Careful, someone else just gave me the “dumb question” lecture. For what it’s worth, I think your analogy is the right line of inquiry. I agree that the two analogues (cryogenics and burial) aren’t strictly analogous though, cryogenics does take more resources.
Q: Why would people in the future want to revive us?
A: Why are scientists talking about cloning from the DNA of the pharoahs or the
frozen sperm of prehistoric animals? Because the past interests people. Why do
people donate to charitable hospitals? Because people care about one another.
Complete indifference to human life isn’t as common as we sometimes let
ourselves think.
Mind you, we aren’t depending on that sort of help in the least. We hope to be
revived — and helped in leading new future lives — not by some featureless
“them”, but by the efforts of our own cryonics organizations. After all, it’s their — and
our — job.
CI has a legal and moral obligation to do its best for its patients — some of whom
will be friends and relatives of future CI officers and directors — and we are
confident those obligations will be respected.
This answer doesn’t inspire me with confidence at all. It’s true that the past interests people, but this isn’t the same as wanting hundreds or maybe thousands of members of this past living with us. It would look more like an immigration from the past, and we all know how immigrants are traditionally treated.
It’s true that we’re not completely indifferent to human life, yet I don’t think this extends to people who are technically dead. This is more of an unknown problem—will society treat preserved human beings as potentially alive human beings? Much hinges on this.
CI’s legal and moral obligation is factual at present, but this will become less certain the further we have to project into the future. Will the CI become one of those few seemingly immortal institutions like the Catholic Church, or will it degenerate? I guess there’s a good case for its own immortality if a few important thresholds are reached. For one, the revival process on a human being has to be demonstrated. This would be enough to put human interest into the preservation of this, or similar, institution.
I used to have trouble remembering the exact
Markdown syntax for links. It’s
easier to remember when viewed in light of Markdown’s intent of being as close
as possible to normal human-readable text:
The first character is an open square bracket, not an open parenthesis,
because square brackets are less common in normal text.
The link text comes first, not the URL, because that’s what’s visible to the
human reader after the conversion to HTML. The URL is like a footnote. (Not
a mistake you made in your comment, but still an easy one to make.)
Edit—other pitfalls:
There must be no space between the close square bracket and the open
parenthesis.
If the link contains a close parenthesis it must be preceded with a
backslash. So if a link’s last few characters are foo) the
Markdown version’s last few characters should be foo\)) (note
the two close parentheses—a backslash-escaped one that is part of
this particular link, followed by one that is part of the Markdown
link syntax).
In Less Wrong’s Markdown implementation, the link needs to include
the
http://
or
https://
part at the beginning. If it’s left out, the link text and
everything will disappear.
Careful, someone else just gave me the “dumb question” lecture.
Yeah, I saw that, and thought it was unjustified.
Anyway, I can see where “it’s our job” angle is just as good an answer to “why won’t you ditch the body first chance you get?” as it is to “why won’t you just store the body indefinitely rather than revive it?”
And I can see where it isn’t a very confidence-inspiring answer, as you say.
That said, I’m not sure there’s a better answer to be had. We do all kinds of things that depend on the assumption that legal and financial arrangements will remain more or less as they are; signing up for cryonics is no less justified on that basis than setting up a trust fund for my grandchildren.
For alcor atleast, the people in charge of the money are REQUIRED to be signed up for cryonics and I believe 3 of them need to have close relatives or significant others already in cryonics. This means that’s it’s in the interest of the people in charge to not screw themselves or the people they love, instead of not screwing random frozen strangers.
Of course, if I run a cemetery and I have close relatives buried in that cemetery I’m probably motivated not to plow the whole thing over to put up condos, and I’m probably motivated to ensure that my own relatives aren’t disinterred to make room for new paying customers, but that doesn’t necessarily make me equally motivated to ensure the same for people I don’t know.
