Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cryonics

bekkerd

Question:

What are your thoughts on cryogenic preservation and the idea of medically treating aging?

His response:

A marvelous way to just convince people to give you money. Offer to freeze them for later. I'd have more confidence if we had previously managed to pull this off with other mammals. Until then I see it as a waste of money. I'd rather enjoy the money, and then be buried, offering my body back to the flora and fauna of which I have dined my whole life.

Link

Question:

What are your thoughts on cryogenic preservation and the idea of medically treating aging?

His response:

A marvelous way to just convince people to give you money. Offer to freeze them for later. I'd have more confidence if we had previously managed to pull this off with other mammals. Until then I see it as a waste of money. I'd rather enjoy the money, and then be buried, offering my body back to the flora and fauna of which I have dined my whole life.

Link

I wonder what will we hear from non-LW rationalists about the SIAI when it gains enough prominence. I think its pretty easy to predict...

I don't really want to watch that live though - some day some genuine technological danger, AI related or not, may be actually foreseen - and then actions of boys who read in fiction about Chupacabra and then cry wolf (and get candy on request for the clarity of their cries) are going to ever so slightly raise existential risk (if widely rebutted).

Note that cryonics is pretty incidental to rationality. If anything, having people live forever is likely to slow down the progress due to increased odds of gerontocracy, and thus be detrimental to the survival of the human species. EY reflects on this in his "3 worlds collide" story.

6gwern14y

Do we need to predict? http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong & http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thread:User_talk:WaitingforGodot/Criticisms_of_LessWrong - and keep in mind this is with David Gerard watering it down.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cryonics

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Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cryonics

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