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

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Just to be clear, I should note that whole life insurance may get you round a practical problem, but the same legal problems apply as with term insurance.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Many thanks again for all your advice here. I shall try and find out what other cryonics people in the UK have done, and if I find something that seems workable and affordable I'll ask for advice again - cheers!

[lizw.livejournal.com]

You're welcome - happy to help in any way I can.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Actually, while we're on the financial side of this, another thought: it occurs to me that you need to think not only of the cost of the actual cryopreservation and revival, but the cost of the presumed new medical treatment for whatever you were suffering from when you "died", plus the cost of living after revival. Your skills will be out of date, and you won't be able to rely on waking up in a legal system or economy where revived people (or anyone at all, necessarily) will be entitled to a pension or benefits or education grants. So it seems to me you'd need to have made some sort of investment pre-death (or via instruction in your will) that you think would plausibly produce, during the time you expect to be suspended, enough money to live on at least for the time it would take you to retrain, after allowing for inflation. Even that assumes that you'd be employable at all (think age discrimination, disability discrimination if the process doesn't leave you functioning perfectly, prejudice against people seen to have "cheated" death, etc); you might need to have enough of a fund to meet your living expenses for the rest of your life. How do CI suggest people address that?