
Why Cryonics Makes Sense (2016) - apsec112
https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html
======
trgv
I think it's very unlikely that this company will be able to keep the bodies
preserved until we develop the technology to revive them.

I also think it's unlikely that a future society will allocate resources to
revive these people, even if we suppose technology exists and the bodies are
well preserved enough. Everyone who knows these people today will surely be
dead by that point.

Furthermore, many of the people paying for this seem to believe in the
inevitable emergence of a utopian society with unlimited resources, which
seems almost a necessary condition for these people to be revived. Personally,
I'm not banking on that happening either.

An aside: when I was younger, my brother and I had an idea for a post-
apocalyptic short story related to this subject. The plot goes something like
this: after the collapse of human civilization, a group of survivors exhaust
the remaining food supply and begin to starve until they discover a solar-
powered facility full of thousands of perfectly preserved corpses, which (the
story would have implied) will feed them for decades to come.

~~~
c22
> Furthermore, many of the people paying for this seem to believe in the
> inevitable emergence of a utopian society with unlimited resources, which
> seems almost a necessary condition for these people to be revived.
> Personally, I'm not banking on that happening either.

This seems like a feature. If a Utopia arises you'll be revived into it and if
not you won't have to live in the alternative.

As for motivation for future generations to revive you it seems prudent to
will all your resources into a trust upon your death to be paid to whoever
brings you back.

------
reasonattlm
I finally signed up in 2016 as well. It is The Responsible Backup Plan in the
grand scheme of things, assuming you are someone who likes to be alive. Around
that time I set down some high level notes on what I think to be important in
the process, which can be found here:

[https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2016/07/finally-
signed-u...](https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2016/07/finally-signed-up-
for-cryopreservation-the-existence-of-a-fallback-plan-is-great-but-only-if-
you-actually-take-advantage-of-it/)

[https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2016/05/overfund-the-
lif...](https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2016/05/overfund-the-life-
insurance-policy-that-pays-for-your-cryopreservation/)

"I have put off signing up for cryopreservation for a decade or so. This isn't
uncommon; after all, it involves paperwork, adult responsibility, planning
ahead, thinking about unpleasant events, and all that. People put off many
other things for these and similar reasons. Writing wills, buying houses,
getting married, starting companies, and so on. That doleful feeling of some
unknown scope of paperwork that will have to be accomplished in the event that
you do get your act together and set forth to be a responsible adult is ever a
strong deterrent. Still, sooner or later all these tasks have to be carried
out, and while no-one enjoys wading through legal documents, it is never as
bad as you think it is going to be. If you are unfamiliar with the process of
signing up for cryonics organization membership and cryopreservation, let me
tell you that it is much less work than buying a house. It is about two and
half times the work of getting a life insurance policy, if that helps
calibrate things any better."

~~~
nikkwong
What were your biggest concerns, and what made you finally decide to go
through with it?

------
ashleyn
Here's the problem I always had with cyronics. You're trusting the future to
revive you using future technology. But can you trust it will be for your
benefit? Can you trust the technology will be used ethically?

Suppose a theocratic world order identifies you as an enemy of the state, and
in an effort at "penance", places your brain into a machine that simulates
torture, where not even suicide can bring about escape?

A curt reminder that historical "progress" is neither linear nor clearly
defined was all I needed to reject the concept. If you assume technology will
be fantastic enough one day to revive your perished brain, what holds back the
caution that this same technology cannot be used to subject you to inescapable
torture?

You may view information-specific death as optional now, but one day, it may
be outright banished from your set of choices. The world you return to may not
afford you the luxury of choosing to die.

~~~
teraflop
You could make the exact same argument without cryonics.

It's possible that tomorrow, the United States will collapse into an evil
theocracy that decides to both torture me and devote all of its resources to
prolonging my life indefinitely. I could commit suicide today to escape that
possibility, but I don't because I judge it to be extremely unlikely.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You could make the exact same argument without cryonics.

You could, but it would make less sense.

> It's possible that tomorrow, the United States will collapse into an evil
> theocracy that decides to both torture me and devote all of its resources to
> prolonging my life indefinitely

It could, but the information available to most observers makes both the
policy transition described unlikely tomorrow, and he technology development
improbable in the time necessary to have a meaningful effect even with the
policy transition.

OTOH, such a policy transition is much more likely between now and whenever
the technology to restore life to a frozen cadaver is developed, and at least
a large portion of the technology development necessary to effect the extended
torture is _certain_ with the ability to revive frozen corpses.

The scenarios aren't parallels.

------
analog31
_There’s been an explosion in the engine, and the plane is going to crash in
15 minutes. There’s no chance of survival. There is a potential way out—the
plane happens to be transferring a shipment of parachutes....

Those who choose not to take that option, please remain in your seat—this will
be over soon, and you will feel no pain._

Why does this argument strike me as analogous to Pascal's Wager? You can pray
for an afterlife, or not. Your choice. Which do you choose?

