What usually happens is that a person decides, while relatively young and healthy, that they want to be cryopreserved, and at that point they sign up with an organization that provides cryopreservation services and arrange for them to be paid (e.g., by buying a life insurance policy that pays out as much as the organization charges). Later, when they die, the organization sends people to do the cryopreservation. No last-minute panicked decisions are generally involved, other than maybe “so, should we call the cryo people now?”.
I have not heard of anyone deciding while still young and healthy that they want to get frozen[1] right now this minute. Not least because pretty much everyone agrees that there’s at least a considerable chance that they will never get revived, and giving up the rest of your life now for the sake of some unknown-but-maybe-quite-small chance of getting revived in an unknown-but-maybe-quite-bad future doesn’t seem like a good tradeoff. And also because the next thing to happen might be a murder charge against the people doing the cryopreservation.
[1] “Frozen” is not actually quite the right word given current cryopreservation methods, but it’ll do.
Marriage, which compared to waking up in some distant future is a walk on a beach in terms of adjustment, comes as a shock and—well—sometimes depressing change for many people. I would thing at least some adults would be unwilling to risk cryopreservation not because of fear of the unknown, but exactly because of the unpleasantness of a known.
About disgust. My sister has once worked at a sanitary-epidemiological station (don’t know what they are called in your area), and there was a mother who bribed a doctor to diagnose her child not with scabies that he/she had, but with some other, socially acceptable illness. The kid got the kindergarten carantined for some considerable time. So it might be people are appalled by the illness (again, I don’t say there’s any justification. It’s just how people think, and they don’t even need to know the reason why a person would choose to be cryopreserved. Now, if it was a last-minute desperate attempt at a miracle cure, this is more respectable.)
I concede that there are probably some people who, if they could, would get cryopreserved while still young and healthy in the hope of escaping a world they find desperately unpleasant for a possibly-better one.
(I would guess that actually doing this would be rare even if it were legal. We’re looking at someone unhappy enough to do something that on most people’s estimates is probably a complicated and expensive method of suicide—despite being young, reasonably healthy, able to afford cryopreservation, and optimistic enough about the future that they expect a better life if they get thawed. That’s certainly far from impossible, but I can’t see it ever being common unless the consensus odds of cryo success go way up.)
But unless I’m very confused, it seems like the subject has changed here. The answer to the question “Why not sign up for cryopreservation when you die?” can’t possibly be “I have a life, why would I decide to give it up?”.
I’m not sure I understand your point about disgust. Would you like to fill in a couple more of the steps in your reasoning?
Er, no. I meant that people who have experienced change might be less willing to choose a greater change, though it was very nice of you to understand it so.
Clarifying about the latter. People might think, not quite clearly, that someone who wants a cure as early in life might have done something to need it, for example got himself an unmentionable disease. Like scabies only worse.
I meant that people who have experienced change might be less willing to choose a greater change
OK. Then I have even less clue how this relates to the discussion I thought we were originally having.
I think we are all agreed that there are plenty of reasons why someone might choose not to get cryopreserved while still young and healthy. James_Miller’s questions were not (I’m about 98% sure) intended to be relevant to that question; only to the question “why not arrange to be cryopreserved at the point of death?”.
Everything you’ve been saying has (I think) been answering the question “why not get cryopreserved right now, while your life is still going on normally and you’re reasonably healthy?”. Which is fine, except that that isn’t a question that needs answering, because to an excellent first approximation no one is thinking of getting cryopreserved while still young and healthy, and no one here is trying to convince anyone that they should.
Clarifying about the latter [...]
OK, so this was yet another reason why some people might choose not to get cryopreserved while still young and reasonably healthy. Fine, but (see above) I think this rather misses the point.
Yes, sorry, I think I misread the questions for 2 reasons: 1, I saw no reason to be cryopreserved when old and maybe going senile, and waking to an alien universe with almost no desire to truly adapt to it, and no real drive to understand it, and 2, I might put a higher probability ofyoung and healthy people dying abruptly than you do. There are enough wars for it to happen. Cryopreservation might be awfully handy.
