POLL: Cryonics - do you want to be frozen when you die?

[Laman]

I continue to be astonished at the rationalizations by which people manage to call the worst bug in the universe a feature. In theory, I know it's an easy to explain phenomenon, but that doesn't reduce the astonishment I feel.

i have already concluded i can't beat your arguments, but anyway, it just feels wrong. somehow i can't believe that a) people will defeat death and will live forever, b) they will be able to expand exponentially fast to the space, c) they will live happy and meaningful lives this way and d) if this all happen, that it is a good thing. but i think i can live happy even without it

prepare to evacuate soul in 10, 9, 8, ...

[hyperpape]

I didn't mean to restart this debate, though I knew it was a predictable consequence of posting this. Cue the doctrine of double effect!

[kitanifan]

My answer is no. I am not sure I like the 2011 world, and i am sure i would hate a 2090 world.

[daniel_the_smith]

My answer is no. I am not sure I like the 2011 world, and i am sure i would hate a 2090 world.

Is that your true objection? Pretend you live to see 2090 via natural means-- do you really expect you would hate the world so much that you'd find suicide preferable to continued life?

[hailthorn011]

My answer is no. I am not sure I like the 2011 world, and i am sure i would hate a 2090 world.

Is that your true objection? Pretend you live to see 2090 via natural means-- do you really expect you would hate the world so much that you'd find suicide preferable to continued life?

Well, living through natural means is, well, a more natural transition then suddenly being thrust into a time period where everything you know has changed. If you live through the times, you can slowly adapt to the changes as they come. But it would be an abrupt twist to suddenly go from 2011 to 2090. Look at how much things have changed since just 1990.

[Joaz Banbeck]

My answer is no. I am not sure I like the 2011 world, and i am sure i would hate a 2090 world.

There is no way to know what the world will be like in 2090, in another 79 years. But maybe we can get a rough approximation. Let's look at a hypothetical somebody who would have been frozen 79 years ago...and wakes up today. ( This data is for the US )

In 1932
* Your life expectancy was about 15 years less.
* Unemployment was 23.6 percent, and if you are unemployed, you can literally starve to death as 20 did in NY alone in 1931.
* If you do work, you probably work 69 hours per week. And it is probably manual labor.
* Alexander Fleming just published a paper about a strange blue-green mold, but it has not gone further. You could die from even a mild infection.
* Cars are a luxury for the rich, as is flying.
* Computers and TV are still in the most primitive stages. For entertainment you have radio - with tubes that burn out frequently.
* Electricity is now in the homes of more than 50% of the population, but plumbing is not. Most of the population has never heard of toilet paper.
* Trade of ideas and things is meager. Most people have never heard of sushi or Zen or go. Spaghetti is an exotic foreign food.

If I had to deal with the sudden transition from that to today's world, I think that I'd find the benefits worth it.


( Disclaimer: No, I didn't choose this because it was the great depression. I decided to do a current year vs -79 years comparison before I did the math. Upon doing it, I was mildly amused to find that 79 years was deep in the great depression. Upon further reflection, it seemed fitting, for we are in the worst economic times since then, and it provides a nice comparison of how bad it can be now vs how bad it could get then. )

[hyperpape]

Let's look at a hypothetical somebody who would have been frozen 79 years ago...and wakes up today. ( This data is for the US....If I had to deal with the sudden transition from that to today's world, I think that I'd find the benefits worth it.

Farrington said that even "with all the ugly sides of our civilization, I am sure I would rather live as we do now than have to live as the caveman did." Wittgenstein replied "Yes, of course you would. But would the caveman?"

Almost everything you know about the way the world works is no longer true. Unless you are at the upper extreme of cognitive flexibility, you live in a world you will never understand or be comfortable in.

• Your racist and sexist attitudes render you unfit for participation in ordinary society.
• The skills that you have are completely obsolete. You will have to learn everything children learn, but you will have to do it while supporting yourself and without the benefit of being a blank slate.
• Social interaction and art will both seem debased to you.
• Unlike someone who has lived through a great period of time now, your children and friends are gone or have lived through decades without you. They may still love you, but you no longer know them.
• If your children and friends were all frozen and you are awakened simultaneously, you are now essentially a splinter group from the broader society. I doubt that ends well.

[Joaz Banbeck]

...Almost everything you know about the way the world works is no longer true. Unless you are at the upper extreme of cognitive flexibility, you live in a world you will never understand or be comfortable in.