~~~
apsec112
An afterlife would require fundamental revisions to the laws of physics, while
cryonics does not (as the article goes on to explain). Pascal's Wager is about
how an infinite payoff leads to infinite expected value, regardless of the
odds. There are no infinities anywhere in cryonics, it's just a question of
weighing the odds against the expected payoff, like taking a risky new drug or
any other experimental medical procedure.

~~~
analog31
... or sending money to Nigeria, to transfer millions of dollars to your name,
which also doesn't violate the laws of physics.

The traditional afterlife of religion was constructed to obey physics as it
was understood at the time.

------
lz400
I feel that article could have condensed the same ideas in 5% of the length.
Basically it all comes down to an expected value calculation in a situation
where almost everything is unknown.

What surprises me is that Alcor doesn't have more clients. 200K (80K for a
head) is not a lot of money relatively speaking. Any senior engineer in a tech
company could afford to put apart 80K in a trust fund for this and sign up.
And you'd expect most engineers think the same way as the article: cheap for a
potentially infinite payoff. But afaik they only have a few clients.

~~~
tim333
Indeed, the Cryonics Institute is the value for money option at ~ $30k, have
been freezing for 40 years and have 153 frozen/vitrified humans, plus some
pets. So only like four a year. ([http://www.cryonics.org/ci-landing/member-
statistics/](http://www.cryonics.org/ci-landing/member-statistics/)).

I offered to have my gran done as I liked her and 30k wasn't a big deal at the
time but she said no way. I guess most people aren't that in to the idea.
Maybe they're thinking a reanimated corpse having a rough time whereas I think
a more virtual upload to a sort of digital heaven might be jollier. But with
the ability to do stuff like compose like Beethoven rather than just hanging
out on clouds. I wonder how things will actually pan out.

------
rosser
How is this argument materially different from Pascal's Wager? It is
_entirely_ the same structure:

    
    
      P: (cryonics works | God is real)
      If !P and you don't play along, no outcome
      If P and you don't play along, "bad" outcome
      If !P and you do play along, no outcome
      If P and you do play along, "good" outcome
    
      ∴ You are dumb not to play along, just in case.
    

What am I missing?

~~~
evgen
If P and you do play along you still have no assurance of a good outcome. If
!P and you do not play along then your heirs enjoy the benefits of your estate
instead of a collection of con men and snake oil salesmen.

Cryonics snake oil salesmen are modern-day alchemists, promising you that they
will figure out how to turn lead into gold any day now and if you just set up
a small annuity on their behalf they will make sure that a golden statue
proclaiming your magnificence will be the first thing they create upon
success. Surely you could not doubt them, for it is obvious that lead exists,
and that gold exists, and we have seen how various substances and processes
transform materials in ways that defy explanation. With a little bit more
money to fund the research they are absolutely going to figure out how to
convert one to another...

~~~
rosser
I'm not saying there _will_ be a good outcome, if P and you play along. I'm
saying that's the argument.

I think cryonics is as much snake oil as Pascal's God.

I'm baffled that I should need to clarify that, given that's what I analogized
the argument to.

~~~
evgen
I probably should have left the "if P" part out, but the "if !P" bits that
assume no cost are where the cryonics crowd plays their deception and it
annoys me to see this repeated. This really approaches the sort of "what's the
harm" claims made for a lot of pseudo-science and so I feel compelled to
address it but did not mean to suggest that you were making the claim.

------
Lxr
Do we know for sure that people are completely unconscious while preserved? It
would be unpleasant to be stuck upside down in a vat of liquid nitrogen unable
to move unless you were... People in comas feel and hear things, it sometimes
happens under general anaesthesia, it doesn’t seem too unlikely.

~~~
tritium
Given that most of the chemical processes of neurology are halted by rendering
the usual liquid soup of metabolism completely inert, any rememberance of
dreaming or sensation is going to occur in the transient periods of going
under or coming out of storage.

To borrow from the array of _Inception_ memes, your sense of time in the dream
world is distorted, which is why dreams can feel like days-long ordeals even
though you’ve probably never had a dream last even 2 hours, let alone 8. So if
you do come out of it with trippy dream-like memories or weird emotional
feelings as residue from nightmares, what will they amount to? I guess it
could be unpleasant, but if you’re going to get on living, you’ll have to
figure out a way to get over it and move on.

I mean, whatever baggage you wind up with is going to be stacked next to what
amounts to an (almost assuredly unsettling) near death experience, and waking
up alone anyway, with (very likely) no friends or loved ones to offer support
after you wake back up, so you’ll have that to cope with as well. No one
promised that living forever would be easy.

------
tytytytytytytyt
Wasn't Alcor the company where employees got in trouble for playing with the
frozen heads?

~~~
apsec112
The allegation was false. The accuser (Larry Johnson) was sued for libel, was
ordered by a court to stop disparaging Alcor, ignored the order, was held in
contempt of court, had an arrest warrant issued, and finally took the Fifth
rather than answer questions about whether he lied to the police and various
other parties.

[http://www.alcor.org/press/response.html](http://www.alcor.org/press/response.html)

