My co-blogger Eliezer and I may disagree on AI fooms, but we agree on something quite contrarian and, we think, huge: More likely than not, most folks who die today didn't have to die! Yes, I am skeptical of most medicine because on average
Well, i'd beg to disagree on this one. Most folks frozen today probably won't be possible to revive. On top of this jumping onto crappy cryonics is not a very good approach for incentive for that cryonics not to be this crappy.
Freeze a goddamn cow brain, or best yet elephant brain (or other human sized-ish brain), report on all the shredded up by ice pieces that cryo-protectants never reached.
I don't want myself to be frozen by human ostriches that are afraid to do a test that has a good chance of finding out that a lot (or everyone) they already froze is almost certainly non-revivable by any technology up and including atomic resolution scanning..
In every discussion I find about cryonics, I never see anyone talking about the one factor that weighs most heavily (in my opinion) on my decision... The effect that cryopreservation has on your loved ones, friends, and family that you (hopefully temporarily) leave behind. For anyone who has ever stood at the bedside of a loved one as that loved one passed away, you know how difficult and painful it is to let go. Even after the person has most certainly passed, you need to hold that person's hand and come to terms, for your own sake, with that person's passing. This takes time -- different amounts of time for each individual -- and should not be rushed. And the process is not over when you finally physically let go. It continues through the wake and the funeral and for months thereafter. It is the grieving process, it is natural, it is essential to emotional health, and it cannot be suppressed or mitigated by logic. It happens within each of us, no matter what science, religion, or other coping mechanism we may have.
And so, when I think of cryonics, I am torn. I believe in it. I believe it can work. I believe we will, in the "near" future, cure aging and most diseases. We will have the medical technology to un-freeze those who have been preserved. We will have the technology to repair at least some of the damage done by the anoxia of death and the cryopreservation process, such that a substantial portion of identity and memory is restored. (even if not all)
And yet... when I think about my family standing at my bedside, grieving as I pass, I do not want a small army of technicians looking over their shoulders, impatiently tapping their watches, knowing that every second of delay means further damage to my brain. My family will need to grieve. They will need to let go in their own time, at their own pace. And they probably will not understand, despite my best efforts to explain it and prepare them, why these guys in white coats so desperately need to interrupt their grieving RIGHT NOW to drain my blood and put me on ice. And their necessary process of grieving will be muddled and confused -- because even as they conduct my funeral and bury a box somewhere, they will all know that it is empty, and they will wonder... What are we doing?? Is he dead or what? Do we let go now, or what? The potential for psychological and emotional trauma is huge. I love my family, and I do not want to put them through that.
I really don't care about what the future will look like when I wake up. I don't care if there's a super-AI running everything, or if I'm uploaded to a simulator headed for Gliese, where I only get 1 subjective year of processing every 200 actual years, due to power constraints. Whatever. It's so utterly unpredictable, I don't even try. As others have explained, the cost is not an issue, either. No... really, the only hangup in my cryonics calculus is how it will affect my family.
I guess it's all on me to prepare them for it. But I worry that it's simply not possible, no matter how hard I try. It is my love for them, and my desire to never put them through the pain of grieving (or make it worse than it already is), that paradoxically makes me hope they all die before me. If I was alone in this world, cryonics would be a no-brainer. (haha, get it? "no-brainer"...)
Miguel, you do not absolutely need to live (or die) near a Cryonics facility local to you. Cryonics patients are shipped from all around the world. And now the logistics have just become far simpler: http://www.engadget.com/201... I recommend http://www.KrioRus.ru for the most competitive terms and pricing.
I do not understand how your belief in the effectiveness of cryonics is compatible with your prediction of a hyper-competitive em economy. Your vision of the future is one where ems are constantly being evicted from their bodies because they cannot generate enough value to pay for their hardware rental. Under this situation, why would anyone ever pay to run an em of you? You could not possibly compete against highly trained and specialized and optimized ems.
