Most people, given the option to halt aging and continue in good heath for centuries, would. Anti-aging research is popular, but medicine is only minimally increasing lifespan for healthy adults. You, I, and everyone we know have bodies that are incredibly unlikely to make it past 120. They're just not built to last.
But what are you, really? Your personality, your memories, they don't leave you when you lose a leg. Lose most parts of your body and you're still you. Lose your brain and that's it. [1] You are a pattern, instantiated in the neurons of your brain. That pattern is sustained by your body, growing and changing as you learn and experience the world. Your body supports you for years, but it deteriorates and eventually isn't up to the task any more. Is that 'game over'?
Perhaps we could scan people's brains at extremely high detail so we could run them in some sort of human emulator. This requires a thorough understanding of the brain, huge amounts of storage, unbelievably fast computers, and very detailed scanning. If it's even possible, it may be several hundred years away.
Our bodies aren't going to last that long, but what if we could figure out how to preserve our brains so that the information didn't decay? Then, if the future turned out to be one in which we had advanced brain emulation and scanning technology, we could be revived. I don't know if people in the future would want to spend the time or money to revive us, but in a future with technology this advanced, reviving a preserved brain as a computer simulation could be really cheap.
The most advanced technology for long-term tissue preservation today [2] is cryonics: freezing with vitrification. You add something to the blood that keeps ice crystals from forming and then freeze it. This is pretty much the same thing frogs do, hibernating frozen through the winter. The biggest organs that have been successfully brought back to working order after vitrification are rabbit kidneys, and the brain is a lot bigger and much more complex. While there are people applying this technique to human brains after death, it's very much a one way street; we can't revive them with current technology.
How much should it worry us that we can't reverse this freezing process? If we're already talking about revival via high-detail scanning and emulation, which is only practical after hundreds of years of technological development, does it matter that we can't currently reverse it? The real question in determining whether vitrification is sufficient is whether we're preserving all the information in your brain. If something critical is missing, or if something about our current freezing process loses information, the brains we think are properly preserved might be damaged or deteriorated beyond repair. Without a round trip test where we freeze and then revive a brain, we don't know whether what we're doing will work.
Another issue is that once you've frozen the brain you need to keep it cold for a few centuries at least. Liquid nitrogen is pretty cheap, but providing it constantly over such a long time is hard. Organizations fall apart: very few stay in business for even 100 years, and those that do often have departed from their original missions. Current cryonics organizations seem no different from others, with financial difficulties and imperfect management, so I don't think 200+ years of full functioning is very likely.
Even if nothing goes wrong with the organization itself, will our society last that long? Nuclear war, 'ordinary' war, bioterrorism, global warming, plagues, and future technologies all pose major risks. Even if these don't kill everyone, they might disrupt the cryonics organizations or stop technological development such that revival technology is never developed.
Taking all these potential problems and risks into account, it's unlikely that you can get around death by signing up for cryonics. In attempts to calculate overall odds for success from estimated chances of each step I've seen various numbers: 1:3, 1:4, 1:7, 1:15 and 1:400. I'm even more pessimistic: I calculated 1:600 when I first posted to lesswrong and have since revised down to 1:1000. To some people the probability doesn't matter, but because it's expensive and there are plenty of other things one can do with money, I don't think it's obviously the sensible thing to do.
(I also posted this on my blog.)
[1] Well, lose your heart and you're gone too. Except that we can make mechanical hearts and you stay the same person on receiving one. Not so much with a mechanical brain.
[2] Plastination is also an option, but it's not yet to a point where we can do it on even a mouse brain.
Interesting and nearly impossible subject
The odds a race of people ,living on a planet over populated as it is, will take the time effort and money to re-animate thousands/millions of human beings (or brains ) simply because those from the past "paid" for them to do so? Has a probability rate of nearly ZERO!
The idea that people actually pay to possibly (and unlikely) be re-animated in any form? Makes one believe that they are not only without understanding of how the life and death process works but also frighteningly unstable.
Once one is dead? They are DEAD. There are legitimate reasons for this that involve such things as the malfunction of organs etc.
Don't believe congress in the future (if there even is one) will be arguing over proposed bills to help fund the medical procedures necessary to successfully re-animate human beings from the past. Wont happen.
Also the idea of bringing people/brains back to life without having to perform medical procedures in order to keep said subject alive? I personally do not believe would be possible for many, many hundreds of years if at all !
Meaning: you died for a reason and if they don't fix it? You aren't going to be resurrected successfully. There will be no star trek beaming device that resurrects the dead and if so expect hundreds if not thousands of years to pass before such a device is invented and tested to be successful.
All utter hogwash in my opinion.
For the sake of argument if said device was invented: What will the failure rate be by the way? Ever think about that?
Where will one live once re-animated? Where will one work? Where will ones brain be placed?
Will homeless shelters be erected for the re-animated? Or will the few "lucky ones" simply be used as lab rats once they are brought back to "life"? hhhmmm
Also, whose going to re-animate all of these people/brains and what are they going to be paid by the hour to do so? Do they receive benefits? Will they be offered insurance and 2 weeks vacation every year? LOL.
"Honey I'm home! my gosh what a tough day at the re-animation lab today!" How will those brought back to life be fed/nourished? Will they be kept in institutions? Or simply left to walk the streets jobless, hopeless vagrants?
Will there be a re-animators union run by the teamsters?
This is insanity people!
By the way your $100,000 dollars today will be worth about $1,000 tomorrow. In other words: You probably couldn't spend enough money today to be successfully re-animated in the future. After all inflation IS an issue is it not?
This scenario would be similar to Ben Franklin paying $500 to be cryogenically frozen in 1782 so he could be unfrozen in 2322.
Do you honestly believe his $500 (useless old world dollars) would be enough to pay for his re-animation process in the future? The answer is a resounding NO. Our paper money will be worth nothing in the future as has been the case with most outdated over circulated currency throughout history.
Wake up people, honestly.
Even this seems highly unlikely due to the cost, man hours etc. involved and even they would most likely be reduced to lab rats or specimens to be used by future scientists. Possibly a life spent in a plexi-glass enclosure for future human beings to gaze at in awe from 9-5pm?
If you honestly believe they (whoever they may be) ,in the distant future, would take the time effort and money to re-animate your average joe? Excuse me while I shoot coffee through my nose in uncontrollable fits of laughter !
what evolved society does such a thing unless it possesses value of some sort? How are you or your brain going to make it in a future of smarter, stronger and more advanced human beings? Will you be reduced to the local freak show at the future carnival? "Come see the ignorant weakling from the past folks: Resurrected Man!"
Someone like ohhh lets say: John Jones dollar store chain and BBQ restaurant magnate of Kentucky OR Jill Holloway trust fund baby of the Wal Mart clan? Probably wouldn't make the cut unless of course they needed another guinea pig from the past to study. So those of you with questionable resumes don't count on being resurrected. We don't invest in bums today why would we in the future?!
Obviously some human beings self importance, fear of death and narcissism knows no bounds (OR any form of sanity).
If you buy into this obvious scam? I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you as well ...
I daresay people do think about that. But look at it this way: What's the failure rate for revivification after cremation? What's the failure rate for revivification after burial? I personally believe that these techniques have a potentially non-zero revivification rate (we don't know for certain that we can't work backwards from aggregate environmental data), but even so, freezing the brain whole is going to give us success probabilities which are orders of magnitude higher.
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