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Why so few of us?

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#1 kline

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Posted 24 January 2014 - 09:22 PM


Hello to everyone,

Back in the 90s when i found bob ettinger, one thing that puzzled him was the same that is puzzling fellow cryonisists today: why aren't there more of us? with the terrible specter of Death staring us in the face, why arent there more people signed up to be suspended until science can come to our rescue?

i could postulate two or three suggestions. but i wont waste my time. my shoulder is too sore--for one thing--and this is the wrong forum for another. one idea that i have seen is that too few of the public have even heard of the idea of "deep-freezing our dead bodies" with the hope that future technologies will be able to bring us back in some distant future. The solution would seem to be fairly easy: educate people about the odds of this being implemented.

At most, perhaps 12 or 14 people in my writing group knew of my plans to be suspended. Even in Seattle, which is reasonably open-minded, the group looked at me with a rather brusque sniff. not all, but a sizable minority. one woman asked me about my family? {after all, considering that i was in a wheelchair, that precluded life insurance. and after i retired, my employer's insurance would end.) the godly or skeptics asked why i wouldnt face my end like everyone else.

i may have asked closer friends one more time. Awnsers tended toward the negative. Odds were too long; not enough money for wife and son, etc. i havent asked anybody since.

my thinking to the problem of there being so few of us is the lack of information. starting up an informational campaign is much less costly now than even a generational ago, but it is the only thing i can think of.

Anybody else? Starting a website is super-cheap these days. if this group comes up with a clever name for a non-profit site, we need ideas. humor works best!

gary
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#2 Mind

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Posted 24 January 2014 - 11:39 PM

Thanks for the post Gary. It is called the "death trance." That is why so many "open-minded' (har, har) people in Seattle reject cryonics.

People are slowly coming around. There are already some pretty good cryonics websites out there with a lot of information. What would help, IMO, is for more people to be more open about their cryonics plans, like yourself.
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#3 kline

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Posted 25 January 2014 - 01:56 AM

Thanks for the post Gary. It is called the "death trance." That is why so many "open-minded' (har, har) people in Seattle reject cryonics.

People are slowly coming around. There are already some pretty good cryonics websites out there with a lot of information. What would help, IMO, is for more people to be more open about their cryonics plans, like yourself.




hmm. if people really Are coming around, however slowly [ :-) * 0.5! ], it's a Good Sign. i dont get out much these days; my wife hurt her back lifting my scooter in her van and it's a PITA for me to heft my dead weight up (without falling out!) besides, this is my 2nd favorite place i'd choose to live. the first place is the warm, dry caves of Hell. my ME buddy who came closest to Maybe givinng cryonics half a glance is now lugging a cart of oxygen. { im so glad i quit smoking....}

pretty sure that www.thought.org still has a cryonics subdomain. it's just that after i got laid off on 9/14, i ran out of ideas. my former internist "suggested" than i not type for six months or i would be hacking something and suddenly find my shoulder on the floor. i took his advice.

meanwhile, my better half has told her friends about my plans and i've been the butt of their jokes. If anyone reading this wants to write something, i'll publish it and will put in an ad on my ASCII mail file//signature.

i can think of two potential titles: "Do you want to lives to be 199 years"; "Do you want a second roll of the dice?"

ciao.
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#4 kline

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Posted 26 January 2014 - 08:04 PM

where is the google "hangout"? we were supposed to be at?

gary
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#5 koala_muncher

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Posted 28 April 2014 - 10:28 AM

I think a lot of people feel that cryonics is a repulsive concept because of the popular perception that it involves repopulating the planet with old, diseased, and half brain-dead individuals who were fortunate enough to have enough cash to try out their sick Frankenstein's monster reanimation experiment on the rest of the world. Unless this perception changes, Cryonics will remain unpopular.  

 



#6 kline

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Posted 30 April 2014 - 08:24 PM

Folks who are interested in living many, many years will do the research required about aging.  They will find researchers with advanced degrees, probably still teaching at  one of the better universities.  C. Kenyon [b. 1955] is but one example.  She is currently in San Francisco and working with at least a couple age-related genes.

 

I'll leave it as an exercise to whoever is looking for an extended lifespan to find more on Prof. Kenyon's work.  (Until I found her year-of-birth, i figured she was in her early 40s ... )  Nevertheless, I hope  to be alive and functional when her work comes to fruition. 


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#7 ADVANCESSSS

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Posted 10 June 2014 - 10:08 PM

Why arn't your no's a yes as a advocate to living forever???



