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

[xmakina.livejournal.com]

Time would be my biggest concern. It's all well and good sinking $30,000 or whatever stupid numbers they're asking for but the fact is you could need to be stored for over 100 years, minimum. The idea that the building will remain perfectly operational, both in terms of infrastructure (power, vehicle access etc.) and commercially (bankruptcy, staff mis-management, embezzlement) is exceedingly slim.

Also, the Republicans really don't like people fucking with life and/or death so don't be surprised that if we did find a way to resurrect frozen bodies the Republicans wouldn't promptly ban it and order all bodies to be destroyed.

[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.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

We've had this conversation before, and I'm short on time, but it's an awful lot of money on a very long shot - and there are things I'd rather the money went on things that are of proven benefit to human life.

[zotz]

The consensus is, as far as I can tell, that microscopic cracks from the freeze-thaw process do fairly comprehensive destruction in spite of the measures taken. I've never heard anyone even speculate about how it might be possible to reverse it.

Also, the record of incorporated organisations for keeping their commitments over the sort of timescales we're talking is the opposite of good. My guess is that for one reason or another all of their bodies will thaw, intentionally or otherwise, over the next few decades.

[lolliepopp.livejournal.com]

IAWTC

Life is for living, not for trying to cheat.

L
x

[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.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

I'm very sceptical of the science behind it but that's not what bothers me.

I find the idea of spending tens of thousands of pounds at a shot at preserving my life after death to just be very hard to justify. That's hardly pocket change.

Skipping right past the issue of whether it's better to spend money on enjoying myself now rather than a gamble on extending my life, I wonder how many people's lives could be extended/saved using that money in more conventional means.

I'd rather the world's resources went to helping people who need that money right now rather than to give privileged people hope for life after death.

[clarisinda.livejournal.com]

Aside from the high likelyhood that it just won't happen at all, more frightening is the thought that I might be revived but in a less than perfect, healthy state. Worst case scenario would be regaining consciousness but having a non-functioning body, and not being able to do anything about that.

[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

[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]

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

[grahamb.livejournal.com]

This is of course, worst case.

Say you're thawed out and you had significant brain damage. The cleaners unplug your freezer in 2039 by accident for 2 weeks and they don't tell anyone. Assume you can specify a clause in your contract where if you have >40% brain damage you'd like to be thrown back in the frozen peas just in case sometime in the 39th century they can fix brain damage.

Here's my problem. I've no idea what the laws in the country where you're thawed out are going to be and what those laws will permit. If you're thawed out and you're going to live the rest of your life in significant pain or some kind of living hell whereby you are confined to a hospital bed (assuming there's a health service) watching endless re-runs of Eastenders.

Welcome to the "Few-Cha"!

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Would you do it if CI offered it to you for free? Imagine that if you don't accept, they'll only spend the money on some other cryonics-related pursuit - you're not offered the option of for example donating the money to Oxfam.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

The consensus is, as far as I can tell, that microscopic cracks from the freeze-thaw process do fairly comprehensive destruction in spite of the measures taken.

Obviously freeze-thawing a kidney is much easier than doing the same with a brain, but a rabbit kidney has gone through this full cycle and the rabbit it was implanted in lived, so it's not obvious that these cracks are a show-stopper. Would these cracks result in information-theoretic death?

[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.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

It's easy to imagine scary scenarios, and lots of people in this thread have done it. But I see no reason to think that this is likely, or even plausible enough to assign real weight to.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

CI specifically, probably not - I don't trust them, and their successors likely even less, and I'd need to have a lot of trust in an outfit to put myself in their hands in a desperately vulnerable state (coming round from the process).

But a hypothetical organisation I did trust, yes, probably.

[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.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Oh, and definitely head-only if my organs can be used for transplantation.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

These are both very plausible worries, I think (though I think it could well be less than 100 years).

- The tanks need topping up with liquid nitrogen once a week and they store some onsite for emergencies, so it would take a hell of an infrastructural problem to thaw the corpscicles.

- Commercially is a bigger worry. Liquid nitrogen is cheap, and CI invest a lot of money very conservatively on your behalf when you get frozen, so it's not as certain as it may seem that they'll go bust and thaw you out, but it's by no means certain that they won't.

- Your last point is also a real worry, but I couldn't go so far as to say it was *more likely than not*. Doubtless someone somewhere will eventually propose this, but I'd be a little surprised if it got all the way to being made into law.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I would very much like to hear more about why you don't trust CI specifically, since they were who I had in mind...

[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?

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

I haven't yet, because I procrastinate, but do intend to.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

They say that many, many more people die meaning to get around to it than are cryopreserved. You and I may be among them...