Defend the indefensible: Cryogenics

I did a quick search and found no thread on this.

I totally want to be frozen and revived in the future. Everyone I tell this to looks at me like I just admitted to sleeping with my cousin.

Thoughts? Comments?

It reminds me of "cryoturbation," which I still think would be a great name for a metal band....

...that's really all I can come up with.

how can you say its indefensible when it's wot let stallone save those blokes

check out the this american life episode about cryonics, it's a truly disturbing and awful story.

my gravestone cyrogenic chamber will be ingraved with the words "jus' chillin'".

Can we also to a DtI: Cyrogenics as plot device? They used it in every science fiction story for, what, 10 years?

the economist robin hanson is hugely into cryonics, and writes a lot of interesting things about it; see e.g. here, here and here for recent posts

why would anybody want to suffer consciousness any longer than the natural lifespan demands

I mean the reward for toughing it out to the end is that you never have to go through it again, that's kind of the point as far as I'm concerned

cryogenics not so much about extending lifespan as spreading it out over a longer period of time, innit?

at least, that always seemed like the appeal to me -- freeze yrself for 50 years, spend a year in THE FUTURE!!!, repeat

right.
http://www.pinktentacle.com/images/koi_robot.jpg

people are probably going to be riding to work on these in like fifty years. it would be worth seeing. i know every generation is at the forefront of whatever's going on etc etc, but i feel like the advent of technology in the past hundred years is such a defining point. it's amazing and frustrating in equal measure seeing inchoate technologies and solutions to problems, like attempts to balance out neurological problems, and the way they're progressing piece by piece. i'd love to see what people will be like when it's been honed, or at least practiced for a while longer. i'd love to see whether people listen to the velvet underground or blind willie harris for fun in ten thousand years.

it's all rather dubious, they don't have the technology to unfreeze anyone at the moment, so they're just assuming it'll eventually be invented. you're also assuming they'll have a cure for whatever killed you in the first place. dicking around with people's genes to extend their lifespan seems more plausible to me.

What happens if when you awake, instead of the anarcho-communist techno utopia you are expecting, there is some awful dystopia where they take particular delight in torturing those rich vain optimistic fucks who decided to freeze themselves back in the 21st century?

check out the new innovative torturing methods they have going. people on the wrong side of inquisitions would have given their right arm to be tortured by lasers.

What happens if when you awake, instead of the anarcho-communist techno utopia you are expecting, there is some awful dystopia where they take particular delight in torturing those rich vain optimistic fucks who decided to freeze themselves back in the 21st century?

Honestly, I'd probably be way into it, given that otherwise I would have just died anyway, and even that insight into the crazy Mad Max future would intrigue me.

Of course, the problem with cryogenics is that the Science of the Future will probably just look at frozen folks from now and say "Jesus, dumbfucks didn't know how to freeze people, no way we're bringing this guy back."

check out this episode of slug of time, where an old s.f. short story about accidental cryogenics is read, and mark s gives a shout-out to washington irving among others:

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/09/a-bite-of-stars-a-slug-of-time-and-thou-episode-12/

I have a catalog from a company that offered cryogenic services back in the 80s. Back then, it was WAY cheaper to just have your head frozen.

Gross and vain. If you think your mortal contents are that significant, why not donate them to science?

Skulls or relics of world leaders and other historic figures -> classic, however.

my uncle had his head frozen btw

Top five favorite TAL episodes of all time. Almost too good for that show.

It's... chilling.

OH! I kill me.

the reward for toughing it out to the end is that you never have to go through it again, that's kind of the point as far as I'm concerned

I have sadly and slowly accepted that a lot of life is like high school, but I can't quite go this far.

Ice Cr?m, please expound on uncle head freezing, thanks.

he did this the cryogenics - i guess its cheaper to just freeze the head - it was all somewhat ironic as he didnt exactly live his life to the fullest while he had the chance

his head is somewhere in arizona frozen

its all v ghastly tragic and pitiful imo

has abt 0% chance in hell of ever working - people arent ladybugs - cant just thaw out at yr leisure

It's... chilling.

OH! I kill me.

― mose def (kenan), Friday, December 26, 2008 1:49 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

seriously, though, that is one of the most upsetting stories i've ever heard... anyone interested in cryonics should listen to this, it tells the story of the guy who basically promoted the idea and got it into the mass media / national consciousness... and everything went SO wrong.

Cryogenics provides badly needed employment to a variety of otherwise unemployable people. And it beats the hell out of dumping bodies into hastily dug mass graves.

Besides these obvious benefits, cryogenics research, much like space exploration, encourages advances in cutting edge technlogy that could lead to improvements in ordinary life, such as flash-freezing snake meat for trans-shipment from Mongolia to Beijing.

As folly as it might be, I figure it's only a matter of a few decades before we have actual "Arks in Space." The prospect just seems too good not to offer to folks wealthy enough to afford it and vain enough to have made that much loot.

