Cryonics wants to be small, or why should the future want you?
All this technical discussion misses what I see as the major problem of cryonics if it works as advertised—why should the future want us?
Imagine if today were discovered few frozen Homo habilis and had technology to revive them. After, they would spend their lives in comfortable zoo that is paradise by ape men standards ( plentiful food! no dangerous beasts! warm shelter!)
Now try the same scenario, but with few millions of our frozen ancestors. The results will be same—at best, few dozens would be picked to be resurrected and studied, but I cannot see us welcoming millions of new hairy citizens.
Conclusion—to me it seems that if you want to maximize chance of future society resurrecting you, keep cryonics as close guarded secret of tiny elite...
Conclusion—to me it seems that if you want to maximize chance of future society resurrecting you, keep cryonics as close guarded secret of tiny elite...
I hear this from cryo skeptics all the time. Doubts—not so much as to whether it works or not, but as to whether the patients who could be revived are human or not. Your whole argument treats the patients as dead and gone, and the people who would die without cryonics as expendable. It is simply not consistent with cryonics working in the first place.
If cryonics works in the first place, it means everyone who could be preserved but isn’t, is a human casualty—and everyone who could be reanimated but isn’t is stuck in a coma against their will. I don’t care if you give that an arbitrarily low probability, but if you are going to argue about what is the case if it does work, you have to remain consistent with that assumption if you want to criticize it effectively.
Luckily, future humans will have experience with suspended animation and radical surgery long before they can realistically revive a cryonics patient. Getting someone suspended with near-zero damage is an unsolved challenge, but few seem doubtful that it will be solved at some point. Repairing the damage of a current-day cryonics case is necessarily further down the road.
Simply having experience with reanimating suspendees (and seeing major surgery such as full body replacement using regrown organs), I expect they will have a much more enlightened perspective on this situation than your average cryonics critic today. Death will then be viewed as something extremely uncommon and in need of extremely good evidence before medical procedures and ethics can be cast aside.
I hear this from cryo skeptics all the time. Doubts—not so much as to whether it >works or not, but as to whether the patients who could be revived are human or not.
No, the question is whether the advanced posthuman civilisation will see the frozen primitive men as human beings.
How many resources are we spending to save and improve lives of apes?
If cryonics works in the first place, it means everyone who could be preserved but >isn’t, is a human casualty
The purpose of cryonics , at least as as advertised here, is to save specifically your life, not humanity in general. And, for the purpose, is simply better to be one of a few rare specimens than one in a mass.
and everyone who could be reanimated but isn’t is stuck in a coma against their will.
why would they care about our will?
Death will then be viewed as something extremely uncommon and in need of >extremely good evidence before medical procedures and ethics can be cast aside.
How many resources are we spending to save and improve lives of apes?
How many resources are we spending to save and improve lives of the mentally retarded? My cursory research has over half a billion U.S. dollars in the United States in the year 2002.
How many resources are we spending to save and improve lives of the mentally retarded? My cursory research has over half a billion U.S. dollars in the United States in the year 2002.
Surely the US spends more on healthcare than that?
About a thousand times more by the government on health care, yes. This is just the estimates I found of governmental spending on people with mental retardation.
I thought I was quite explicit. AlexM implied that future posthumans would not be interested in reviving comparatively moronic predecessors by suggesting their attitude towards these would be akin to our attitude towards apes. I suggested that the more appropriate analogy would be to human beings with developmental disabilities, for whom substantial sums of public money are spent. What’s overly subtle about that?
This might depend on how long it takes to develop revival. Any estimates?
If it’s just a few decades, cryonics companies might want to signal trustworthiness by reviving everyone.
In The First Immortal, a science fiction novel about cryonics, there’s a law that no one gets revived unless there’s someone willing to do the work of integrating them into the future society.
In other words, you’d do well to be an interesting person, and better to be from a family with a very strong culture of loyalty, though I suppose that integration could also be a matter of contract with a cryonics company.
This might depend on how long it takes to develop revival. Any estimates?
It depends on the gap between us and the future society—if the wilder/more optimistic predictions of transhumanism and artificial intelligence come true—and they have to come true for cryonics to work, the gap between 2050 and now will be bigger that between us and Stone Age.
