Cryonics

[ciphergoth]

I'm considering signing up with the Cryonics Institute. Are you signed up? I'd be interested to hear your reasons why or why not. It does of course sound crazy, but when you press past that initial reaction to find out why it's crazy, I haven't heard a really satisfactory argument yet, and I'm interested to hear what people think. There are many reasons it might not work, but are there reasons to think it's really unlikely to work? How likely does recovery need to be for it to be worth it?

Comments

[djm4]

I've no wish to live on indefinitely. When I die, I die; I'm genuinely not interested in coming back. My memes may live on after me, if they're worthy, and that's really all that matters. I find it very unlikely that keeping my physical body viable (either before, during or after cryonics) will represent an efficient use of anyone's resources.

I realise I may be highly unusual in that.

[lolliepopp.livejournal.com]

IAWTC

Life is for living, not for trying to cheat.

L
x

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

But we cheat all the time - all of modern medicine is cheating.

This is going to get sticky isn't it?

[lolliepopp.livejournal.com]

modern medicine IMO *extends* life, the link you posted is for a procedure to take place after death, with the briefest chance you will come back, therefore "cheating" death

I do think you and I have very differing views about this though, as you are a logically driven vehicle and I am more emotionally charged.

Re: This is going to get sticky isn't it?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

The procedure takes place after what we *currently call* death, but we used to call the heart stopping death, in which case you'd say that CPR took place "after death".

[barakta]

I don't think you're unusual, I also feel that when I die I die and that somehow that's what makes what it is, that we don't live on forever.

Plus yeah better things to spend my money on, inefficient use of resources and I wouldn't trust any organisation to remain ongoing for 100 years plus.

[djm4]

I also don't think I'd want to wake up in a world which was run by people who had actually made this work. I suspect they'd be the worst sort of leeches; people who would think 'it's better to spend resources unfreezing this one dead rich person than to feed these twenty living children.'

Of course, it's possible that in the future we'd have enough resources that that choice wouldn't need making (it would need to be a lot of resources, given how we apportion out the ones we have today). But I very strongly doubt it, and I can certainly live with the possibility of being wrong. The idea of being dead doesn't bother me much, although I admit that some of the ways I might transition to that state are deeply unpleasant.

[barakta]

Yes I had that thought about waking up and knowing that to bring me back to life resources which could go to more others aren't being made available to them, it's bad enough as it is now.

Have you ever read the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson? One of the premises of that book is that life can be extended several so that some of the original starting people live to well over 200 - which on Mars is presumed to be sustainable but when Earthers find out about it there's huge outrage and demand for it on an already overcrowded planet. The trilogy has a lot of faults, but that's one of the better 'ideas' explored (not enough) I feel.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

That's the world we live in today; we spend tens of thousands of pounds keeping cancer patients alive, when the same money would save twenty lives in the Third World. I'm hoping the future will do better on that axis, just as I think we do better today than we did in the past.

[djm4]

That's the world we live in today; we spend tens of thousands of pounds keeping cancer patients alive, when the same money would save twenty lives in the Third World.

We live in a world where we do that, yes.

If you want to debate the exact morality of the amount we spend on cancer care, I might be up for that, but it's a tricky subject that affects both friends and family, and so is hard to do objectively. However, I do see a qualitative difference between keeping someone alive using technology that is currently known to work, and storing someone who's long-term dead using technology that might very well not work at all. So I don't accept that the world I described in my reply is the world we live in today, even if it shares some features.

We also live in a country - though sadly not a world - where evidence-based cost/benefit analysis is seen as important in determining which treatments to make generally available to people who otherwise couldn't afford them on the NHS. I think this is a good thing, and makes the world a bit less like the one I described in my reply.

(Again, speaking personally, when I get cancer, I want the miniumum spent on me to let me die in bearable pain. I have no problem at all with the many people - including my parents and a couple of good friends - who make other choices, but that is mine.)

I'm hoping the future will do better on that axis, just as I think we do better today than we did in the past.

