Till Death Do Us Part
Robin, a deep thinker most at home in thought experiments, says he believes that there is some small chance his brain will be resurrected, that its time in cryopreservation will be merely a brief pause in the course of his life. Peggy finds the quest an act of cosmic selfishness…
Peggy’s reaction might be referred to as an instance of the “hostile-wife phenomenon…cryonics has been known to frequently produce intense hostility from spouses who are not cryonicists.”
Today, [there are] just fewer than 200 patients preserved within the two major cryonics facilities, the Michigan-based Cryonics Institute and the Arizona-based Alcor…with 10 times as many signed up to be stored upon their legal deaths.
Robin is George Mason University economist Robin Hanson. See the story in The New York Times Magazine and the posts at Marginal Revolution.
Who Wants to Live Forever?
Interesting article. What’s wrong with the wives?
Who wants to live forever? I would think most people would?
Remember, it’s only the brain that is preserved. Most of us think of ourselves as something more than just a brain. A lot of life’s pleasures would be missed without the rest of me.
Assuming you had only a brain preserved, but no eyes, ears, vocal cords, etc., wouldn’t you be trapped in a position where you would be completely unable to communicate with the rest of the world? Tell me how that would be satisfying.
Death is a fisherman, the world we see
His fish-pond is, and we the fishes be…
I don’t really like the idea of living together. I remember wondering about what heaven was like when I was a kid. Streets of gold. Spending all day worshipping, singing. Wouldn’t that get boring after a while?
I don’t think I would want this done to my body/brain. I agree with the wife, although I would respect my husband’s wishes.
It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the opposition from members of both sexes tends to come from ignorance in prerequisite areas, such as mathematics and engineering disciplines.
More women than men being ignorant of these scientific foundations is a product of cultural bias, not innate biology. Unfortunately it evidently has a very real effect in skewing the demographic that is willing to consider cryonics as a valid form of normal self preservation.
@Paul H, if they either grow you new organs or replace them with indistinguishable prosthetics, your experience will be just like any other 15-20 year old — but mentally older and wiser.
I’m trying to figure out the financial incentive to revive an ancestor’s cryogenically-frozen head. Imagine it’s the year 2210 and society reaches the ability to revive brains. This could be a costly procedure. I doubt the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandkids all want to cough up their share of their meager inheritance to fund and care for an ancestor born nearly 300 years earlier. Getting to the point where you feel comfortable “pulling the plug” on an infirm, dying parent is hard enough. Re-inserting the plug for a long-deceased ancestor is not likely to happen.
I like Luke’s idea. Leave me in the vat until you can grow me an entire new body.