Cryonics -- anyone else interested?

[CosmicVortex10]

If there is a medical procedure that has a 1% chance of saving your life, without any dramatic evil consequences, and the alternative is certain death... Arnt you morally obligated to take it?

I think in the future their gonna look back and ask why the millions that are dying now arnt being saved when they could be. I think were gonna look pretty backwards and primitive.

Thoughts?

[scarlet_owl]

1. I would rather just die.

I wouldn't want to live in a world without death. I can't think of one good reason that I should live forever.

[CosmicVortex10]

10. Because theres an infinite amount of stuff to do?

If I live to be a hundred billion -- ill never run out of things to do. Especially given the climb to unlimited technology, that just opens up exponentially more doors.

[scarlet_owl]

24. No, I would rather die because

there will come a day when it is time for me to go. Things die. Without death, the world will be stagnant. When it is my time, I will have used up enough of the planet. It will be someone else's turn. I would never get bored of the wonders of this earth. I just don't want to "wear out my welcome". Dying is natural and part of the human existence. I don't want to be deprived of it.

[CosmicVortex10]

25. Fine -- suicide is always your option.

And thats what it would be if you deliberately chose not to use avilaible technology to save your life (everything else being equal). Why wait for 80? Why not going ahead and axe yourself at 50? Thats the natural age for dying anyways.

[Skip Intro]

30. Is it possible that death is not natural

but just another "illness" to overcome?

A hard to grasp concept - for me anyway, but could it be valid? Could we - humanity, in our short, short time being able to recognize and articulate such things, be wrong about the inevitability of death? Is that possible?

[MisterP]

2. I can't say I feel cold about it...

:D

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. Obligated?

Why? And apparently the idea of overpopulation doesn't enter into your equation. The elimination of death would NOT be a good thing on a planet with seven billion humans, tremendous problems from pollution, overcrowding, and the basic general fuckery that human societies get up to: wars, random violence, etc...not to mention the fact overpopulation leads to increases in the number of random acts of aggressive violence; of rape; of generalised stress and anxiety in the population, with all the attendant ills that entails, such as heart disease, depression, assorted forms of mental instability...there are TOO MANY people already, and artificially lengthening the lifespan of those who've come to the end of their natural term seems like a good way to ensure that the problem is exacerbated.

That's my opinion, anyway.

[CosmicVortex10]

5. I would think it wouldnt be an issue by that time...

If you have the technology to repair individual brain cells from freezing, and do it a few hundred billion times... space travel shouldnt be a tall order.

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. We've already cloned mammals...

but we can't send an UNMANNED space mission to the nearest planet without something fucking up drastically. Totally different areas of technology, anyway...advances in biotech don't necessarily mean advances in the things NEEDED to make interstellar travel a reality, like cold fusion and near-lightspeed propulsion systems. And just thinking "okay, well, let's not worry about it, after all, we'll be able to deal with our excess population by sending them off to colonise other planets" is just a way of avoiding the problem and the necessity of doing anything about it.

[CosmicVortex10]

12. So at what point do you consider someone unnaturally old?

Given normal human lifespans were originally in the 30s in a state of nature, or even the high 40s at the turn of the last century... whats abnormal? 80? 90? 150? Why?

How do you determine which day your going to wake up and say 'Hmm, this is 1 day longer then I wanted to live'?

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. "unnaturally old"...

would be the point at which the body's systems have failed to such a degree that the organism is no longer capable of supporting life in any other way save artificially, either by medication, organ transplant, or some other means. Personally, I won't want to live any longer once there's no enjoyment in life, once I'm no longer able to think clearly, to move about freely...no longer able to LIVE (in the full sense of the word) but merely to exist and continue drawing breath. THAT is no sort of life at all.

[CosmicVortex10]

17. So with enough technology -- you wouldnt have an issue?

So with mature nanotech - we can keep every cell tuned, all the brain cells poppin -- meaning you get the body you had a 25 and all the mental accuity that goes with it.. theres no need for new organs, or transplants..

What then? Do you turn down eternal youth? Which particular day would that be on?

[Spider Jerusalem]

21. If nanotechnology becomes workable in my lifetime...

then I don't think I'd necessarily have a problem. But it's a science still in its infant stages. And that still leaves other problems...such technology will only be available to the wealthy, when it DOES arrive. It'll take generations for it to become something that's within the reach of the average person. Although development of nanotech, free cloning, and so on might also have a depressing effect on birthrate...leads to some interesting questions about how such things would affect religion, too, but that's another topic.

[CosmicVortex10]

23. It might take generations.. but what would you care?

Yould be frozen. When it becomes economically cheap enough to thaw you out and fix ya, you wont care if its 100 years or 100000. Its the same experience from the freezer.