What usually happens is that a person decides, while relatively young and healthy, that they want to be cryopreserved, and at that point they sign up with an organization that provides cryopreservation services and arrange for them to be paid (e.g., by buying a life insurance policy that pays out as much as the organization charges). Later, when they die, the organization sends people to do the cryopreservation. No last-minute panicked decisions are generally involved, other than maybe “so, should we call the cryo people now?”.
I have not heard of anyone deciding while still young and healthy that they want to get frozen[1] right now this minute. Not least because pretty much everyone agrees that there’s at least a considerable chance that they will never get revived, and giving up the rest of your life now for the sake of some unknown-but-maybe-quite-small chance of getting revived in an unknown-but-maybe-quite-bad future doesn’t seem like a good tradeoff. And also because the next thing to happen might be a murder charge against the people doing the cryopreservation.
[1] “Frozen” is not actually quite the right word given current cryopreservation methods, but it’ll do.
Marriage, which compared to waking up in some distant future is a walk on a beach in terms of adjustment, comes as a shock and—well—sometimes depressing change for many people. I would thing at least some adults would be unwilling to risk cryopreservation not because of fear of the unknown, but exactly because of the unpleasantness of a known.
About disgust. My sister has once worked at a sanitary-epidemiological station (don’t know what they are called in your area), and there was a mother who bribed a doctor to diagnose her child not with scabies that he/she had, but with some other, socially acceptable illness. The kid got the kindergarten carantined for some considerable time. So it might be people are appalled by the illness (again, I don’t say there’s any justification. It’s just how people think, and they don’t even need to know the reason why a person would choose to be cryopreserved. Now, if it was a last-minute desperate attempt at a miracle cure, this is more respectable.)
I concede that there are probably some people who, if they could, would get cryopreserved while still young and healthy in the hope of escaping a world they find desperately unpleasant for a possibly-better one.
(I would guess that actually doing this would be rare even if it were legal. We’re looking at someone unhappy enough to do something that on most people’s estimates is probably a complicated and expensive method of suicide—despite being young, reasonably healthy, able to afford cryopreservation, and optimistic enough about the future that they expect a better life if they get thawed. That’s certainly far from impossible, but I can’t see it ever being common unless the consensus odds of cryo success go way up.)
But unless I’m very confused, it seems like the subject has changed here. The answer to the question “Why not sign up for cryopreservation when you die?” can’t possibly be “I have a life, why would I decide to give it up?”.
I’m not sure I understand your point about disgust. Would you like to fill in a couple more of the steps in your reasoning?
Er, no. I meant that people who have experienced change might be less willing to choose a greater change, though it was very nice of you to understand it so. Clarifying about the latter. People might think, not quite clearly, that someone who wants a cure as early in life might have done something to need it, for example got himself an unmentionable disease. Like scabies only worse.
OK. Then I have even less clue how this relates to the discussion I thought we were originally having.
I think we are all agreed that there are plenty of reasons why someone might choose not to get cryopreserved while still young and healthy. James_Miller’s questions were not (I’m about 98% sure) intended to be relevant to that question; only to the question “why not arrange to be cryopreserved at the point of death?”.
Everything you’ve been saying has (I think) been answering the question “why not get cryopreserved right now, while your life is still going on normally and you’re reasonably healthy?”. Which is fine, except that that isn’t a question that needs answering, because to an excellent first approximation no one is thinking of getting cryopreserved while still young and healthy, and no one here is trying to convince anyone that they should.
OK, so this was yet another reason why some people might choose not to get cryopreserved while still young and reasonably healthy. Fine, but (see above) I think this rather misses the point.
Yes, sorry, I think I misread the questions for 2 reasons: 1, I saw no reason to be cryopreserved when old and maybe going senile, and waking to an alien universe with almost no desire to truly adapt to it, and no real drive to understand it, and 2, I might put a higher probability ofyoung and healthy people dying abruptly than you do. There are enough wars for it to happen. Cryopreservation might be awfully handy.
Of course, “cryocrastination” is a thing too.