#8 koala_muncher

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Posted 11 June 2014 - 08:35 AM

I personally think cryogenics is a cool idea and I'd be willing to consider it as I get older and as technology progresses.  I was playing the devils advocate referring to societal perception that may ultimately introduce limitations (eg legislation) on the reanimation of the dead.  There are a lot of entrenched social perceptions here including social justice, the taboo of the dead, the "interference" with a corpse, the thwarting of God's plan or the plan of the gods, and the fear of a "zombie" awakening.  We will be stuck with these until society builds positive notions about the the rebirth of deceased citizens and sees the medical and social benefits of "dormant" citizens being "revitalised" (if any).  The success of the first group reanimations are likely to be highly influential.  Will the first few spring out of the ice and become international mega-stars or they will groan in pain and suffer a horrible death?  Either way, it will be a cliffhanger.



#9 StevesPetRat

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Posted 03 August 2014 - 01:12 PM

Yeah, in the unlikely event I have the money I'll probably do it, but I'm not convinced there's going to be a big demand for MOAR HUMANS at any point in the future. Like, where's the incentive to develop the reverse cryonics procedure? You could argue for a moral imperative, and I would rebut that moral imperatives have a rather poor track record of becoming actions. For most people that 15 or 30 grand would mean a lot more to their survivors than as a remote chance of revival. Then you have the quantum histories people saying that we can resurrect everybody eventually anyway, which as a physicist I'm skeptical about. Still, suppose we get to the point where we're defrosting people successfully. That would require both a high technology society and one that places a far higher value on human life than ours does. In that case, I would argue that from that point, the odds are quite good we do end up developing the technology to restore the dead-dead, or at least reasonable simulacra thereof. That would negate the need for cryonics; you might end up waiting a century or 2 more for resurrection, but what's the hurry?

Whee think I got a little off topic

#10 YOLF

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Posted 04 August 2014 - 07:02 PM

Copies aren't quite the same, so preservation of the original will always be necessary. Some of the cryonics funds are also placed in an investment or separate investments are made which will grow over time to be sufficient to allow for defrosting and repair.

 

I would argue that human resources are the most valuable and are much more valuable than the money spent on cryonics. The benefits to society that arise from the development of cryonics are also very important contributions to medicine that will help more people in the future. We're already seeing doctors in Pittsburgh use a process similar to cryonics to extend the viability of injured patients. Patients with brain injuries are routinely cooled with ice to prevent secondary damage and the advances in cryonics will eventually be adopted or lead to even better developments until we have reversible cryonics that will allow patients to be handled without the need for exhausting doctors and without having to lose patients in triage due to a lack of medical personnel. Triage will instead become "Freeze the worst patient's first" and doing such will give us plenty of time to find the best treatment for the patient or develop customized treatments suited to the individual patient's successful survival and recovery. There will be few who won't be recoverable given enough time. Families will celebrate their love one's birthdays in their absence and will eventually celebrate the day they get them back.



#11 StevesPetRat

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Posted 04 August 2014 - 10:21 PM

Ah, so you think it will be an outgrowth of medical research in other areas. That's certainly possible.

#12 YOLF

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Posted 04 August 2014 - 11:24 PM

It's like anything else. It develops on it's own and had to prove it's efficacy. We need to show results.



#13 Arjiuna

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Posted 27 August 2014 - 01:05 AM

Why don't they have (I know I must be missing something) some case studies of people/animals being resurrected successfully? The US can't be the only country attempting this, hell, Germany must have dozens of legal/illegal experiments in publication with some sort success ratio. People must have volunteered, even if the chances of coming back were slim to none. Where are their brains now???



#14 YOLF

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Posted 27 August 2014 - 01:16 AM

We'll "resurrect" people when we're ready to ensure that we can. These lives are important and we have to make sure that we can thaw and reanimate them successfully before we do anything. We haven't done anything yet because we have time on our side. New technologies would make anything we developed today obsolete by the time we made them available and the patients would still need to be cured of whatever killed them and be restored to a state of sustainable youth/health. 

 

I'm not sure about Germany, but Russia has some dog experiments where their heads were transplanted and there have more recently been some dogs that were cooled to around zero Celsius and revived as well as a rabbit kidney that was vitrified with an advanced cryonics procedure and successfully transplanted. There were also some frozen mice that were brought back, but the videos have since disappeared. I've seen them, but some have said that they were removed for depicting the "abuse of animals." In any case, things are looking promising. There are alot of technologies on the horizon which will make cryonics more and more viable.



