

You Only Live Twice - bloch
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/12/you-only-live-twice.html

======
jongalt
Reasons why cryonics is dumb:

\- First off, there's a close to zero chance of a successful revival. Pretty
much all of the major problems with thawing (like, let's rebuild your severely
damaged brain) are pushed off onto future generations to solve. Not to mention
curing whatever killed you in the first place. But let's pretend the future is
magic, and this can work...

\- Who pays for this? And no, I'm not talking about the freezing. The article
presumes we can just use life insurance to pay for cryonics (and not say, to
support your presently alive loved ones). But who pays for your future
miraculous revival? Even in the super advanced future, presumably a complex
procedure like reconstructing a human brain won't exactly be a cheap one. Not
to mention all the medical care you'd need for recovery (and don't forget
about all those people who just froze their heads, they'll need whole new
bodies!). Why exactly are the people of the future so eager to resurrect all
these frozen corpses of people with no living family or friends to support
them? Is the future such a utopia that not only have we solved overpopulation,
but we're desperately looking to bring back long frozen bodies with severe
medical problems?

\- The part that really strikes me as idealistic and naive about the article
though, is the idea that death is "not part of the plan". And I thought we
were being unrealistic about the future when they could rebuild your brain. So
now everyone lives forever? That doesn't seem very sustainable. Not to mention
the fact that it is the very finiteness of life that makes it valuable in the
first place.

Conclusion: The present is yours to do with what you like, and the future may
or may not ever get here. Invest in today.

~~~
newt0311
Lets see...

Value of my life (at least to myself): infinity,

Probability of revival: >0

Expected value = (probability of revival) * (value of my life) = infinity.

So... low odds are not a good excuse to not go for cryonics.

Next, who pays: The person being frozen. Its like a trust fund. Toss in a
large one time sum and live off the interest. The interest on 120K at 4%
annual compound interest (after inflation) is ~500 dollars/yr which should be
enough to maintain what is basically a big freezer for a long time and note
that that 4% is a _very_ conservative figure and accumulating 120K is not a
big deal for those in the upper middle class and above which is still a lot of
people.

What he means by "death is not part of the plan" is that at least they are
trying to live longer, even if the chances of success are slim.

Conclusion: Cryonics has the potential to be a valuable investment.

~~~
byrneseyeview
_Value of my life (at least to myself): infinity,_

I seriously doubt this. There are numerous activities -- smoking, eating
delicious food, having risky sex, crossing the street -- that people routinely
do despite the incremental risk of mortality. I've read that when you divide
the extra money by the increased death risk (e.g. a $10K lump sum payment for
a 1% chance of dying, as you'd get if, for example, you switch to higher-risk
duties in a mining or lumber job), the average person values his own life at
between $1 million and $10 million.

If you do spend all of your time on maximizing your probability of survival --
making money for medical care, reading medical journals in your free time, not
doing anything that's really fun and slightly fatal -- I'd believe you.
Otherwise, you suffer from cognitive dissonance.

~~~
ShardPhoenix
That evaluation is taking into account the fact that death is inevitable
within 120 years or so regardless of what you do. If you expected to live for
1000 years or more, you'd presumably value your life higher.

~~~
byrneseyeview
It's still a finite number, and unless the marginal utility of life goes up
over time, it should be less than eight times the original number. So let's
say $5 to $50 million. Still not infinite.

------
tdavis
_Not signing up for cryonics - what does that say? That you've lost hope in
the future. That you've lost your will to live. That you've stopped believing
that human life, and your own life, is something of value._

No, it's because I value my life so much that I don't believe in cryonics. If
it is your belief that it is possible to live N number of lives, your current
life loses some of its meaning. Maybe you don't strive for so much, because
there's probably more time later. Maybe you don't try as hard because if you
fail, you might get a do-over. Maybe you don't shoot for the whole "regret
nothing" thing with as much tenacity.

~~~
izaidi
By that logic, would you rather die in 5 years than in 50?

