130 replies to this topic

[freethinker]

Cryonics is more than 'a shot in the dark'! It is an intelligent and very reasonable decision, considering the alternative! I don't want to sound offensive, but i would almost go so far as to say that anyone who doesn't opt for cryonic suspension is a fool! I have argued and philosophized countless times with many people about this issue and have found it amazingly unbelievable how many people are either opposed or indifferent to cryonics! It really boggles my mind how short sighted people can be! Even in the off chance that it is eventually proven that cryonic suspension as it's practiced today is futile, it would still have been a worth-while pursuit at least in principal.

Hi, I would very interested in hearing your arguments. I'm trying to convince my parents and family to undergo this procedure, but they ridicule the idea. If you could present the arguments in terms of premises and conclusions, that would be awesome! (ex: if A, B, C & D are true, it would be unreasonable not to sign up for cryopreservation...)

Many thanks!

[Shannon Vyff]

Hello, Jean David--good luck with your efforts. Your family may be more amendable to the idea of a family membership at CI, as the costs are a lot less. Sometimes though cryonicists can't get their families to sign, and have to decide if they want to do it on their own. You can say key points, like how vitrification preserves Brain well, how it is worth trying just in case it works--etc. You can sign up yourself as a role model, sometimes other family members will do it if you are... it is nice to have a supportive community like ImmInst if your family ridicule you--I'm fortunate that my parents do not ridicule me, one has environmental concerns, the other money concerns that so far prevent them from joining--but my husband, and my children are also signed. I know my children may have very different lives as adults, but I hope they keep some of the transhumanist ideas I raise them with...I'd help them with family memberships if they wanted it. (But this is at least 15 to 20 years from now that I'm speculating about ) Take care, let us know if you get anywhere with your family but many people here have the same problem...

[freethinker]

Hello, Jean David--good luck with your efforts. Your family may be more amendable to the idea of a family membership at CI, as the costs are a lot less. Sometimes though cryonicists can't get their families to sign, and have to decide if they want to do it on their own. You can say key points, like how vitrification preserves Brain well, how it is worth trying just in case it works--etc. You can sign up yourself as a role model, sometimes other family members will do it if you are... it is nice to have a supportive community like ImmInst if your family ridicule you--I'm fortunate that my parents do not ridicule me, one has environmental concerns, the other money concerns that so far prevent them from joining--but my husband, and my children are also signed. I know my children may have very different lives as adults, but I hope they keep some of the transhumanist ideas I raise them with...I'd help them with family memberships if they wanted it. (But this is at least 15 to 20 years from now that I'm speculating about ) Take care, let us know if you get anywhere with your family but many people here have the same problem...

Thank you very much Shannon. Yes, I should sign up to prove to them that I'm really serious about it.

David

[salyavin]

Even if we're not overly optimistic it's still the best backup plan we have until someone like Aubrey De Grey succeeds. While waiting for aging to be "cured" you may be hit by a car and in that case cryonics is our best hope IMHO. That's why I'm with Alcor.

[VictorBjoerk]

still there are really remarkable few people who haved signed up for it,at least in my opinion....However maybe the fact that Paris Hilton has signed up for it may bring more attention...........

[bgwowk]

While waiting for aging to be "cured" you may be hit by a car and in that case cryonics is our best hope IMHO.

You may be hit by a car even after aging is cured. There will always be something that knocks people beyond treatment by contemporary medical technology, and sometimes beyond treatment by any technology.

[Shannon Vyff]

It is a myth that Paris Hilton signed up for cryonics.

[John_Ventureville]

Shannon wrote:
I know my children may have very different lives as adults, but I hope they keep some of the transhumanist ideas I raise them with...
>>>

LOL I find this funny in that I normally hear laments like this in regard to a child leaving the faith of their Evangelical or Mormon parents (I realize you are much more open-minded). I wonder what terrible folly your kids as adults could stumble into? hee "Mom, I will never take those cognitive enhancing nanomed pills, because my hero, Jeremy Rifkin, has declared it evil, along with everything else you stand for!" Something I have seen a great deal is an adult child converting to the religion/belief system of the person they fall in love with and marry, no matter how odd a fit it may seem for them. Oh, well..., just as long as your kids never join the Republican party!

John : )

[MicroBalrog]

Imagine you are drowning in a large lake. You don't know how to swim.

Would you not grasp at the flimsiest straw if it were available to you? Of course!

Now it's not really certain cryonics will work. But that's the straw we have. Even if it is a very 'crap shoot' technology, it is still better than the chance of dying you have without cryonics. Which is one hundred percent.

Right now, unless something gets done in terms of research, you are dying. If you do not become cryopreserved, you will die.

[Shannon Vyff]

Hah John, I fully expect one of my kids to join the religion their life partner was raised (rather than the Unitarian Universalist, & secular humanist beliefs in which I'm raising them) I just hope they keep that "Cryonics will work if I'm to do more good in the future" or "Cryonics will work only if it is allowed to work" attitude

[JJN]

Ah, I just have to chime in,

There are many variables involved in cryonics. One may be revived in a state varying from some sort of 'clone', to a 'decent' semblance of their former self. I ask myself, knowing this is the range, do I still want to do it?

Let's say, at the 'clone' end of the range, what would I think of things? By the way, the analogy to a clone is really not accurate I think. Maybe in the case of a kidney, or something, but not of the brain. The brain is constructed over the course of time built partly on the blueprint of DNA, and so on, but also shaped very much by environment and experience. Just, the brain can not be 'cloned', unless a copy is made utilizing all of the factors involved with environment, memories, and experience. At which time, you would be at the 'decent' semblance range of things...

Anyways, at the 'least semblance' range of revival, I am assuming I would be reconstructed into the form of some sort of 'whole' person. Perhaps I could even be 'implanted' with some sort of knowledge that I would be able to eat, and walk, and talk, and have a decent level of awareness and knowledge of the world, and so on. Or perhaps not, and I would have to learn a lot, but would have the capability to do so, not to have a life as a bumbling idiot.

It may be, even at this range of things, assuming I understood what had happened to me, that I had lost all of my former memories, and my personality is definitely changed from what it was before, that I may have some, even if just a little, sense of continuity of 'self'. Science and technology did what it did, and now I am who I am, with some sort of connection, even tenuous, to my former self.

At the 'decent' semblance range of things, this continuity would be much stronger.

I really don't think the science of cryonics is a 'bet'. It's not 'win-lose'. Assuming technology and science does progress to where it needs to, to at least bring a person back as a 'whole' person, it is a matter of amount of continuity to one's self.

I am still just thinking about the basics of cryonics. There are many other aspects that maybe could be described as wagers. Will science and technology really progress? Will there be enough interest and resources to revive people? Will there be energy and a stable enough socio-political environment around in the future? I really don't know what to think of those things. It may be, that is really mostly is at stake, and the gamble then becomes one where the thought of being buried or cremated is a definite ending of continuity, and cryonics is a possibility to continue life.

Jeff

Edited by JJN, 29 January 2010 - 07:40 PM.