[Occulus]

13. pssssst

"but we can't send an UNMANNED space mission to the nearest planet without something fucking up drastically"

That's why we have no choice- we must show the courage to send one of our own.

If there were a Mars colony in the works and I was asked to help found it there, I'd sign up immediately. Lord, what an adventure that would be.

[CosmicVortex10]

18. Id be right there with ya!

Sign me up, Ill homestead Mars. Then after its developed, Id sell my intial 50,000 acres for a killing.

[Occulus]

19. there's definitely a market

if there's something interesting there to, ahem, plunder.

Come on, people, the planet is dead unless we want to terraform it.

Wow, this is a whole other thread. I think I'll start one.

[CosmicVortex10]

22. Kinda puts a new spin on the term "Wasted natural resources"

Id say leave earth a garden for the nature lovers and amish, and start planet hopping as we can.

[Occulus]

26. Well,

I've heard some nefarious ideas regarding depopulation here on Earth, and I guess part of what I'm saying is that this would end up being a de facto depopulation project in the end. It would be quite literally the adventure of a lifetime for anyone who dared to try it, and I'm guessing there are enough disaffected people here on Earth that it would have a substantil impact if we all suddenly had the option of leaving and expanding the human presence onto other planets. Were there a fast mathod of space travel, I think we would already be seeing an exodus.

Be warned; nature seeks balance. Natural disasters do not (normally) happen because some God or Goddess or combination of the two is pissed off; rather, they're the drastic result of imbalances in the atmosphere. Think on it:

Natural fires: too dry, cluttered with undergrowth, lightning. 'Nuff said.
Floods: Too much rain for the soil to absorb.
Earthquake: Too much tension along a faultline.
Tornado: This is a guess, but everything I've read points to clouds which rotate too fast. This doesn't explain why we don't have torn{i]icanes; to clarify, hurricane-size tornados.
Hurricane: I have no clear idea what actually causes a tropical depression to form, which is the seed of what could be a hurricane. Post a link or your own knowledge if you can educate me on this (you, the reader in general).
Volcano: Too much pressure in the magma dome underneath the vent. Pressure is like lightning; it will take the path of least resistance. The explosion of Mt. St. Helens is a perfect example of Pipp ('Too much pressure! AAHH!!)
Lightning: Too much charge in the cloud, and it finds a connection to its opposite charge.

All of the above are responses to imbalances in nature. It would be wise to infer that even the systems left active on a dead planet- the chief among these on Mars is the atmosphere- would fight back in some way, much as natural forces here on Earth are becoming more and more violent and extreme due to the alterations our emissions have introduced into a system which has never dealt with them before. It would be very telling to be able to look at a local weather report from fifteen years from now. I expect it would be startling, to say the least.

However, a mass exodus of the adventurous and courageous would leave this planet with, IMO, a signifigantly smaller human population. The planet would be better for it- but I'm not about to advocate forced relocation or any other coercive action. That's not right.

[Dogmudgeon]

31. Real Problems

Spider, I've read your other posts here, too. You make excellent points, but Cryonics is a small piece of what may be the human future. We have a lot of problems to solve. The vanquishing of human mortality will be one step on a long, and (I hope) civilization-making, path.

In the nearer future, we do have to deal with problems relating to overpopulation and resource depletion. That doesn't mean we should stop building the foundation to better things along the way. The space program has never seemed all that practical, but it has produced thousands of technical breakthroughs that improve life.

The fact that we are still up to our ears in "general fuckery" doesn't change the benefits. We seriously need to start applying some of these outlandish ideas to the way we think about the world.

It's impossible to even suggest anything like Socialism without being treated like a vampire; ask some of your friends how it might be possible to abolish prisons. Colonizing Mars should be easy compared to that. I know people who can talk all night about the development of Mars for human habitation, but they'll argue you down if you suggest we do away with imprisonment.

Imagine, now, building a society based on such wealth and abundance and intelligence and wisdom, that money becomes unnecessary. (You'll need earplugs to survive the clamor of Impossible!)

I'm basically a radical meliorist. I think things will improve in human history, but I'm not so naive as to think it won't be a tough haul. I consider myself a liberal because I believe the task is worth undertaking.

Cryonic suspension may disempower the Grim Reaper, and there are hundreds of other things that will also be required to do the job. And before the complete history of Humanity is finally written, we will have to try them all.

--bkl

[Occulus]

4. cryogenics can't possibly work*

and beyond that... why would I want to live in a world where, yes, my fatal disease isn't fatal anymore... but I know noone and there's nothing familiar around me. Society, international politics, even our very system of government is totally different. I don't know any of the rules people live by anymore and might not even understand what all the words in my own language mean.