~~~
tdavis
Uhhh.. neither? Measuring it changes the outcome. Knowing when I'm going to
die is as bad as believing I won't.

~~~
asdflkj
You already know with high probability when you're gonna die. If anything,
living indefinitely (or giving yourself a chance thereof) takes you farther
from knowing when you're gonna die.

------
Retric
I think cryonics is about as useful as all those old tombs in Egypt. We could
probably clone some of those body's and reviving people from cryonics might be
an interesting experiment for our decedents but in both cases much of that
dead person will have been lost. And trading resources in this life so that
some shadow of me might show up in the future is not worth much time. So yea
it's the best hope we have now, like it was their best hope back then, but all
they are talking about is imperfect copies.

------
patio11
OK, so maybe I read too many fantasy and sci-fi novels, but I'm less
interested in the problems of coming back from the dead. What really interests
me is the related problem of how to kill someone securely.

Take, for a prosaic example, vampires. Shooting a vampire will almost
certainly NOT kill them -- sources differ but they might not die, might die
but revive immediately, might die but revive the next night, etc. So how to
kill a vampire definitively?

I think, based on the union of all the vampire lore I've heard, you have to:

* stake him

* stuff his mouth with holy wafers

* cut off his head

* burn the body (both parts, presumably, but better to keep them separate)

* bury the ashes on hallowed ground

* ... at high noon

* drop a nuclear bomb on top of the church

THERE. One vampire, securely disposed of.

I'm sorry if this digression into the fantastic was a waste of time for you.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled intellectual discussion of
cryogenics.

------
mattmaroon
Maybe, I'm wrong, but I often get the impression that the person who writes
this blog is in need of a good grief counselor, but may be too smart for most
of them to help.

~~~
Eliezer
My grief is not the problem. This world is the problem.

~~~
mattmaroon
If this world is the problem, you need to redefine the word problem.

~~~
MaysonL
No, you just need to change the bleeping world.

~~~
mattmaroon
Maybe. Maybe death isn't such a bad thing. We only dislike it due to our grief
response, but outside of that it performs lots of useful functions.

Also, I'm still highly skeptical cryonics will ever be reversible to the point
where I can truly be brought back. My body may be reanimated, maybe, but
without my memories, it's not much different than birthing a fully formed
adult.

I'm not opposed to cryonics in general, but the author said he thought it
should be done by the state to everyone unidentified, which I find ludicrous.

------
yters
That's a pretty hopeless point of view. Why not assume that in the future
they'll harness the universe's full computational capabilities and emulate
every single being that has ever lived? If cryonics is possible, the
simulation scenario is just as possible, since it uses the exact same
assumptions. Plus, it is a lot cheaper to believe in:)

~~~
byrneseyeview
_Why not assume that in the future they'll harness the universe's full
computational capabilities and emulate every single being that has ever
lived?_

Because if you assume it will happen, you have to assume that the mostly
likely explanation for your existence is that it _did_ happen.

~~~
yters
That's a bad reason to assume the opposite. If Eliezer's assumptions are
valid, then the scenario I outline is just as valid. You can't have one
without the other.

------
chris11
I'm not convinced that medical science is so far behind determining life. Once
a person is pronounced dead, I'm convinced they're brain dead. So it's useless
to preserve someone when nearly all of their information on the state of their
mind has been lost.

