I think it is quite possible for rich individuals to create structures surviving themselves such that it would be very hard to distinguish them for institutes/foundations/whatever that has a living person at the bottom. I’m not very familiar with the subject, but I would guess that there exists accounts on the Cayman Islands and similar states whose owners have died but the owners is too well hidden for anyone to find out.
Concerning the academic interest, I think that coming generations will, like us, find the preceding documentation terribly lacking. “Written records and movies? Why didn’t they upload and archive their brains?” People living in the early days of writing would probably consider themselves as saving all that anyone in later times could wish to know, and compared to a society without writing, they would be at least partly justified in that belief. We’re in the middle of the fourth information revolution (the preceding being the invention of writing, book binding and the printing press*) and we shouldn’t underestimate in what new ways and to what higher extends information will be stored and used in the future.
*You probably could add language and perhaps some other things I haven’t thought of, it depends on what timescales you’re interested in.
(“In any case, in the event that radical life extension is already here, there’s just no need to solve the problem of defrosting frozen brains for paying customers so I’d expect that to be, at least, put on the back burner.” I guess you just where careless with the “In any case” here; in exactly the case we where discussing, the assertion is false.)
I think it is quite possible for rich individuals to create structures surviving themselves such that it would be very hard to distinguish them for institutes/foundations/whatever that has a living person at the bottom. I’m not very familiar with the subject, but I would guess that there exists accounts on the Cayman Islands and similar states whose owners have died but the owners is too well hidden for anyone to find out.
Concerning the academic interest, I think that coming generations will, like us, find the preceding documentation terribly lacking. “Written records and movies? Why didn’t they upload and archive their brains?” People living in the early days of writing would probably consider themselves as saving all that anyone in later times could wish to know, and compared to a society without writing, they would be at least partly justified in that belief. We’re in the middle of the fourth information revolution (the preceding being the invention of writing, book binding and the printing press*) and we shouldn’t underestimate in what new ways and to what higher extends information will be stored and used in the future.
*You probably could add language and perhaps some other things I haven’t thought of, it depends on what timescales you’re interested in.
(“In any case, in the event that radical life extension is already here, there’s just no need to solve the problem of defrosting frozen brains for paying customers so I’d expect that to be, at least, put on the back burner.” I guess you just where careless with the “In any case” here; in exactly the case we where discussing, the assertion is false.)