#15 Antonio2014

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Posted 08 September 2014 - 09:55 PM

I can't answer for other people, but I'll explain the reasons I'm not much interested in cryonics:

- I think cryonics is for the rich, and I'm not rich. Also, if I were rich, I would prefer to fund anti-aging research rather than saving the money for my cryonization.

- Cryonics needs a stable society/country/economy for a long time. I think this is rather difficult.


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#16 YOLF

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Posted 12 September 2014 - 05:38 AM

Cryonics isn't that expensive. Right now it's around $12k USD to start. Alcor (current services between $80-200k) recently published a plan in their magazine to bring cryonics down to less than $3,000 USD and many other advances are presently being made. Cryonics was only for the rich, but the price has come down significantly and we will hopefully be able to offer it to everyone someday. For Alcor's $3k plan to work, it should be noted that we'd need around 12 million new cryonicists. Want to be one of them? Would you sign up for $3k?



#17 Luminosity

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Posted 12 September 2014 - 05:45 AM

If you really want to know why people feel the way the do, you ask those people.  



#18 YOLF

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Posted 12 September 2014 - 06:01 AM

How about you Lumi? Would you get cryonics from Alcor for $3,000? Do you have cryonics arrangements?



#19 FrogWarrior

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Posted 12 September 2014 - 08:07 AM

If I could afford it i probably would because it'd be so trippy waking up in the future, but I can't afford it and don't find the spectre of death the least bit terrifying. I'm looking forward to it so I'll no longer have to eat and deal with all this bodily bullshit. I'm only in my 20s but I dont think Im gonna be around that long, 40 max. If I woke up in the future, they'd have cures for all my issues though, so I'd be sorted. God knows what happens the consciousness during that time span. Given the choice, I'd flip a coin on it. Either way looks good to me.



#20 FrogWarrior

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Posted 12 September 2014 - 08:12 AM

I personally think cryogenics is a cool idea and I'd be willing to consider it as I get older and as technology progresses.  I was playing the devils advocate referring to societal perception that may ultimately introduce limitations (eg legislation) on the reanimation of the dead.  There are a lot of entrenched social perceptions here including social justice, the taboo of the dead, the "interference" with a corpse, the thwarting of God's plan or the plan of the gods, and the fear of a "zombie" awakening.  We will be stuck with these until society builds positive notions about the the rebirth of deceased citizens and sees the medical and social benefits of "dormant" citizens being "revitalised" (if any).  The success of the first group reanimations are likely to be highly influential.  Will the first few spring out of the ice and become international mega-stars or they will groan in pain and suffer a horrible death?  Either way, it will be a cliffhanger.

 

That kinda thinking is todays thinking. Today we don't burn people alive because we think they're witches. People evolve. Generally the more evolved people around today become tomorrows norm. Unless theres a global apocalpyse, the time will come when they attempt to unfreeze the people. Things will probably be so radically different then that any misconceptions about death we have today will have changed completely. I got pinned down to a chair by something invisible a few months ago, and I had a confirmed out of body experience a few years ago. Something tells me death isn't the end of consciousness.


Edited by FrogWarrior, 12 September 2014 - 08:18 AM.


#21 Antonio2014

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Posted 12 September 2014 - 08:16 AM

3000 $/year? For how long, 100 years? Nobody I knew had that money when he/she died.



#22 FrogWarrior

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Posted 12 September 2014 - 08:20 AM

3000 $/year? For how long, 100 years? Nobody I knew had that money when he/she died.

 

It costs that much? In that case it'd be downright evil for anyone to do this, considering millions of people live on less than $1/day.



#23 YOLF

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Posted 12 September 2014 - 04:52 PM

To clarify, it costs $3,000 for perpetual storage with the new plan which isn't implemented yet. Around $2400 of it would be for the cryopreservation of the whole body, this is less than the cost of most medical procedures. After that, you need to earn around $1/yr to pay for the LN2 that keeps you cold as a massive dewar/storage tank would have very little boil off and require only a small amount of maintenance. 

 

Costs:

Upfront: ~$3000

Annual: ~$1

 

 

In any case, there is much that can be saved by transitioning an immortalist ethic. With reversible cryonics alone, we could save half of the money spent on healthcare (~8% of GDP) immediately and use it to cure disease, end poverty etc etc... You shouldn't see us as the problem, but rather the ethical solution. With more sustainable health, we could go even further into cost saving and cure diseases/end poverty more quickly. With even a little bit of info, it's a no brainer that just hasn't been done yet. 



#24 Antonio2014

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Posted 12 September 2014 - 07:53 PM

Ah, ok, I thought it was 3000 $/year. That is more affordable. There still remains the problem of social/political/economical stability needed for such long preservation.