~~~
mhartl
You're right to be skeptical, but I encourage you to investigate further,
since this is a common but erroneous belief: that even a few minutes without
oxygen causes irreparable brain damage. In fact, it's the autoimmune response
upon _revival_ that causes the damage to the brain, not the hypoxia. And cold
prevents the damage; some types of brain surgery require zero blood pressure,
and are performed at low temperature (potentially for hours) without harm to
the brain.

~~~
chris11
I probably spoke to fast. I could see it being somewhat feasible if the
cryonics facility was immediately informed that the patient was dying, and the
patient was frozen within hours of clinical death. My main concern is the
success of freezing a brain dead person. I also was mainly referring earlier
to the loss of information in the brain, not the actual physical brain
damage.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theoretical_death>. So if the
family refuses or delays to inform the organization, I'm skeptical about
whether the information in the brain can be preserved. And there have been
bitter legal battles fought over cryonics.
[http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/is-that-what-love-is-
the-...](http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/is-that-what-love-is-the-hostile-
wife-phenomenon-in-cryonics/)

------
tocomment
Does the idea of quantum immortality suggest that you would be revived? In
that case I guess you're already living in a universe where you WILL freeze
yourself (or in one where the singularity gets here soon.)

------
jodrellblank
Reasons why cryonics is dumb:

Life is suffering (Buddha, n B.C.) Death is void. Nothing > suffering.

But there's a wall of pain/fear/effort/risk with suicide that keeps people
inside life. Once you're dead, you're forced past the wall and it's a simple
choice:

more suffering or no suffering?

Immortality by not dieing isn't quite the same option - avoiding old age
suffering or going to old age suffering? Easy, being alive and rejuvenated
wins.

------
time_management
I find it interesting that there's a not-small class of atheists who,
believing they face the horror of annihilation, are driven to believe in
things that are just as irrational as traditional religion-- mind uploading,
cryonics, singularity, etc.

I don't know if there's an existence after death, though I think there
probably is one, and I consider myself lucky to believe this, for if I'm
wrong, I'll never know. What's horrible about annihilation/nonexistence isn't
any experience of it-- there is none, by definition-- but the rather hideous
shadow the prospect, were it true, would cast over life.

~~~
yters
Yeah, I don't get the "horror" of annihilation. If I won't care once I'm gone,
why should I care now?

~~~
time_management
Because a human life is so incredibly short that decline and death are rapidly
impending, and it's difficult not to think about them constantly. Perhaps I'm
unusual, but I think about death-- my death, not just the abstraction--
several times per day. And I'm not a depressed or morbid person, so I think
this is pretty normal.

It would suck if the final act of existence were painful decline, followed by
eternal oblivion. It could well be the case, but I'm glad that if it is, I'll
never know about it.

~~~
yters
Well, that's just a matter of psychology then, not any kind of logical should.
I think about death too, but it doesn't seem to bother me like it does others
since I don't see a logical reason behind the dread. Sure, the psychological
side still gets to me when I stare death in the face, but otherwise not so
much.

A logical should would be something like if I were to die I would spend an
eternity in ceaseless boredom. That would be a reason to avoid death.
Otherwise it is just a false anticipation, like jumping off a high rock when
you know it is perfectly safe. I try to eliminate that from my life if I can,
which is the rational course of action. I think this is the psychological
basis of thrill seeking.

If you look at your own decision making process, you'll see that this
procedure is how you also shape your psychological reactions. Say you really
dreaded a certain event, such as moving out of your parents house. Then, when
the time came, you found you could handle yourself alright. With that
knowledge in the back of your mind, you no longer dread similar situations as
much. I'm just making this process explicit in how I think about life.

------
dexter
"If you want to securely erase a hard drive, it's not as easy as writing it
over with zeroes. Sure, an "erased" hard drive like this won't boot up your
computer if you just plug it in again. But if the drive falls into the hands
of a specialist with a scanning tunneling microscope, they can tell the
difference between "this was a 0, overwritten by a 0" and "this was a 1,
overwritten by a 0".

There are programs advertised to "securely erase" hard drives using many
overwrites of 0s, 1s, and random data. But if you want to keep the secret on
your hard drive secure against all possible future technologies that might
ever be developed, then cover it with thermite and set it on fire. It's the
only way to be sure."

There have been no cases of anyone ever restoring a zeroed hard drive. It's
utter bullshit. Especially these days with our precision aligned platters and
insane densities.

