Tim Walters said:
By that logic, one should pay to have prayers said for one’s soul.
Even if the probability of cryonics revival is miniscule, I would still bet that it’s higher than (a) the existence of a deity, (b) who could be effectively prayed to, (c) who would care about my prayers and answer them, and (d) the existence of a soul separate from material existence.
Bill Mill said:
Thought experiment: tomorrow, John Q. Scientist reveals that he can, for the cost of $1 million, revive any person who has been cryogenically frozen. Say 1000 people are frozen cryogenically in an acceptable state right now. Do we revive them? Why? What if they will only get (maybe) another year? 5 years? 10 years? Who pays for it? What if it’s $100 million?
But it wouldn’t happen tomorrow. It would happen far enough in the future that the present (which will be the past, by then) will be interesting for historical reasons. If we would revive frozen people from the 1800′s, why wouldn’t we? From my view of human psychology, many of us would be thrilled to bring back people from 100+ years ago. The main barrier would be the cost, assuming the technology was there. And the more people we unfreeze, the more economies of scale come into play. The price of reviving people will only go down as time passes, due to technology improving.
Of course, we could have a scenario where museums pay to revive us, and then keep us as an exhibit to recoup the cost. That would make a great sci-fi story.
Tim Walters said: By that logic, one should pay to have prayers said for one’s soul.
Even if the probability of cryonics revival is miniscule, I would still bet that it’s higher than (a) the existence of a deity, (b) who could be effectively prayed to, (c) who would care about my prayers and answer them, and (d) the existence of a soul separate from material existence.
Bill Mill said: Thought experiment: tomorrow, John Q. Scientist reveals that he can, for the cost of $1 million, revive any person who has been cryogenically frozen. Say 1000 people are frozen cryogenically in an acceptable state right now. Do we revive them? Why? What if they will only get (maybe) another year? 5 years? 10 years? Who pays for it? What if it’s $100 million?
But it wouldn’t happen tomorrow. It would happen far enough in the future that the present (which will be the past, by then) will be interesting for historical reasons. If we would revive frozen people from the 1800′s, why wouldn’t we? From my view of human psychology, many of us would be thrilled to bring back people from 100+ years ago. The main barrier would be the cost, assuming the technology was there. And the more people we unfreeze, the more economies of scale come into play. The price of reviving people will only go down as time passes, due to technology improving.
Of course, we could have a scenario where museums pay to revive us, and then keep us as an exhibit to recoup the cost. That would make a great sci-fi story.