(Caveat: I keep using the cemetery analogy, not because I think it’s particularly close, but because I suspect that if I raise these sorts of questions directly about cryonics I’ll get interpreted as someone who just wants to reject cryonics and is looking for reasons to do so, whereas if I raise the same questions about cemeteries the focus has a higher chance to be on the questions instead of speculations about my psychology.)
Careful, someone else just gave me the “dumb question” lecture. For what it’s worth, I think your analogy is the right line of inquiry. I agree that the two analogues (cryogenics and burial) aren’t strictly analogous though, cryogenics does take more resources.
For what it’s worth, here’s what the Cryonics Institutes gives in (their FAQ)[http://www.cryonics.org/prod3.html]:
This answer doesn’t inspire me with confidence at all. It’s true that the past interests people, but this isn’t the same as wanting hundreds or maybe thousands of members of this past living with us. It would look more like an immigration from the past, and we all know how immigrants are traditionally treated.
It’s true that we’re not completely indifferent to human life, yet I don’t think this extends to people who are technically dead. This is more of an unknown problem—will society treat preserved human beings as potentially alive human beings? Much hinges on this.
CI’s legal and moral obligation is factual at present, but this will become less certain the further we have to project into the future. Will the CI become one of those few seemingly immortal institutions like the Catholic Church, or will it degenerate? I guess there’s a good case for its own immortality if a few important thresholds are reached. For one, the revival process on a human being has to be demonstrated. This would be enough to put human interest into the preservation of this, or similar, institution.
I used to have trouble remembering the exact Markdown syntax for links. It’s easier to remember when viewed in light of Markdown’s intent of being as close as possible to normal human-readable text:
The first character is an open square bracket, not an open parenthesis, because square brackets are less common in normal text.
The link text comes first, not the URL, because that’s what’s visible to the human reader after the conversion to HTML. The URL is like a footnote. (Not a mistake you made in your comment, but still an easy one to make.)
Edit—other pitfalls:
There must be no space between the close square bracket and the open parenthesis.
If the link contains a close parenthesis it must be preceded with a backslash. So if a link’s last few characters are
foo)the Markdown version’s last few characters should befoo\))(note the two close parentheses—a backslash-escaped one that is part of this particular link, followed by one that is part of the Markdown link syntax).In Less Wrong’s Markdown implementation, the link needs to include the
or
part at the beginning. If it’s left out, the link text and everything will disappear.
Yeah, I saw that, and thought it was unjustified.
Anyway, I can see where “it’s our job” angle is just as good an answer to “why won’t you ditch the body first chance you get?” as it is to “why won’t you just store the body indefinitely rather than revive it?”
And I can see where it isn’t a very confidence-inspiring answer, as you say.
That said, I’m not sure there’s a better answer to be had. We do all kinds of things that depend on the assumption that legal and financial arrangements will remain more or less as they are; signing up for cryonics is no less justified on that basis than setting up a trust fund for my grandchildren.
For alcor atleast, the people in charge of the money are REQUIRED to be signed up for cryonics and I believe 3 of them need to have close relatives or significant others already in cryonics. This means that’s it’s in the interest of the people in charge to not screw themselves or the people they love, instead of not screwing random frozen strangers.
(nods) I know, and I think that’s cool.
Of course, if I run a cemetery and I have close relatives buried in that cemetery I’m probably motivated not to plow the whole thing over to put up condos, and I’m probably motivated to ensure that my own relatives aren’t disinterred to make room for new paying customers, but that doesn’t necessarily make me equally motivated to ensure the same for people I don’t know.
(Caveat: I keep using the cemetery analogy, not because I think it’s particularly close, but because I suspect that if I raise these sorts of questions directly about cryonics I’ll get interpreted as someone who just wants to reject cryonics and is looking for reasons to do so, whereas if I raise the same questions about cemeteries the focus has a higher chance to be on the questions instead of speculations about my psychology.)
If I wanted to be revived, I’d hide a bunch of gold and tattoo a note to that effect on my chest before being frozen.