I.... don't think I'd want to live in that world. I'd feel helpless.

Well, more helpless than I do in this one.

edit: *unless one has access to completely mature nanotechnology on the scale that the nanites could be programmed to repair all damage in all cells affected by the formation of ice crystals

[CosmicVortex10]

6. History is full of people saying it cant be done...

Man flying? Space travel? lol - so many people with egg on their face. It was once remarked when someone was building the first cars that man's mind couldnt handle going 20 miles an hour.

[Occulus]

11. Oh, I know many stories

about egg-meet-face moments in science. However, all the ones I can think of don't/didn't have documented evidence that what they were trying to do was not doable. As I edited above, though, it might be possible using nanotech to repair the cells damaged by the ice formation.

I think some form of digitization of the contents of the brain is closer than cryogenics, by the way. There's already being work done, with some results, in that direction (controlling a POV on a screen through a series of rings via mind/machine interface is as far as I've ever seen it demonstrated).

However, the same concepts behind cryogenics are used every day. Organs for transplant, for example, are packed in ice and protected from it IIRC, but again, they are not actually frozen, as freezing causes irreparable damage.

Find a way to prevent the damage caused to the cells and it may be doable.

[CosmicVortex10]

20. Free online book

Check out Erik Drexlers "Engines of creation"
http://www.foresight.org/EOC/

I continue to track the technology and its moving in that direction step by step... and if your dead and frozen and it take a million years to develop, you will only see the blink of an eye. Who cares how long it takes to develop? The fact is it WILL, given no global catastrophies.

[Occulus]

27. "given no global catastrophies."

I'm sorry- could you repeat that, so I know it wasn't typed in error?
:D

Bush is a global catastrophe in progress. heheheheh

[patdem]

7. Cryonics ...that is what one does at the coffin???

[Occulus]

14. heh

smartass :D

[patdem]

9. Are you are talking about crying...or freezing...freezing is cryogenics

[greyl]

16. No, Cryogenics is a branch of physics.

The study of materials at very low temps.


edit: cryonics is the reversible suspended animation thing.

[Dogmudgeon]

28. My experience with the Cryonics movement

I think Cryonics is workable, and most cryogenic cell damage should be reversable within 30 or 40 years. We should expect the first frozen person to be revived sometime around 2035-2050, depending on how quickly we develop medical nanotechnologies.

That said, I'd like to share some of my experiences with Cryonicists.

They are, for the most part, very intelligent and very entertaining people. But they are almost entirely Libertarians, and about a third of them are very nasty Randroid libertarians.

A huge chunk of them believe in a trademarked philosophy called Extropianism®, a branch of transhumanism, but with guns. Yes, that's a sarcastic crack, but if you read any Extropian® literature, you'll see that it isn't too far off the mark. I stopped reading the Extropian® chat lists when the volume of Clinton-hating, Libbrul-baiting, and RKBA posts exceeded the transhumanist posts by a ratio of about 4:1.

The irony is that the founders of the Cryonics movement, like Bob Ettinger, have all been so-called "60's liberals", interested in futurism and social progress.

The Cryonicists' facination with the right wing finally caught up with them a few years ago. Alcor corporation, the first and largest cryonics organization, built an expensive cryonic suspension facility in Arizona, thinking that because Arizona was a conservative state, they would welcome such advanced thinkers as they. They didn't count on the fact that religious right-wingers are remarkably easy to outrage, and several restrictive laws were enacted in their libertarian utopia. Alcor lost a lot of money on the deal, even though the difficulties were "worked out," at least for the time being.

One cryonicist, whom I will not name, is the primary developer of modern histopreservation technology, and has made several major breakthroughs that allow delicate tissues, like kidney and liver, to be transported without significant cell damage. So they ain't all kooks.

So don't think I'm opposed to these guys. Just their flaming John-Galt-ism. I'll be far happier when they abandon their sophomoric political conformity. I wholeheartedly recommend checking them out, and the organizations on the Links page -- even if you're a critic.

Alcor: www.Alcor.org
Links: www.Alcor.org/Links (an excellent collection!)

--bkl
Many are Cold, but Few are Frozen.

[Skip Intro]

29. you know - I dont want to die

I'm scared of it, I'm scared of what will happen to me, what I'll be aware of when I finally leave my body, or vice versa. It terrifies me if I dwell on it. What if I'm aware of my decaying body, what if it hurts?

Damn, I don't believe I just posted this, but something is up with me tonight, and I'm just being honest. Death is scary.