• Your racist and sexist attitudes render you unfit for participation in ordinary society.
• The skills that you have are completely obsolete. You will have to learn everything children learn, but you will have to do it while supporting yourself and without the benefit of being a blank slate.
• Social interaction and art will both seem debased to you.
• Unlike someone who has lived through a great period of time now, your children and friends are gone or have lived through decades without you. They may still love you, but you no longer know them.
• If your children and friends were all frozen and you are awakened simultaneously, you are now essentially a splinter group from the broader society. I doubt that ends well.

That sounds like being an immigrant. If a million Mexicans/Pakistanis/Libyans etc can handle it, I can too.
Regardless, it is way better than being dead.

[hyperpape]

Perhaps we have one difference. I do not think I would ever emigrate. I would consider living elsewhere for a moderate length of time if my wife and daughter were there too.

[Joaz Banbeck]

Actually, you will emigrate sometime in the next 50 years or so, like it or not. You have a choice of destinations.

[hyperpape]

I don't think I follow. Are you saying death is a place one emigrates to? (Btw: I'm 27 so I have a better than 50-50 chance to beat 50 years.)

[ez4u]

I think this question is pure "have your cake and eat it too". If you can wait until you die and then be successfully resuscitated after being frozen, well... you did not die did you?

The real question is whether you are want to be frozen NOW, in the expectation that you will be resuscitated in the future with the expectation that you will then enjoy X-hundred years of healthy life as a result of improvements in medicine, etc. (funded of course by that trust fund you left invested with Bernie Madoff but that's another story...)

Of course by then you will be forced to play Go with a program that runs on your wrist watch and can beat you every time giving a 9-stone handicap - but what? You believe in happily ever after!!!???

[Joaz Banbeck]

I think this question is pure "have your cake and eat it too". If you can wait until you die and then be successfully resuscitated after being frozen, well... you did not die did you? ...

Actually, it depends upon differing definitions of death. If everbody uses the same definition, it doesn't work.
Freezing presumes that both current and future phsicians use a definition that basically translates to "it is beyond our ability to do anything." Their definitions depend on their levels of technology. As the technology changes, so does the definition of death. Feezing arbitrages the difference in definitions.

An example of the current definition of death is

Death is...the irreversible cessation of all of the following: (1) total cerebral function, usually assessed by EEG as flat-line (2) spontaneous function of the respiratory system, and (3) spontaneous function of the circulatory system...

Freezing depends upon future physicians having a definition of death that is proportional to their technology.

Death is the irreversable loss of the data stored in the structure of the brain.

So you can be dead according to the first definition, but alive and quite restorable according to the second.


EDIT: A century ago, physicians used a definition of "no heartbeat and no breathing". Many people went to their graves for lack of a defibulator and a shot of adrenalin. If a physician back then could have frozen his patient, and if said patient could be thawed safely, a current physician could jab his chest with a quick release syringe of adrenalin, grab the paddles, and shock him back to life in less than a minute.
Definitions of death depend on your technology.

[jts]

EDIT: A century ago, physicians used a definition of "no hearthbeat and no breathing". Many people went to their graves for lack of a defibulator and a shot of adrenalin. If a physician back then could have frozen his patient, and if said patient could be thawed safely, a current physician could jab his chest with a quick release syringe of adrenalin, grab the paddles, and shock him back to life in less than a minute.
Definitions of death depend on your technology.

It's worth pointing out that "no heartbeat and no breathing" are still two of the three conditions, and the third can't be meaningfully maintained if the other two can't eventually be restarted. Yes, if your heart stops they can crack your ribs and manually stimulate your heart and hope that it starts again, but your chances of walking out of the hospital again are still very, very low.

But I think on the whole, you're dodging ez4u's question. Clearly there are several people here who think that if they die, and are then frozen, the dead, frozen body will eventually be thawed and then made not-dead. However, the certainty that most of you are expressing along all relevant fronts (that living forever is a worthy goal, that eventually technology will be able to thaw and resurrect dead, frozen bodies, that the resurrected person would still be you, that you would be happy living in the future, and so on) suggests that by continuing to live your humdrum, 21st century life, you are taking some very grave risks. You might die somewhere where your cryonicist can't reach you; or you might have a degenerative disease that turns most of your body to mush before killing you; or you might die from a very sudden acceleration, with the same effect. Given your incorruptible faith, why are you still here? Why aren't you frozen in a vault somewhere?

[daniel_the_smith]

Given your incorruptible faith, why are you still here? Why aren't you frozen in a vault somewhere?

I believe I expressed earlier that I think it has < 5% chance of working. I'd be astonished to see a sane person setting the odds much higher than that. Yes, by default, it ought to work-- but there are tons of things that could go wrong along the way. Cryogenic freezing is the 2nd worst thing that can happen to you.

Joaz can give his own probability estimates, but "incorruptible faith" is not a term I find remotely applicable to my own view. What can be destroyed by the truth should be.