NOTE: I have no clue why some of the spaces are “screwy”—the formatting is totally fine when I was typing this post out.
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I think it’s a pretty MAJOR assumption that wealth can *really* transfer over numerous generations.
Say this: say 1 million people a year are cryonically frozen. okay. and they pay with their own money.
Then (assuming revival technologies don’t come 100 years from now), then that’s 100 million people. Sure, they paid with their own money, but we must remember that the value of wealth/money is psychological. Economics depends on contract enforcement (where there is a significant penalty if you don’t comply), which is a subset of the set of incentives, which are all about motivating people to do shit.
And the thing is—it’s quite possible that a disaster could hit, forcing people to move all the cryonically frozen bodies somewhere else (are most of the bodies stored in Phoenix,AZ—given that it’s where Alcor is? I don’t trust that place over the long run, given that it’s experiencing unsustainable growth that’s draining the Colorado River out, that the region is experiencing a massive growth in energy usage [especially from ACs that just dissipates the heat out and make the city even hotter], and that the effects of climate change are expected to be more severe in Arizona than they are in most other places [1], especially given that the Hadley Cell might expand northward). Solar power could save it, but I’m not sure if it will scale there in several decades
And if that happens (or if any relocation is needed), then resources+motivation is limited and no one wants to do it. Especially because that there are few negative consequences if the bodies are left to rot—simply because after a few generations, most cryonically frozen people may be almost completely forgotten—except for the ones who were as famous and respectable as Einstein/Jefferson/etc. Surprisingly, this could be a rational argument for having children, since having children and grandchildren might increase the chances thatsomeone might actually care about trying to revive you once we have the technology for cryonic revival.
Obviously, it could be an incentive for others to unfreeze the body if the person who came back alive was SO grateful that he was willing to repay the favor with something major (say, indentured servitude). Except—that there’s no way to predict that at all. they’re in a totally foreign environment. what personalities they had back then—may not necessarily stay constant in an environment so radically different. Surprisingly though, this could be an argument for lifelogging, since an unrelated person might actually be willing to spend the effort to actually to unfreeze the body of a more interesting person
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With that all being said—I still think it’s a perfectly rational decision to be cryonically frozen. After all, the breakthrough could come within 100 years. And other things can happen too.
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[1] Note how the Southwest (and especially the Rocky Mountains that supply water to the region) will be completely baked. Arizona depends A LOT on water supplies from the Colorado River. But the glaciers in the Colorado Rockies are melting quite fast—and the mountain west is already warming much faster than average under global warming
Also, runoff matters as well: notice how it’s VERY red in Arizona. See below (IPCC 2007)
Can cryonically-frozen people *really* expect to be revived?
Say this: say 1 million people a year are cryonically frozen. okay. and they pay with their own money.
Then (assuming revival technologies don’t come 100 years from now), then that’s 100 million people. Sure, they paid with their own money, but we must remember that the value of wealth/money is psychological. Economics depends on contract enforcement (where there is a significant penalty if you don’t comply), which is a subset of the set of incentives, which are all about motivating people to do shit.
And the thing is—it’s quite possible that a disaster could hit, forcing people to move all the cryonically frozen bodies somewhere else (are most of the bodies stored in Phoenix,AZ—given that it’s where Alcor is? I don’t trust that place over the long run, given that it’s experiencing unsustainable growth that’s draining the Colorado River out, that the region is experiencing a massive growth in energy usage [especially from ACs that just dissipates the heat out and make the city even hotter], and that the effects of climate change are expected to be more severe in Arizona than they are in most other places [1], especially given that the Hadley Cell might expand northward). Solar power could save it, but I’m not sure if it will scale there in several decades
And if that happens (or if any relocation is needed), then resources+motivation is limited and no one wants to do it. Especially because that there are few negative consequences if the bodies are left to rot—simply because after a few generations, most cryonically frozen people may be almost completely forgotten—except for the ones who were as famous and respectable as Einstein/Jefferson/etc. Surprisingly, this could be a rational argument for having children, since having children and grandchildren might increase the chances that someone might actually care about trying to revive you once we have the technology for cryonic revival.
Obviously, it could be an incentive for others to unfreeze the body if the person who came back alive was SO grateful that he was willing to repay the favor with something major (say, indentured servitude). Except—that there’s no way to predict that at all. they’re in a totally foreign environment. what personalities they had back then—may not necessarily stay constant in an environment so radically different. Surprisingly though, this could be an argument for lifelogging, since an unrelated person might actually be willing to spend the effort to actually to unfreeze the body of a more interesting person
==
With that all being said—I still think it’s a perfectly rational decision to be cryonically frozen. After all, the breakthrough could come within 100 years. And other things can happen too.
==
[1] Note how the Southwest (and especially the Rocky Mountains that supply water to the region) will be completely baked. Arizona depends A LOT on water supplies from the Colorado River. But the glaciers in the Colorado Rockies are melting quite fast—and the mountain west is already warming much faster than average under global warming
Also, runoff matters as well: notice how it’s VERY red in Arizona. See below (IPCC 2007)