It’s interesting, because I don’t feel negatively about cryonics (and back when I did I don’t think it had to do with coldness), but when you suggested the normal-temperature equivalent I got a very different mental image.
That person, the one at room temperature who can be brought back later, is sleeping.
Meanwhile, cryo-related mental images are all science-fictiony. I’m thinking of Fry from Futurama and the Ancient lady in Stargate SG-1 and so on. I have examples of those readily available to my pattern-matching software (I imagine most people in the general population aren’t as familiar with this sort of media) and I can think of the previously frozen persons walking around lucid and alive.
But they weren’t sleeping. And sleep is so harmless, so inviting.
Edit: “Room temperature” should really have been “body temperature”. But the distinction seems relatively small in my mind. I think the key is that you can touch somebody who’s body temperature or room temperature, if you want. You can go pat them on the head or hold their hand. You can’t do that with someone frozen.
Indeed. Cold storage evokes science fiction and the various cartoonish parodies of it, and popular media depictions of wicked or comical immortalists, and religious mythology to some extent (being dead long enough to become “cold” and then coming back to life), while being unconscious but warm is more evocative of things that are seen as neither weird nor threatening nor comical, like Sleeping Beauty, and, more generally, of benign things like sleep, and undesirable-but-clearly-better-than-being-dead things like being in a coma.
So maybe it’s actually more the “COLD is DEAD” metaphor at work than any of the “COLD is [something immoral or threatening]” metaphors. The idea of a person being that cold and still being revived seems much more like a resurrection than like waking up or even coming out of a long coma — which probably contributes to a “blasphemous!” pattern match among those whose religions tell them that dying and coming back to life is only for really important people, and a “hogwash!” pattern match among people who have rejected those religions.
That person, the one at room temperature who can be brought back later, is sleeping.
Meanwhile my instincts are making me literally cringe just reading that… The same way I cringe when see or hear tell of foreign locations where meat is sold unrefrigerated on the street. Lukewarm meat feels wrong at a visceral level.
Agreed, though my post did say “normal body temperature”, not room temperature. A human body at normal body temperature just seems like a person who’s at least slightly alive or was very recently alive, not like a dead and rotting piece of meat.
Agreed, though my post did say “normal body temperature”, not room temperature.
I understand. I was going with Alicorn’s description—and normal body temperature incidentally ‘feels’ a whole lot worse to me.
We’re just talking about instinctive subjective reactions here but I note that one of the appealing things to me about your specific proposed explanation was that it didn’t talk about temperature or bodies at all:
“If there were a medical procedure which, if all other attempts to treat a life-threatening condition failed, could preserve the patient indefinitely in a suspended state in anticipation that future technology may enable them to be resuscitated and treated, would you be open to undergoing this procedure as a last resort?”
That sounds good to me. And to Alicorn it translated into imagery of room temperature and sleeping. The same translation that feels ‘inviting’ to Alicorn feels revolting to me. Perhaps your (Ata’s) instincts are also somewhat different to mine in as much as ‘normal body temperature’ feels better than ‘room temperature’.
When OP suggested the normal-temperature equivalent I also got a very different mental image—of someone rotting, or pumped full of formaldehyde. The idea of doing it at room temperature gives me more of an “ick” factor. But I suspect that’s just me.
It’s interesting, because I don’t feel negatively about cryonics (and back when I did I don’t think it had to do with coldness), but when you suggested the normal-temperature equivalent I got a very different mental image.
That person, the one at room temperature who can be brought back later, is sleeping.
Meanwhile, cryo-related mental images are all science-fictiony. I’m thinking of Fry from Futurama and the Ancient lady in Stargate SG-1 and so on. I have examples of those readily available to my pattern-matching software (I imagine most people in the general population aren’t as familiar with this sort of media) and I can think of the previously frozen persons walking around lucid and alive.
But they weren’t sleeping. And sleep is so harmless, so inviting.
Edit: “Room temperature” should really have been “body temperature”. But the distinction seems relatively small in my mind. I think the key is that you can touch somebody who’s body temperature or room temperature, if you want. You can go pat them on the head or hold their hand. You can’t do that with someone frozen.
Indeed. Cold storage evokes science fiction and the various cartoonish parodies of it, and popular media depictions of wicked or comical immortalists, and religious mythology to some extent (being dead long enough to become “cold” and then coming back to life), while being unconscious but warm is more evocative of things that are seen as neither weird nor threatening nor comical, like Sleeping Beauty, and, more generally, of benign things like sleep, and undesirable-but-clearly-better-than-being-dead things like being in a coma.
So maybe it’s actually more the “COLD is DEAD” metaphor at work than any of the “COLD is [something immoral or threatening]” metaphors. The idea of a person being that cold and still being revived seems much more like a resurrection than like waking up or even coming out of a long coma — which probably contributes to a “blasphemous!” pattern match among those whose religions tell them that dying and coming back to life is only for really important people, and a “hogwash!” pattern match among people who have rejected those religions.
Meanwhile my instincts are making me literally cringe just reading that… The same way I cringe when see or hear tell of foreign locations where meat is sold unrefrigerated on the street. Lukewarm meat feels wrong at a visceral level.
Agreed, though my post did say “normal body temperature”, not room temperature. A human body at normal body temperature just seems like a person who’s at least slightly alive or was very recently alive, not like a dead and rotting piece of meat.
I understand. I was going with Alicorn’s description—and normal body temperature incidentally ‘feels’ a whole lot worse to me.
We’re just talking about instinctive subjective reactions here but I note that one of the appealing things to me about your specific proposed explanation was that it didn’t talk about temperature or bodies at all:
That sounds good to me. And to Alicorn it translated into imagery of room temperature and sleeping. The same translation that feels ‘inviting’ to Alicorn feels revolting to me. Perhaps your (Ata’s) instincts are also somewhat different to mine in as much as ‘normal body temperature’ feels better than ‘room temperature’.
When OP suggested the normal-temperature equivalent I also got a very different mental image—of someone rotting, or pumped full of formaldehyde. The idea of doing it at room temperature gives me more of an “ick” factor. But I suspect that’s just me.
Buck Rogers