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NancyLebovitz comments on Cryonics Wants To Be Big - Less Wrong
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Cryonics wants to be small, or why should the future want you?
All this technical discussion misses what I see as the major problem of cryonics if it works as advertised - why should the future want us?
Imagine if today were discovered few frozen Homo habilis and had technology to revive them. After, they would spend their lives in comfortable zoo that is paradise by ape men standards ( plentiful food! no dangerous beasts! warm shelter!)
Now try the same scenario, but with few millions of our frozen ancestors. The results will be same - at best, few dozens would be picked to be resurrected and studied, but I cannot see us welcoming millions of new hairy citizens.
Conclusion - to me it seems that if you want to maximize chance of future society resurrecting you, keep cryonics as close guarded secret of tiny elite...
This might depend on how long it takes to develop revival. Any estimates?
If it's just a few decades, cryonics companies might want to signal trustworthiness by reviving everyone.
In The First Immortal, a science fiction novel about cryonics, there's a law that no one gets revived unless there's someone willing to do the work of integrating them into the future society.
In other words, you'd do well to be an interesting person, and better to be from a family with a very strong culture of loyalty, though I suppose that integration could also be a matter of contract with a cryonics company.
It depends on the gap between us and the future society - if the wilder/more optimistic predictions of transhumanism and artificial intelligence come true - and they have to come true for cryonics to work, the gap between 2050 and now will be bigger that between us and Stone Age.
Would you invite your great...grandfather Ugg for dinner?
I've wondered if the revived people might end up as an underclass, or as several underclasses.