I imagine such a woman would be viewed as a worthwhile curiosity, but probably not a good prospective friend, by history geeks and journalists. I think she would find her sensibilities and skills poorly suited to letting her move comfortably about in mainstream society, which would inhibit her ability to pick up friends in other contexts. If there were other defrostees, she might connect with them in some sort of support group setting (now I’m imagining an episode of Futurama the title of which eludes me), which might provide the basis for collaboration and maybe, eventually, friendship, but it seems to me that that would take a while to develop if in fact it worked.
I would expect that it would be very natural to treat defrostees like foreign exchange students or refugees. They would be taken care of by a plain old mothering type like me, that are empathetic and understand what it’s like to wake up in a foreign place. I would show this 18th century woman places that she would relate to (the grocery store, the library, window shopping downtown) and introduce her to people, a little bit at a time. It would be a good 6-9 months before she felt quite acclimated, but by then she’d be finding a set of friends and her own interests. When she felt overwhelmed, I would tell her to take a bath and spend an evening reading a book.
I’ve stayed in foster homes in several countries for a variety of reasons, and this is quite usual.
Hmm, I wonder if you could leave instructions, kind of like a living will except in reverse, so to speak… e.g., “only unfreeze me if you know I’ll be able to make good friends and will be happy”. Perhaps with a bit more detail explaining what “good friends” and “being happy” means to you :-)
If I were in charge of defrosting people, I’d certainly respect their wishes to the best of my ability.
And, if your life does turn out to be miserable, you can, um, always commit suicide then… you don’t have to commit passive suicide now just in case… :-)
But it certainly is a huge leap in the dark, isn’t it? With most decisions, we have some idea of the possible outcomes and a sense of likelihoods...
Well, if everyone else they’ve revived so far has ended up a miserable outcast in an alien society, or some other consistent outcome, they might be able to take a guess at it.
If I’m in charge of unfreezing people, and I’m intelligent enough, it becomes a simple statistical analysis. I look at the totality of historical information available about the past life of frozen people: forum posts, blog postings, emails, youtube videos… and find out what correlates with the happiness or unhappiness of people who have been unfrozen. Then the decision depends what confidence level you’re looking for: do you want to be unfrozen if there’s a 80% chance that you’ll be happy? 90%? 95%? 99%? 99.9%?
Two, I might not be intelligent enough, or there might not be enough data available, or we might not be finding useful statistical correlates. Then if your instructions are to not unfreeze you if we don’t know, we don’t unfreeze you.
Three, I might be incompetent or mistaken so that I unfreeze you even if there isn’t any good evidence that you’re going to be happy with your new situation.
I imagine such a woman would be viewed as a worthwhile curiosity, but probably not a good prospective friend, by history geeks and journalists. I think she would find her sensibilities and skills poorly suited to letting her move comfortably about in mainstream society, which would inhibit her ability to pick up friends in other contexts. If there were other defrostees, she might connect with them in some sort of support group setting (now I’m imagining an episode of Futurama the title of which eludes me), which might provide the basis for collaboration and maybe, eventually, friendship, but it seems to me that that would take a while to develop if in fact it worked.
(Meta) I wish byrnema had not deleted their comment which was in this position.
I would expect that it would be very natural to treat defrostees like foreign exchange students or refugees. They would be taken care of by a plain old mothering type like me, that are empathetic and understand what it’s like to wake up in a foreign place. I would show this 18th century woman places that she would relate to (the grocery store, the library, window shopping downtown) and introduce her to people, a little bit at a time. It would be a good 6-9 months before she felt quite acclimated, but by then she’d be finding a set of friends and her own interests. When she felt overwhelmed, I would tell her to take a bath and spend an evening reading a book.
I’ve stayed in foster homes in several countries for a variety of reasons, and this is quite usual.
Hmm, I wonder if you could leave instructions, kind of like a living will except in reverse, so to speak… e.g., “only unfreeze me if you know I’ll be able to make good friends and will be happy”. Perhaps with a bit more detail explaining what “good friends” and “being happy” means to you :-)
If I were in charge of defrosting people, I’d certainly respect their wishes to the best of my ability.
And, if your life does turn out to be miserable, you can, um, always commit suicide then… you don’t have to commit passive suicide now just in case… :-)
But it certainly is a huge leap in the dark, isn’t it? With most decisions, we have some idea of the possible outcomes and a sense of likelihoods...
Why would they be in a position to know that I’d be able to make good friends and be happy?
Well, if everyone else they’ve revived so far has ended up a miserable outcast in an alien society, or some other consistent outcome, they might be able to take a guess at it.
Bit of a gap between “not a miserable outcast in an alien society” and “has good close friends”.
I can think of three possibilities...
If I’m in charge of unfreezing people, and I’m intelligent enough, it becomes a simple statistical analysis. I look at the totality of historical information available about the past life of frozen people: forum posts, blog postings, emails, youtube videos… and find out what correlates with the happiness or unhappiness of people who have been unfrozen. Then the decision depends what confidence level you’re looking for: do you want to be unfrozen if there’s a 80% chance that you’ll be happy? 90%? 95%? 99%? 99.9%?
Two, I might not be intelligent enough, or there might not be enough data available, or we might not be finding useful statistical correlates. Then if your instructions are to not unfreeze you if we don’t know, we don’t unfreeze you.
Three, I might be incompetent or mistaken so that I unfreeze you even if there isn’t any good evidence that you’re going to be happy with your new situation.