Would you invite your great...grandfather Ugg for dinner?
Someone who knew you may want to bring you back. If it takes centuries, then the more people frozen the better since it will be more likely that someone you knew would be brought back by someone else. And then he may bring you back too. This assumes that the government does not prevent people form doing this.
Cryonics wants to be small, or why should the future want you?
All this technical discussion misses what I see as the major problem of cryonics if it works as advertised—why should the future want us?
Imagine if today were discovered few frozen Homo habilis and had technology to revive them. After, they would spend their lives in comfortable zoo that is paradise by ape men standards ( plentiful food! no dangerous beasts! warm shelter!)
Now try the same scenario, but with few millions of our frozen ancestors. The results will be same—at best, few dozens would be picked to be resurrected and studied, but I cannot see us welcoming millions of new hairy citizens.
Conclusion—to me it seems that if you want to maximize chance of future society resurrecting you, keep cryonics as close guarded secret of tiny elite...
I hear this from cryo skeptics all the time. Doubts—not so much as to whether it works or not, but as to whether the patients who could be revived are human or not. Your whole argument treats the patients as dead and gone, and the people who would die without cryonics as expendable. It is simply not consistent with cryonics working in the first place.
If cryonics works in the first place, it means everyone who could be preserved but isn’t, is a human casualty—and everyone who could be reanimated but isn’t is stuck in a coma against their will. I don’t care if you give that an arbitrarily low probability, but if you are going to argue about what is the case if it does work, you have to remain consistent with that assumption if you want to criticize it effectively.
Luckily, future humans will have experience with suspended animation and radical surgery long before they can realistically revive a cryonics patient. Getting someone suspended with near-zero damage is an unsolved challenge, but few seem doubtful that it will be solved at some point. Repairing the damage of a current-day cryonics case is necessarily further down the road.
Simply having experience with reanimating suspendees (and seeing major surgery such as full body replacement using regrown organs), I expect they will have a much more enlightened perspective on this situation than your average cryonics critic today. Death will then be viewed as something extremely uncommon and in need of extremely good evidence before medical procedures and ethics can be cast aside.
No, the question is whether the advanced posthuman civilisation will see the frozen primitive men as human beings.
How many resources are we spending to save and improve lives of apes?
The purpose of cryonics , at least as as advertised here, is to save specifically your life, not humanity in general. And, for the purpose, is simply better to be one of a few rare specimens than one in a mass.
why would they care about our will?
death of one of them, yes, but one of us?
How many resources are we spending to save and improve lives of the mentally retarded? My cursory research has over half a billion U.S. dollars in the United States in the year 2002.
Surely the US spends more on healthcare than that?
About a thousand times more by the government on health care, yes. This is just the estimates I found of governmental spending on people with mental retardation.
Too subtle.
I thought I was quite explicit. AlexM implied that future posthumans would not be interested in reviving comparatively moronic predecessors by suggesting their attitude towards these would be akin to our attitude towards apes. I suggested that the more appropriate analogy would be to human beings with developmental disabilities, for whom substantial sums of public money are spent. What’s overly subtle about that?
I meant I was too subtle. It was a joke. Apparently a failed one.
Oh, yeah. That is clever. Probably would have worked better in person.
This might depend on how long it takes to develop revival. Any estimates?
If it’s just a few decades, cryonics companies might want to signal trustworthiness by reviving everyone.
In The First Immortal, a science fiction novel about cryonics, there’s a law that no one gets revived unless there’s someone willing to do the work of integrating them into the future society.
In other words, you’d do well to be an interesting person, and better to be from a family with a very strong culture of loyalty, though I suppose that integration could also be a matter of contract with a cryonics company.
It depends on the gap between us and the future society—if the wilder/more optimistic predictions of transhumanism and artificial intelligence come true—and they have to come true for cryonics to work, the gap between 2050 and now will be bigger that between us and Stone Age.
Would you invite your great...grandfather Ugg for dinner?
I’ve wondered if the revived people might end up as an underclass, or as several underclasses.
What’s wrong with getting revived in 2320?
Someone who knew you may want to bring you back.
If it takes centuries, then the more people frozen the better since it will be more likely that someone you knew would be brought back by someone else. And then he may bring you back too.
This assumes that the government does not prevent people form doing this.