Well, even if you were preserved, you still wouldn’t live “forever”. You could still die in an accident in some way that wouldn’t allow you to be dethawed. You could still die from an illness that hasn’t been cured yet. And you wouldn’t survive the heat death of the universe.
But, why wouldn’t you want to keep living? I hear this sentiment often and really don’t understand it. I’ve always wanted to be immortal.
I actually feel the same way. It’s not going to stop me from signing up for cryo, though.
The feeling isn’t rational; if anything, I’d describe it as instinctual, since it seems to be fairly free-floating and I don’t remember having believed anything that seems likely to have spawned it. I try not to build on it, but it has acquired some cruft over the years. The main component is the feeling that anything over about 1,000 years’ lifetime is just crazy talk—literally unthinkable in a way that my brain classifies as ‘impossible’ for no good reason. A recurring crufty rationalization of this is the idea that I wouldn’t be able to handle 1,000 years’ worth of cultural change. Another component of the issue is the feeling that I have that eventually I’ll be ‘done’ - I’ll run out of interesting things to do, or just not want to continue for whatever reason. For no apparent reason, my brain attaches the idea ’200 years old’ to this bit.
Of course, I also rather strongly suspect that if I live to be 1,000 (subjective) years old, I’ll feel the same way, just with the numbers ’10,000′ and ‘2,000’ where I have ‘1,000’ and ‘200’ now. Either way, it seems like living that long and finding out is a good solution to this problem.
I was counting cultural change since I was born, though perhaps it’d make more sense to count cultural change since I started participating in the world—no more than 30 years’ worth, by either count.
You’ve gone from no culture at all (which I somewhat arbitrarily placed as the equivalent of 50kyrs ago) to the present in only as many years as you are old. A mere 1,000 more years of change, experienced in real time, should be easy in comparison.
Think back to whenever your earliest memories are, and the person you were then. Think of that magnitude of change as being just the beginning.
I already had a reasonably good grasp of some parts of our culture as far back as I remember. I’m also already having trouble really keeping up with the world as it is now—I have trouble remembering that cell phones and laptops are commonplace, for example.
My model of how comprehension of culture works is based on the Critical Period Hypothesis—I suspect that we get one burst of really good ability to pick that kind of concept up, and then have a much lower ability for the rest of our lives.
It does occur to me that the kind of advanced science that would be able to reverse cryo preservation might well be able to recreate that kind of ability, though, now that I’ve thought enough about it to spell it out.
It does occur to me that the kind of advanced science that would be able to reverse cryo preservation might well be able to recreate that kind of ability, though, now that I’ve thought enough about it to spell it out.
I’d put a much higher probability on that kind of ‘advanced science’ than on cryonics working, FWIW. The key ingredients like BDNF are already loosely known, and we already know a lot of drugs (like piracetam) that have effects on BDNF.
I phrased my original statement from the point of view of a person who lives in a world where people live to be 80. I’d like to live as long as everyone else lives, if cryonics, prosthesis, nanotechnology, or some unforeseen technology come across that allows people to live to be thousands of years old, then I’d like to live as long as them too. I’m afraid of being alone, and I wouldn’t like to be the last person, or one of the last people alive.
Well, even if you were preserved, you still wouldn’t live “forever”. You could still die in an accident in some way that wouldn’t allow you to be dethawed. You could still die from an illness that hasn’t been cured yet. And you wouldn’t survive the heat death of the universe.
But, why wouldn’t you want to keep living? I hear this sentiment often and really don’t understand it. I’ve always wanted to be immortal.
I actually feel the same way. It’s not going to stop me from signing up for cryo, though.
The feeling isn’t rational; if anything, I’d describe it as instinctual, since it seems to be fairly free-floating and I don’t remember having believed anything that seems likely to have spawned it. I try not to build on it, but it has acquired some cruft over the years. The main component is the feeling that anything over about 1,000 years’ lifetime is just crazy talk—literally unthinkable in a way that my brain classifies as ‘impossible’ for no good reason. A recurring crufty rationalization of this is the idea that I wouldn’t be able to handle 1,000 years’ worth of cultural change. Another component of the issue is the feeling that I have that eventually I’ll be ‘done’ - I’ll run out of interesting things to do, or just not want to continue for whatever reason. For no apparent reason, my brain attaches the idea ’200 years old’ to this bit.
Of course, I also rather strongly suspect that if I live to be 1,000 (subjective) years old, I’ll feel the same way, just with the numbers ’10,000′ and ‘2,000’ where I have ‘1,000’ and ‘200’ now. Either way, it seems like living that long and finding out is a good solution to this problem.
You’ve already handled ~50,000 years of cultural change.
I was counting cultural change since I was born, though perhaps it’d make more sense to count cultural change since I started participating in the world—no more than 30 years’ worth, by either count.
How are you counting it, and why?
You’ve gone from no culture at all (which I somewhat arbitrarily placed as the equivalent of 50kyrs ago) to the present in only as many years as you are old. A mere 1,000 more years of change, experienced in real time, should be easy in comparison.
Think back to whenever your earliest memories are, and the person you were then. Think of that magnitude of change as being just the beginning.
I already had a reasonably good grasp of some parts of our culture as far back as I remember. I’m also already having trouble really keeping up with the world as it is now—I have trouble remembering that cell phones and laptops are commonplace, for example.
My model of how comprehension of culture works is based on the Critical Period Hypothesis—I suspect that we get one burst of really good ability to pick that kind of concept up, and then have a much lower ability for the rest of our lives.
It does occur to me that the kind of advanced science that would be able to reverse cryo preservation might well be able to recreate that kind of ability, though, now that I’ve thought enough about it to spell it out.
I’d put a much higher probability on that kind of ‘advanced science’ than on cryonics working, FWIW. The key ingredients like BDNF are already loosely known, and we already know a lot of drugs (like piracetam) that have effects on BDNF.
I phrased my original statement from the point of view of a person who lives in a world where people live to be 80. I’d like to live as long as everyone else lives, if cryonics, prosthesis, nanotechnology, or some unforeseen technology come across that allows people to live to be thousands of years old, then I’d like to live as long as them too. I’m afraid of being alone, and I wouldn’t like to be the last person, or one of the last people alive.