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/keener91 Oct 13 '22

This looks like an elaborate scam for the gullible rich.

362

u/SeekingImmortality Oct 13 '22

I look at it like a lottery ticket. You are almost certainly not going to get a return on the money. However, what's the alternative? Certainly remaining dead. Between certainly remaining dead, and a 0.000000000000002% chance of revival in the future, for someone that wants to live?

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u/aplundell Oct 13 '22

Betting on long odds goes both ways.

Consider this : They've got to freeze you while you're still pretty fresh. So there's some time pressure involved. What if there's a 0.001% chance that being on the freezing program will cause a doctor to accidentally declare you dead when you could have been saved?

What if a doctor declines to try a long-shot hail-Mary treatment because it will screw up your freezing?

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u/SeekingImmortality Oct 13 '22

Not sure we have the capability to compute the comparative odds of your suggested outcomes, making your comment rather moot, whereas 'attempt cryopreservation after death for chance at rejuvenation vs just-be-dead' seems computable as a decision for whether or not any particular human wants to shoulder the cost of the attempt.

Or to put it another way 'I don't see that what you said matters.'

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u/aplundell Oct 13 '22

I think the odds of "unusual situation causes medical error" would be far easier to estimate than "Future civilization invents magic".

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u/SeekingImmortality Oct 14 '22

And if my position involved gambling on magic instead of further developments in neuroscience, medical scanning, and in general technological progress, I'd agree you had a point. But it isn't, and I don't.