We may do better in the future, but I think one of the signs of us doing better is that we'll regard the idea of cryonics with a sort of amused horror. I'm also not convinced that we will continue to make progress in this area if resources become scarce, as I expect they will unless we manage to, say, crack sustainable nuclear fusion, but that's a rant I've had before, and I know you're more optimistic than I am on that subject (I also hope you're right).

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

I think that death probably is a good and proper end eventually, I'd still prefer to accept it on my own terms though :oP

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Why? What's so good about it? In general, if someone I care about is in danger of death I'll do a lot to try and prevent it; what's different here?

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

As opposed to endless life, I think death probably has it's place.

As far as contemporary society is concerned, the only time this is relevant is when quality of life drops to the point where a person might feel that they would prefer to have a cleaner end.

Even supposing we're able to avoid that problem, I think it still seems plausible that a person who lives long enough may eventually come to think that they've reached a point where it's time for things to end.

My ideal would obviously be that we get to decide when that time is for ourselves rather than through chance and misfortune, although how that would work out in practice I'm not sure of.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Even supposing we're able to avoid that problem, I think it still seems plausible that a person who lives long enough may eventually come to think that they've reached a point where it's time for things to end.

Maybe, but maybe that would take a thousand years or more. Think of all the spritely, life-loving old people you've met. Now imagine them restored to perfect health.

I'm reminded of "belief in belief".

[grendelkhan.livejournal.com]

Late to the party, yes, but...

This whole business reminds me somewhat uncomfortably of "belief in belief" (http://lesswrong.com/lw/i4/belief_in_belief/). People who aren't religious themselves will wax rhapsodic on the merits of spiritualism and such; likewise, people who aren't actively seeking death themselves will explain that death is really a good thing. (I freely admit that djm4's desire to get a DNR while perfectly healthy blows a significant hole in this explanation.)

I suppose entertaining the idea that death (at least from aging) isn't inevitable or won't be for our descendants brings up an uncomfortably intense sense of injustice. For now, no matter the inequality that exists in life, at least the Reaper gets everyone in the end, but if that's taken away, what then?

Re: I'm reminded of "belief in belief".

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Hello! Are you a Less Wrong reader? What's your ID there?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

But I take it this doesn't apply to, for example, electrically restarting the heart in an emergency?

[djm4]

Actually, for me, personally, I'd prefer that it did. I suspect I am very unusual in that, though. I'm not sure where I draw the line, but as a rule of thumb, if I end up 'dead' and in need of 'revival', I'd rather not be revived. That is a very personal choice, though, and not one I expect those close to me (who'd be put through considerable trauma if I were to die) to respect in the case of a heart attack.

However, even if I didn't think it applied, the resources invested in electrically restarting my heart are way smaller than those needed for cryonics, and are definitely on the 'this is OK' side of the line for me.

[xmakina.livejournal.com]

Do Not Resuscitate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_resuscitate)

When there's a law for it, you can't be that weird :)

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I'll certainly respect that, knowing it's what you want. I'll help you write a living will to increase the chances that doctors will respect it, too, if you'd like me to.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

This is basically my feeling about it, as well. Even if I'm wrong and there is no afterlife, everyone I've known well who has died has reached a point when they felt ready to die, and in no case did this appear to me to be exclusively because of the suffering caused by their illness, nor were most of them religious. I expect to reach that point myself eventually. I'm at peace with that, and as it happens, I've just re-written my living will to reflect it. Life is good, but good things turn bad if they're excessively prolonged.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Those people who were ready to die: if the doctors had come in and said "thanks to a new treatment, we can restore you to the rude good health of a much younger person and give you decades more life", do you think they would have refused the treatment?

[djm4]

I'd say: 'sorry, haven't believed in magic all my life, and I don't see any reason to start now.' I think it would be vastly more likely to be a scam than an actual treatment, and the danger is that it's a scam that would let me live long enough to regret it.

An established treatment that had been proven to work over the past few decades, I might consider; it would depend. I genuinely don't cling to life against everything. I will go gentle into that good night; others, who live after me, will sustain the light.

(edited for typo 'light' for 'night'. D'oh! ;-)

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Heh. I like your fix of the poem; the original always bothers me.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do.