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#25 YOLF

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Posted 12 September 2014 - 08:12 PM

Well, cryonics is illegal in Spain, but that doesn't mean it will always be that way. If we can show them that it work, I don't see why they wouldn't allow it.


Oh, the proposal puts the estimated price tag at "under $3500." I'm thinking $3k will suffice and we may even be able to go cheaper as further progress is made.



#26 Slicer

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Posted 21 October 2014 - 01:22 AM

Cryonics has a lot of philosophical issues, most notably the "your body will be turned off for a long time; are you sure that you're going to be the one who comes back to it when we wake it up" school of thought. Since we don't know how consciousness works, it's difficult to determine the difference between frozen and dead.



#27 YOLF

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Posted 21 October 2014 - 01:29 AM

I hear that argument over and over and it really doesn't mean anything. If time were a factor, anyone who has been resucitated or had a heart transplant and was shut off for a short period of time would be a different person... Imagine all of the new existences that this would mean we are creating when we save someone's life. Imagine how messed up a resuscitated person would be when they realize they were resuscitated only to have a short life, oh and they start out as old people to boot! If that were the case, it would be better to leave the dead where they lay. I don't know anyone who has been brought back this way who has claimed that they were a different person than the one who died.

 

This whole argument arises out of a misinterpretation of beliefs... 



#28 Slicer

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Posted 21 October 2014 - 04:32 AM

How about if you copied the patterns of the frozen brain and used them to configure new neurons in a new body in exactly the same patterns? Is that the same person as the frozen one? To an outside observer, the answer is yes; the patterns are the same. But I'm not particularly concerned about what an outside observer thinks; whether or not that freshly minted person would act and behave the same way I would is of little concern to me, because I won't be here to experience it.

 

Even with resuscitations and deep anaesthesia, there's been research that suggests that the brain isn't completely turned off even if the EEG is flat, so this could be an entirely new experience. I'm not going to pretend to know how much brain activity has to exist for continuity of consciousness; I'm not even sure if I'm the same person who went to bed last night. Heck, we don't even know whether if we're the same from moment to moment and that continuous consciousness isn't just an illusion.

 

But it is an extremely common concern, and it does partially answer the question "Where's everyone else?"

 

The other problem with cryonics is that you're entrusting your safety to other people for an indefinite period of time. What if the cryonics company goes out of business? What if the power shuts off for too long? Is anyone going to actually unfreeze these ancient corpsicles or are the laws of the future going to consider them totally dead?

 

I'm not against the concept. I won't argue against it being a better alternative than, say, cremation or burial, but freezing is still just as completely inanimate, and I don't think it'll ever get a lot of traction among people who aren't about to die *right now*. Hence all the contracts for "when I'm dead, freeze me ASAP".


Edited by Slicer, 21 October 2014 - 04:51 AM.


#29 Antonio2014

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Posted 08 November 2014 - 09:42 AM

How about if you copied the patterns of the frozen brain and used them to configure new neurons in a new body in exactly the same patterns? Is that the same person as the frozen one?

 

But that is not done with cryonics! The same neurons that are frozen are unfrozen afterwards.
 

 

Even with resuscitations and deep anaesthesia, there's been research that suggests that the brain isn't completely turned off even if the EEG is flat, so this could be an entirely new experience.

 

Certainly that research hasn't been done at liquid nitrogen temperatures. At these temperatures, all biochemical activity is stopped. Atoms are simply too cold to react.


Edited by Antonio2014, 08 November 2014 - 09:47 AM.


#30 YOLF

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Posted 09 November 2014 - 01:24 AM

 

How about if you copied the patterns of the frozen brain and used them to configure new neurons in a new body in exactly the same patterns? Is that the same person as the frozen one?

 

But that is not done with cryonics! The same neurons that are frozen are unfrozen afterwards.
 

 

Even with resuscitations and deep anaesthesia, there's been research that suggests that the brain isn't completely turned off even if the EEG is flat, so this could be an entirely new experience.

 

Certainly that research hasn't been done at liquid nitrogen temperatures. At these temperatures, all biochemical activity is stopped. Atoms are simply too cold to react.

 

Copied patterns would be a copy of you, but you would be dead if you were not resuscitated.

 

Antonio is correct about the liquid nitrogen temps, they stop all metabolism and are like the pause button on your BlueRay player. During the transition, you are protected from feeling any kind of pain by the drug that Michael Jackson overdosed on... I can't remember how to spell it. 







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