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by justinalanbass 3057 days ago
I can't speak for everyone, but my interest in Cryonics stems from a love of life, not a fear of death. Preservation will not solve grief, death, or displacement in time. Nor does it necessitate immortality - I want to die, eventually, but if there is a chance at more life, I'll take it. People have spent more on experimental cancer treatments with similar uncertainty and discomfort, so I suppose it's similar to that.

I would gladly revive a non famous person from the 18th century - diversity in thought doesn't seem to be a mess to me. And any future that would revive me would necessarily agree - I'm just betting there are enough people like me when resurrection is possible. And if everyone is like you, I'd gladly opt to be dissected and studied instead.

1 comments

Do you really love life, in and of itself, or do you love the things that life makes possible? Just because you're alive doesn't mean you're playing with your great-grandchildren or relaxing on a beach in the Caribbean or making passionate love or creating something that makes people happy. Mere life, without these things, is less than worthless. The industrialized world we live in gives us so much "life" that most of us end up slowly tortured to death in hospitals, delirious and vacant and in interminable, incomprehensible pain, because we consider that more merciful than simply letting sick people die.

And if that's not enough for you, maybe future generations will have the opportunity to reanimate your corpse in a 25th century hospital and torture it some more to see what they can recover from the brain cells that survived the ordeal? Feel free and sign up for that if you want, but I'm out.

Every day we live for those things and face a small chance that some powerful government or entity will capture and torture us or our loved ones indefinitely, for scientific reasons, or perhaps for no reason at all. Escaping life is one solution, but bracing against fear and leaning onto hope seem like more appealing choices to me. Pessimism is a valid argument against Cryonics, but since it's as unfalsifiable as optimism, I'll gladly take the choice that makes me happier. Maybe that is a priveleged and rare choice these days, but all I can say is I hope you find optimism and hope someday in this life, regardless of the viability of some inconsequential technology.