[biolurker1]

the argument is this: certain death vs a miniscule one in a quadrillion chance or lower. It will always tilt the other way no matter what the current scientific status quo is saying because it's possible in theory and it has happened to living organisms before just not humans. Whether it's good for environment, your siblings pocket etc is not part of the core argument.

[fipar]

I think even if you ignore the environment, and cost, the argument for cryonics is not very good.

Let's say someone is successfully revived, there's still heart attacks, cancer, crime (and not just "lowly" criminals, crime also happens within families for inheritance, for example), accidents (car, or just slipping in the shower), earthquakes, ... The list is pretty much endless.

Death is unavoidable, IMHO it's best to learn to cope with it, and focus efforts on reducing what most people would consider the worst deaths (infants, long and painful diseases, wars and torture, etc).

That said, as long as not many people try this (the environmental cost would be high), if many people think about this possibility and that helps them cope with their mortality, and that of their loved ones, good for them.

[hyko]

Even though Death is unavoidable, it’s still a good idea to wear a seatbelt.

Edited to add: it’s hard to imagine a civilisation with the technology to successfully re-animate a corpse, but that is unable to treat heart disease & cancer. Not impossible I suppose, but seems highly implausible.

[Smaug123]

Learning to cope with death is not actually mutually exclusive with taking a punt on cryonics! A 1% chance of survival is still a 99% chance of death, so you'd better have made your peace with it either way.

[Juliate]

Yes, if only for the legal status of property/inheritance: if you are to be revided, who owns your wealth? Do you children inherit? And/when you are revived, what resources do you have? Is your family/descendants in charge of you, or you of them?

[Retric]

Cryogenic preservation is treated like mummification, you’re just declared dead. At which point your assets are likely to just get spent.

If you want to be safe, set up a trust that pays to you preferably and if not then to any descendants you have. That’s unlikely to work if you’re somehow revived in several hundred years, but it’s better than hopping random people will hand you money voluntarily.

[srtjstjsj]

You can't have a trust with no trustee. Is your trustee really afraid of getting sued by a corpse with no heirs?

[hyko]

Deposit your savings in the Alan Turing school of investment, AKA buried treasure: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-markets-saft/saft-on-weal...

[biolurker1]

The argument is zero vs non-zero and anything else is noise

[fipar]

zero vs non-zero of what? If you say the argument is dying now vs dying later, sure, I'll agree.

[biolurker1]

Zero chance of living VS non zero chance of living. I thought that was a coders forum.

[fipar]

Which one is that forum you're talking about?

If you meant this one, it should be obvious that it's not exclusively about coders. Even if it was, your argument is quite weak if you don't qualify the non zero part a bit more. Zero chance of living how much longer than you would have otherwise? under what conditions? At what cost?

[biolurker1]

That's precisely why strict logic is required. You are putting more restrains into a very simple condition. Dead or infinitely small non zero chance of not dead. As said previously, anything else is noise

[gus_massa]

Or give the money to your children so they have a small head start that can use to conquer the world (eventually).

Also, what happens if you are revived?

Where are you going to live? Your home was probably sold a long time ago, or you must share it with all the intermediate revived generations. What about money?

Where are you going to work? Imagine the frozen time was only 100 year. It is difficult to predict what will happen in 100 years, but it is easier to look at the past. Medical doctors didn't have penicillin and Electrical Engineers didn't have transistors. You must take most of your university courses again and perhaps part of your high school classes too.

[knorker]

So what?

You're saying life is not worth living if you're not at least middle class with no big struggles?

[biolurker1]

Yes this argument could be repurposed into: if you are born in Africa there is no reason to live

[gus_massa]

Africa is a big continent, there is a wide difference in income and education level, from country to country and even inside each country.

If you have some spare money to pay a refrigerator for 100 years, you are probably spoiled and want nice living conditions afterwards.

Anyway, imagine you live outside a city and have only a small plot of land for subsistence. After the 100 years you don't have even the small plot of land and don't have the small herd that you inherit from your parents. How/where are you going to live? Farming has changed in the last 100 years. Artificial nitrogen fertilizers have slightly more than 100 years, now there are genetically modified crops, the preferred crops have changed. (Do you know how to harvest soy?) The cattle management has also changed, antibiotics, vitamins supplements, the number of free range herds is decreasing,...

[knorker]

> If you have some spare money to pay a refrigerator for 100 years, you are probably spoiled and want nice living conditions afterwards.

You'd want nice living conditions no matter what you're used to. I really don't understand your point.

Is it "nah, if I can't have netflix I'd rather just die"?

People are very adaptable. What happened more than three months ago doesn't seem to affect your happiness.

So absolute worst case you are thawed out (because you paid for it), but are now completely broke and unemployable, there is zero social safety net or UBI, and no chance for you to even steal food. You are 100% certain to starve to death. So kill yourself then? At least your got a brief glimse of how it all turned out.

I'd rather be alive and work for food in a circus as "the millennial man" than die and do nothing.

[biolurker1]

You are generalizing the argument giving conditions where life is worth it or not. That's not the point. And stop downvoting.

[gus_massa]

There is a trade off:

* You can invest X money for a Y% chance that you will be revived in the future.

* You can invest X money for a Z% chance that your children will survive in %W case of a problem. Like a better surgeon in a heart operation or cancer treatment, or more food stored before a famine, or a home that is not in a floodable area, or more education to get an points to get a visa to another country, some swimming classes to be more healthy, more airbags in the car in case of a collision, ...

Money can buy survival rate when it is correctly invested, the question is which one is the the one that gets more bang for the buck.

PS: Just in case you are wondering, I didn't downvote you.

[iso1631]

You're describing Pascal's wager.

[robbiep]

The same argument could essentially be applied to the resurrection

[heavenlyblue]

Sound just like the argument for the worship of god.

[dang]

Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents, especially generic flamewar tangents.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[heavenlyblue]

It's not a generic tangent - it's a direct reference to Pascal's wager [1]. Unfortunately the parent doesn't make their argument any more generic that Pascal's wager itself.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

[dang]

Ah I see. But then you should have said "Sounds just like Pascal's Wager". That's a great point and not generic at all.

The trouble with what you did post is that it landed with readers as generic religious flamewar whether you meant it that way or not. I realize it's not always possible to predict how things will land, but the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate intent. Here are some previous explanations on this theme if interested:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

[Aeronwen]

God wants your exclusive devotion. The freezer doesn't care what else you're doing to help you to cheat death, so you can spread your faith around more and hedge your bets.