to mention the likely extreme costs of recovery post-freezer. But if you're looking for more life, it's your only potential option.) The problem is that we haven't been focusing enough on the real issue: Death. Finding ways to extend human life…

If we find (an affordable) way to extend human life indefinitely, then at some point individuals are going to be faced with the choice of voluntarily "stepping aside" (or whatever polite term we might come up with) or stop having children. I don't think either would be in most people's nature, which doesn't seem to lead to any pleasant consequences I can think of.

[deleted]

Re: As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it?

#55

Post by thret »

asto wrote: post #36

To do away with death is to do away with evolution. Not a very good idea. We should work towards improving the quality of life rather than extend it. Would have been happier if the article was "as more people fall to chronically painful illnesses, isn't it time we act?"

Evolution happens from one generation to the next and there isn't much we can do to prevent it. You are thinking of natural selection, and we've already done away with that by ensuring humans have the opportunity to procreate regardless of physical defects.

Re: As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it?

#56

Post by nknight »

jpulgarin wrote: post #52
nknight wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I would want to be > 99% sure about this before completely giving up on cryonics. That same logic can be used to justify spending inordinate resources on any sort of snake oil. Why should cryonics be special?

You don't know what logic he used, only his conclusion. Perhaps the logic is: * If something is agreed to have a chance of extending my life for thousands of years by more than 5% of people whose thinking I respect and * it costs less than 200k and * there are no obvious people who are profiting from this then * I want to be >99% sure about it not being viable before giving up on it.

He hasn't made that argument or anything close to it. The most he's said/implied is that $50/month is worth it. If he has some other logic, he'll need to share it if he hopes to convince anyone. Otherwise, he's just a guy standing on the sidewalk with a bottle of magic pills.

Re: As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it?

#57

Post by georgieporgie »

AngryParsley wrote: post #25
ams6110 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we find (an affordable) way to extend human life indefinitely, then at some point individuals are going to be faced with the choice of voluntarily "stepping aside" (or whatever polite term we might come up with) or stop having children. I don't think either would be in most people's nature, which doesn't seem to lead to any pleasant consequences I can think of.

The question is not "if" but "when." Biotech and medicine are only getting better. At some point we'll be able to reverse aging, then we'll have to deal with the consequences. To prevent overpopulation, people can either have kids or live incredibly long lives. Not both. I bet once indefinite life extension becomes feasible, something along these lines will happen: Everyone who had serious philosophical conundra on t…

To prevent overpopulation, people can either have kids or live incredibly long lives. Not both.

Space travel would alleviate that restriction.

Re: As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it?

#58

Post by monkeypizza »

davidu wrote: post #7
cydonian_monk wrote: post #5

It's not the lack of cryo arrangements that's the problem. (I've considered cryo myself, but I'm not impressed with the likelyhood of success. Too many fracturing events, not to mention the likely extreme costs of recovery post-freezer. But if you're looking for more life, it's your only potential option.) The problem is that we haven't been focusing enough on the real issue: Death. Finding ways to extend human life…

I hadn't considered my greatest fear, but now I recognize it: Finding ways to extend human life indefinitely should be our generation's "Space Race." We already suffer from over-population and pollution. Death is a key piece of the demographic shift, and just about every other anthropological process related to the change and evolution of culture and society. Living longer would not increase our society's capability…

>Living longer would not increase our society's capability or capacity, it would almost assuredly decrease it, not to mention life would be exceptionally crowded, everywhere.

I think it would improve our capacity. Look at how much investment is put into someone before they can productively give back to the economy - kids take years of being raised, teacher's time, plus years of experience before they start paying their own way.

I think life extension would spread that capital cost out over a much longer productive life - right now say years 1-20 you are a resource drain, and the same for years 65-90. So you are producing stuff for society just half of your life (yet, this is enough for a surplus - the quality of goods output today in the world is continuously increasing) If we double lifespan it would double the productive years, so each life would be MUCH more productive.

That's not even including the fact that the second (doubled) productive section could take advantage of the first section's experience. So if we doubled each individual's productive lifetime, (by increasing total lifespan by just 50%) it would most likely more than double their total output.

Imagine how valuable someone who had 40 years of experience, plus a 20 year old's fast mind would be?

[note that by productivity I mean the amount of human / natural resources a person takes up; kids take up parents & teacher's time, older people take up highly trained doctor's time. People who are "productive" are generating more valuable services than they're taking up. So, people spending longer within that middle section would make them even more of a gain for the world]

Re: As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it?

#59

Post by lsparrish »

bartonfink wrote: post #2

The choices already exist. Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs could certainly have cryopreserved themselves if they wanted to. It's not like Alcor is unknown, especially in the circles Ritchie and Jobs were in. What do you (since this is a self post) think we as society should do about it?

Good question. Here are some possible answers:

* Better social networking for cryonics participants.

* More persuasive essays on the topic.

* New blood in the movement.

* Stronger associations to stronger movements.

* Different or more aggressive marketing/promotion tactics.

* Prizes similar to the X-Prize for demonstrating reversible cryopreservation on a small scale (e.g. organs)

* (Maybe unrealistic?) Government funding for cryobiology, specifically as pertains to brain preservation, and secondarily as pertains to whole organisms.

One major thing I'm noticing is that cryonics frequently seems to be seen as a low-status thing, despite being popularly associated with wealthy billionaires. There seems to be a paleo-humanistic (as I call it) tendency to rationalize and even glorify death as part of the grand cycle of life, and cryonics seems to be directly set against that. This may be why so many of the old sci-fi greats (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, etc.) opted out. AFACT most living sci-fi and great humanistic writers of the aging generation (Terry Pratchett, David Brin, and so forth) are not signed up nor particularly supportive. I'm not sure how to change this narrative but I strongly feel there is a problem with it.

Another big problem I see is that cryonics tends to be popularly associated with selfishness -- yet it is compatible with altruism, and in fact has exceptional potential to save billions of lives if pursued aggressively (and if it works). Technically, it seems like one need not be concerned with one's own survival at all to be in favor of cryopreserving the world (particularly when economies of scale are factored in).

Re: As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it?

#60

Post by blrs »

I think Hackers will have the last laugh after all. When hackers finally build an AI, it will also be the first soul. An intelligent mind decoupled from a body and thus capable of being immortal. The first step in this direction was the stored program concept itself which was best articulated by Von Neumann (http://qss.stanford.edu/~godfrey/vonNeumann/vnedvac.pdf) and realized in the EDVAC. This allowed programs to be decoupled from hardware. Dennis Ritchie, whose loss we all mourn, made what I consider the second big step. Decoupling large software systems from hardware, via a portable operating system. It will take a while (10-20 years?), but maybe something like ROS (http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/software/ros-platform) will someday become a full mind that is still decoupled from any particular hardware...a soul!!!
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