The only way for you to be revived as a free person is if you have sufficient capital invested to pay for everything yourself, and for the legal system to respect your wishes and your property rights to that capital. The former is plausible, assuming your investments do not get wiped out in one of the economic shocks between now and the time they learn how to make an em out of a cryopatient. But the legal problems seem insurmountable at the present time; if there is a chunk of capital sitting unclaimed for the purpose of doing something to a person who is legally dead, someone will hire a lawyer to figure out how to appropriate it.
Suppose that we found several thousand primitive hominids frozen in ice in a condition that would allow for revival. Suppose further that these people had somehow managed to accumulate, store, and protect enough wealth to pay for their revival and maintain a decent standard of living for the rest of their lives. What kind of life would they live? They would not be able to function as members of society; they would not have the intellect or training to understand or follow the basic rules of our legal and social system. The best they can hope for is to be put on some kind of reservation, a walled garden, where they interact with each other, an artificial environment, and the occasional anthropologist.
re. Fork“he knows there will be two people, one of whom is an upload that remembers being him, and the other a physical person who remembers being him.”
The upload and the physical person in addition to remembering being him, will each also have the memory of the original thinking or knowing there may be 2 of him in the future, ie. they will know about a probable existence of another copy, they will know of a possible fork.
I actually started the process of signing up for cryonics but the insurance requirements have changed recently and it's no longer possible to do any of the labwork outside of the United States (or even within NY apparently). I guess this will have to wait until the next time I cross the pond.
homunq: Most of this falls into two standard patterns with standard answers , "We should spend resources on something less selfish." - we should start by cutting on luxuries like going to the cinema and buying new clothes before vital expenses - and "I want to die at some point for reason X." - why in a few decades instead of in a million years or tomorrow? Life expectancy is not optimized for Fun, just for genetic fitness. "Death ends selfishness" is a good argument, though; it's a benefit of death we can't emulate without dying (because of akrasia). Still, if it justifies not signing up for cryonics, then it justifies killing yourself right now.
Is there really nobody here taking the position that the deal we get without cryogenics (a lifetime, then we are survived by our works and descendents, physical and intellectual) is not so bad? I understand that such a position is suspect because of stockholm-syndrome like biases, but there are also biases at least as large and silly for me-me-me-me-me.
I think about it this way: let me just consider the utility of the last millenium with or without reincarnation having some truth. I get almost exactly the same number, in fact slightly less for reincarnation. I think I would even get the same number if I'd been born at the start of it, and was facing the prospect of either a millenium of people I don't know, or one of myself and those I love constantly being reborn in new situations. (I focus on the last millenium to avoid unimaginable near-infinities. I'm actually seriously skeptical about a singularity or any very strong transhumanism, but that's not the point at debate, so 1000-2000 is a good slice.)
So that's my objection. Sure, it'd be fun to resurrect, for me, but is that the best use of those resources? (Even in a singularity, resources only multiply unimaginably, they are not infinite.) I doubt it. And the nice thing about death is it lets me stop being so selfish, so I can really worry about the resources and the fun, and not about me.
"What I wonder about cryonics is the pickup process. I don't suppose that Alcor has agents at every hospital in America. I'll skip over all the ways to die where they can't hope to get to you before you rot."
This confuses me as well. Do people signed up for cryonics worry about the circumstances of their death? I read on Alcor's website that the company encourages terminally ill patients to relocate close to their Arizona headquarters. On the other hand, not everyone gets advanced warning of his or her impending death. Suppose you die peacefully in your sleep, and no one notices for several hours. Then, are you just out of luck? I suppose you could have a device that constantly measures your heart rate and notifies Alcor (or another cryonics organization) in the event of cardiac arrest. Do cryonics organizations encourage any such thing? Are cryonics patients occasionally "lost" in this way?
This is not a debate about ethics as it should be a debate about the possibility of this scientific method. To me, i value life more than anything as should everyone and i can hardly see why someone would want to die. Think about it, 3 choices, rot, burn, or get frozen with the possibility of living life as it was before. This at least gives people hope and hope is something that need be much desired in this world. I give you my words and hopefully you can take a liking to them.
last thing earth needs is for humans to be immortal
(joke)
https://waitbutwhy.com/2016...
Please read this and share it, as it has convinced many people to sign up for cryonics.
