Once cryonics is regarded as a solved problem, and there is a mass market for cryonic revival using a particular suspension technology, there will be little economic or scientific incentive to try to solve the harder problem of reviving people who were suspended using older suspension technologies. Nobody will award a grant to study the problem. Nobody will fund a start-up to achieve it.
Those of you who expect people in the future to work on the problem of how to revive your brain that was suspended with today’s technology: Are you also looking forward to all the cool new games they will have developed for the Playstation 3?
Maybe not new games, but people do build emulators for obsolete platforms—as freeware, even. Gift economies aren’t uncommon when resources aren’t scarce.
Even setting aside a post-FAI economy, why should this be the case? Your PS3 metaphor is not applicable. Owners of old playstations are not an unserved market in the same way that older frozen bodies are. If PS(N) games are significantly more expensive than PS(N+1) games, people will simply buy a PS(N+1). Not an option for frozen people; older bodies will be an under served market in a way PS3 owners cannot be.
If there’s a “mass market” for revivals, clearly people are getting paid for the revivals, somehow. I see no reason why new bodies would pay, while old bodies would not. If people are being revived for historical research or historical curiosity, then older revivals will probably be MORE valuable. If it’s charitable, I don’t particularly see why altruistic people will only care about recent bodies. Further, especially if effective immortality exists, you’ll very quickly run out of recent bodies.
There might be an economic reason, in that more recent people have an easier time paying for their own revivals, because their revival is cheaper and/or their skills are more relevant. But if you’re worried about that, you can probably significantly improve your odds by setting up a trust fund for your own revival.
I think this depends greatly on how many people are in storage that can’t be revived with the current methods at hand. If it’s just a few hundred, you’re conclusion is likely correct. If it’s tens of thousands, I doubt research would stop completely
Once cryonics is regarded as a solved problem, and there is a mass market for cryonic revival using a particular suspension technology, there will be little economic or scientific incentive to try to solve the harder problem of reviving people who were suspended using older suspension technologies. Nobody will award a grant to study the problem. Nobody will fund a start-up to achieve it.
Those of you who expect people in the future to work on the problem of how to revive your brain that was suspended with today’s technology: Are you also looking forward to all the cool new games they will have developed for the Playstation 3?
Maybe not new games, but people do build emulators for obsolete platforms—as freeware, even. Gift economies aren’t uncommon when resources aren’t scarce.
Even setting aside a post-FAI economy, why should this be the case? Your PS3 metaphor is not applicable. Owners of old playstations are not an unserved market in the same way that older frozen bodies are. If PS(N) games are significantly more expensive than PS(N+1) games, people will simply buy a PS(N+1). Not an option for frozen people; older bodies will be an under served market in a way PS3 owners cannot be.
If there’s a “mass market” for revivals, clearly people are getting paid for the revivals, somehow. I see no reason why new bodies would pay, while old bodies would not. If people are being revived for historical research or historical curiosity, then older revivals will probably be MORE valuable. If it’s charitable, I don’t particularly see why altruistic people will only care about recent bodies. Further, especially if effective immortality exists, you’ll very quickly run out of recent bodies.
There might be an economic reason, in that more recent people have an easier time paying for their own revivals, because their revival is cheaper and/or their skills are more relevant. But if you’re worried about that, you can probably significantly improve your odds by setting up a trust fund for your own revival.
I think this depends greatly on how many people are in storage that can’t be revived with the current methods at hand. If it’s just a few hundred, you’re conclusion is likely correct. If it’s tens of thousands, I doubt research would stop completely
Are you looking forward to all the new theater plays that are going to be written?