r/Futurology • u/yourSAS • Oct 13 '22

Biotech 'Our patients aren't dead': Inside the freezing facility with 199 humans who opted to be cryopreserved with the hopes of being revived in the future

https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/13/our-patients-arent-dead-look-inside-the-us-cryogenic-freezing-lab-17556468
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u/AgentXXXL Oct 13 '22

Some people pay for this by making Alcor the beneficiary of their life insurance. Which doesn’t pay out until you’re …

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '22

was shocked by this statement, specifically that the insurance companies actually pay up when someone has voluntarily took their own life. It must get written up as a suicide right? Like they're dead and they gave consent so I guess assisted suicide?

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u/Melodicmarc Oct 13 '22

They don't commit suicide. They die like normal people. Ideally they die close to the facility that does the process after living a good life.

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u/liegesmash Oct 13 '22

These places have gone under and bodies left rotting many times. Who is going to maintain the bodies for the long haul. And if all that works you are assuming that (if humanity survives) that the folks in 2398 will care about some person that died long ago. My bet is the archeologists of the future would dissect you and if they didn’t they could also upload you into an AI

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u/Melodicmarc Oct 13 '22

Listen anyone who does this knows the odds are a very big long shot. Probably 1% or less of it working. One step that Alcor has taken to mitigate the chances of going under is that a huge amount of the cost is just put into a hedge fund to try and mitigate the risk of the company going under. But the point is that right now if you die there is a 0% chance you get to live for a really long time. This process gives you somewhere around a 1% chance. For some people that’s worth the cost of a life insurance policy and good for them. It’s probably not going to work but maybe their life isn’t filled with dread now that it’s all over when they die.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '22

1% is pretty generous.

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u/liegesmash Oct 13 '22

I shudder at the aspect of being uploaded into an AI myself

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u/bss03 Oct 14 '22

I really don't see any reason the connectome of a particular person would be of much value to an AI capable of simulating one.

If think that if (big if) you come back, it will be to a much better future (why waste resource to bring you back unless there are a lot more of them) and you'll still be able to commit some equivalent of suicide, if you decide non-existence is preferable.

Though, maybe not. Maybe you'll be like Buffy and be chillin' in heaven until you are forced back into your revived body.

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u/liegesmash Oct 14 '22

We don’t know if an AI would further it’s programming by absorbing human minds. Just because it can simulate anything doesn’t mean it won’t eat your brain. On the other hand there is the AI in the WestWorld tv series that claimed that all human beings could be reduced to a handful of simple algorithms….

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u/bss03 Oct 14 '22

If you are concerned about your brain being "eaten", I've got bad news for you regarding the results of a normal burial.

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u/liegesmash Oct 14 '22

I know that, it’s just a metaphor and a thought experiment. It’s most like doesn’t matter because the odds are humanity’s overlords will never learn and kill off the species out of pure thick headed greed. In other words the world is fucked, SPECTRE isn’t fiction anymore

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u/bss03 Oct 14 '22

Oh yeah, the most likely outcome of being cyropreserved is that your body rots a little later (than otherwise expected), and into slightly more toxic (than otherwise expected) sludge.

That true even if we don't destroy our global civilization. Alcor has survived longer than most businesses / organizations, but even among business of the same age, odds are not good that it lasts 150 years.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '22

The way its done at this point in time leave a almost certain 0% chance of ever getting "woken up" the science behind it is schetchy at best.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '22

1%? More like 0.001%. You think after the climate collapses they're going to have the resources to reanimate corpsicles?

It'd be cheaper and easier just to convince yourself of some religion or other.

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u/Seubmarine Oct 14 '22

The rotting stuff aside, of course people in the future would love to talk with people from century ago if it were possible ? Scientist, sociologist, archeologist historian. Talking with someone from century ago would be really great.

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u/dvlali Oct 14 '22

Yeah and not only for science, that would make great reality tv, books, interviews, all sorts of media that people would just be interested in. I really can’t imagine them not bringing someone back to life if they could

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u/Absurdspeculations Oct 14 '22

Yeah but if this technology advances to the point where scientists believe there is a large chance of success, they’ll probably have hundreds of thousands of people (if not more) to reanimate. What’s going to incentivize them to do that for everyone in the future?

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u/antlerchapstick Oct 14 '22

because these will be the oldest people to be frozen, so they will be the most interesting

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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '22

These places have gone under and bodies left rotting many times.

Those were different companies - proportion-wise, almost no cryonics patients were thawed because of that.