I've asked about this. It doesn't seem you can sign up for cryonics and volunteer to be an organ doner.
Well, i'd beg to disagree on this one. Most folks frozen today probably won't be possible to revive. On top of this jumping onto crappy cryonics is not a very good approach for incentive for that cryonics not to be this crappy.
Freeze a goddamn cow brain, or best yet elephant brain (or other human sized-ish brain), report on all the shredded up by ice pieces that cryo-protectants never reached.
I don't want myself to be frozen by human ostriches that are afraid to do a test that has a good chance of finding out that a lot (or everyone) they already froze is almost certainly non-revivable by any technology up and including atomic resolution scanning..
Thank you. You have no idea how much this article has impacted me. It is a large part of my worldview, and I think back to it every day.
So just freeze your head. Everything below the neck can still go to organ donation when the cryonicists are done with it. It's even cheaper.
In every discussion I find about cryonics, I never see anyone talking about the one factor that weighs most heavily (in my opinion) on my decision... The effect that cryopreservation has on your loved ones, friends, and family that you (hopefully temporarily) leave behind. For anyone who has ever stood at the bedside of a loved one as that loved one passed away, you know how difficult and painful it is to let go. Even after the person has most certainly passed, you need to hold that person's hand and come to terms, for your own sake, with that person's passing. This takes time -- different amounts of time for each individual -- and should not be rushed. And the process is not over when you finally physically let go. It continues through the wake and the funeral and for months thereafter. It is the grieving process, it is natural, it is essential to emotional health, and it cannot be suppressed or mitigated by logic. It happens within each of us, no matter what science, religion, or other coping mechanism we may have.
And so, when I think of cryonics, I am torn. I believe in it. I believe it can work. I believe we will, in the "near" future, cure aging and most diseases. We will have the medical technology to un-freeze those who have been preserved. We will have the technology to repair at least some of the damage done by the anoxia of death and the cryopreservation process, such that a substantial portion of identity and memory is restored. (even if not all)
And yet... when I think about my family standing at my bedside, grieving as I pass, I do not want a small army of technicians looking over their shoulders, impatiently tapping their watches, knowing that every second of delay means further damage to my brain. My family will need to grieve. They will need to let go in their own time, at their own pace. And they probably will not understand, despite my best efforts to explain it and prepare them, why these guys in white coats so desperately need to interrupt their grieving RIGHT NOW to drain my blood and put me on ice. And their necessary process of grieving will be muddled and confused -- because even as they conduct my funeral and bury a box somewhere, they will all know that it is empty, and they will wonder... What are we doing?? Is he dead or what? Do we let go now, or what? The potential for psychological and emotional trauma is huge. I love my family, and I do not want to put them through that.
I really don't care about what the future will look like when I wake up. I don't care if there's a super-AI running everything, or if I'm uploaded to a simulator headed for Gliese, where I only get 1 subjective year of processing every 200 actual years, due to power constraints. Whatever. It's so utterly unpredictable, I don't even try. As others have explained, the cost is not an issue, either. No... really, the only hangup in my cryonics calculus is how it will affect my family.
I guess it's all on me to prepare them for it. But I worry that it's simply not possible, no matter how hard I try. It is my love for them, and my desire to never put them through the pain of grieving (or make it worse than it already is), that paradoxically makes me hope they all die before me. If I was alone in this world, cryonics would be a no-brainer. (haha, get it? "no-brainer"...)
Miguel, you do not absolutely need to live (or die) near a Cryonics facility local to you. Cryonics patients are shipped from all around the world. And now the logistics have just become far simpler: http://www.engadget.com/201... I recommend http://www.KrioRus.ru for the most competitive terms and pricing.
I do not understand how your belief in the effectiveness of cryonics is compatible with your prediction of a hyper-competitive em economy. Your vision of the future is one where ems are constantly being evicted from their bodies because they cannot generate enough value to pay for their hardware rental. Under this situation, why would anyone ever pay to run an em of you? You could not possibly compete against highly trained and specialized and optimized ems.