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/2680/st4c01fb4.jpg

Curiously, googling this brings you to a site where a guy is trying to market his own novel:

Welcome aboard an Ark Of Hope whose 22nd–century crews of special astronauts zoom to the outer limits of the
universe, then far beyond! Picture what those amazing
cosmonauts see far ahead in Time and Space as one
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before a sequel empyrean arises from its ashes!
Trust your imagination to usher you onboard the
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heavens as those swift Starships whisk them away from
an increasingly imperiled globe and then wing them toward
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LOOK toward the future for an infinite universe of possibilities!
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SEE when deep Space flight is achieved during the Seventh Millennium!
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PEER over a remote horizon to a time when Man finally takes the giant leap into Space!
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LEARN how they design, build, then launch the disks on the most far-reaching mission imaginable! FOLLOW the beckoning of your curiosity to places only those most powerful of Spaceships can reach!
DISCOVER the essence of some awesome pilots with the right stuff to fly such mighty Spacecraft!
ENCOUNTER all the unforeseen dangers those intrepid explorers must face while confronting
every conceivable obstacle on their audacious quest to prove a Multi-Cosmos Theory as they
endeavor to save themselves plus other endangered forms of life from their native planet!
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of authentic democracy, genuine liberty and justice for all finally come true!
SEEK the best way to improve any troubled world beset by problems!
FIND solutions for the distressed Earth in a salutary future world!
IMAGINE living happily ever after in such a beneficent place!
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to purchase the personally–autographed edition of the book
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It's kind of nice when read in a Criswell/newsreel announcer voice. The 20+ color changes in text alone on the site are a hoot.

Is that supposed to be a concrete poem? I like it.

s1ocki if you had listened to my radio show you'd know that CRYONICS is the actual SCIENCE of COLD THINGS. whereas CRYOGENICS is the science of converting tragedy and poor decision making into cash

then again no cryogenics, no futurama, so

i was gonna make that pedantic point as a FIRST RESPONSE but refrained on grounds of pedantry

it's all rather dubious, they don't have the technology to unfreeze anyone at the moment, so they're just assuming it'll eventually be invented.

i dont think it's an assumption, it's more that there is a small probability that the technology will be invented, and as you extend out civilisation that probability gets higher. even if the probability is incredibly small, the benefit for these people is so large (these people really like being alive and really like the idea of living in the future) that it has a good expected return. apparently it doesn't cost all that much to do.

and if the technology never gets invented then they are dead anyway, so what difference does it make? they are out a couple of hundred or thousand dollars a year while they were alive, but i probably spend that sort of money on computer games and dvds that i never end up actually playing or watching, so i guess they are no more stupid than i am

that is one of the most upsetting stories I've ever heard...

Same here, which is why it's one of my favorites. Maybe that sounds sadistic or masochistic or some such, but how often does This American Life leave you feeling kinda shaky and drained? But at the same time like you have heard a genuinely worthy and remarkable story? It bears repeat listenings, it really does. I mean, if you can bear it.

there's a bunch of them like that. the "heretics" one... the "the super" one...

The "heretic" one was pretty good too, yeah.

But I don't know about "a bunch." I think they get at that part of my brain that handles Big Questions about once a year.

Sorry, derail... yes yes frozen heads, carry on.

Because... again sorry to belabor this... the story isn't about bodies or afterlife or eternity or any of that, it's about the limits of imagination. The fact that the guy was a salesman who can never ever stop selling, even and especially to himself, gives it a kind of philosophical vortex. He seemed to have meant well at first, but by the end of the story, it would be positively silly to try to factor that in. But neither is he evil, or anything so mundane. He's a salesman, and he won't ever stop selling, and... here's where I get all grandiose... that's the same perpetual motion machine that all human imagination runs on. And our small personal fantasies are kind of counterintuitively all that connect us to reality.

Vortex. Anyway. Great story.

what happens to yr head if they go bankrupt or something or the power goes out for an extended time and there's no generator?

it rots

something like that happened a while ago as i recall

Worms is what happens.

xpost

Yeah, the story may be about the same incident that ice cr?m is thinking of.

I look at it like this:

Burned or buried = 0% chance to return
Frozen = .00000000000000001% chance to come back (which is infinitely greater than 0%)

And if someone janitor trips on a cord and thaws me out on accident in 200 years, one of my descendants can sue them and make some $$ and thank their great great great great great uncle Nate.

the alcor faq addresses a lot of misc stuff like "How will Alcor sustain itself for the duration of my cryopreservation?"

a: it cant and ps u are a suckr plz send $$$

Minimum Cryopreservation Funding:

* $150,000.00 Whole Body Cryopreservation ($65,000 to the Patient Care Trust, $70,000 for cryopreservation, $15,000.00 to the CMS Fund).

* $ 80,000.00 Neurocryopreservation ($25,000 to the Patient Care Trust, $40,000 for cryopreservation, $15,000.00 to the CMS Fund).

Surcharges:

* $ 15,000.00 Surcharge for Members residing in the United Kingdom.

* $ 25,000.00 Surcharge for Members outside the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom.

* $ 25,000.00 Surcharge for last minute, non-member cryopreservations.