The only way for you to be revived as a free person is if you have sufficient capital invested to pay for everything yourself, and for the legal system to respect your wishes and your property rights to that capital. The former is plausible, assuming your investments do not get wiped out in one of the economic shocks between now and the time they learn how to make an em out of a cryopatient. But the legal problems seem insurmountable at the present time; if there is a chunk of capital sitting unclaimed for the purpose of doing something to a person who is legally dead, someone will hire a lawyer to figure out how to appropriate it.
Suppose that we found several thousand primitive hominids frozen in ice in a condition that would allow for revival. Suppose further that these people had somehow managed to accumulate, store, and protect enough wealth to pay for their revival and maintain a decent standard of living for the rest of their lives. What kind of life would they live? They would not be able to function as members of society; they would not have the intellect or training to understand or follow the basic rules of our legal and social system. The best they can hope for is to be put on some kind of reservation, a walled garden, where they interact with each other, an artificial environment, and the occasional anthropologist.
re. Fork“he knows there will be two people, one of whom is an upload that remembers being him, and the other a physical person who remembers being him.”
The upload and the physical person in addition to remembering being him, will each also have the memory of the original thinking or knowing there may be 2 of him in the future, ie. they will know about a probable existence of another copy, they will know of a possible fork.
I actually started the process of signing up for cryonics but the insurance requirements have changed recently and it's no longer possible to do any of the labwork outside of the United States (or even within NY apparently). I guess this will have to wait until the next time I cross the pond.
homunq: Most of this falls into two standard patterns with standard answers , "We should spend resources on something less selfish." - we should start by cutting on luxuries like going to the cinema and buying new clothes before vital expenses - and "I want to die at some point for reason X." - why in a few decades instead of in a million years or tomorrow? Life expectancy is not optimized for Fun, just for genetic fitness. "Death ends selfishness" is a good argument, though; it's a benefit of death we can't emulate without dying (because of akrasia). Still, if it justifies not signing up for cryonics, then it justifies killing yourself right now.
Is there really nobody here taking the position that the deal we get without cryogenics (a lifetime, then we are survived by our works and descendents, physical and intellectual) is not so bad? I understand that such a position is suspect because of stockholm-syndrome like biases, but there are also biases at least as large and silly for me-me-me-me-me.
I think about it this way: let me just consider the utility of the last millenium with or without reincarnation having some truth. I get almost exactly the same number, in fact slightly less for reincarnation. I think I would even get the same number if I'd been born at the start of it, and was facing the prospect of either a millenium of people I don't know, or one of myself and those I love constantly being reborn in new situations. (I focus on the last millenium to avoid unimaginable near-infinities. I'm actually seriously skeptical about a singularity or any very strong transhumanism, but that's not the point at debate, so 1000-2000 is a good slice.)
So that's my objection. Sure, it'd be fun to resurrect, for me, but is that the best use of those resources? (Even in a singularity, resources only multiply unimaginably, they are not infinite.) I doubt it. And the nice thing about death is it lets me stop being so selfish, so I can really worry about the resources and the fun, and not about me.
You either turn to digital dust or you turn to dust.
"What I wonder about cryonics is the pickup process. I don't suppose that Alcor has agents at every hospital in America. I'll skip over all the ways to die where they can't hope to get to you before you rot."
This confuses me as well. Do people signed up for cryonics worry about the circumstances of their death? I read on Alcor's website that the company encourages terminally ill patients to relocate close to their Arizona headquarters. On the other hand, not everyone gets advanced warning of his or her impending death. Suppose you die peacefully in your sleep, and no one notices for several hours. Then, are you just out of luck? I suppose you could have a device that constantly measures your heart rate and notifies Alcor (or another cryonics organization) in the event of cardiac arrest. Do cryonics organizations encourage any such thing? Are cryonics patients occasionally "lost" in this way?
This is not a debate about ethics as it should be a debate about the possibility of this scientific method. To me, i value life more than anything as should everyone and i can hardly see why someone would want to die. Think about it, 3 choices, rot, burn, or get frozen with the possibility of living life as it was before. This at least gives people hope and hope is something that need be much desired in this world. I give you my words and hopefully you can take a liking to them.