Bedford was frozen in 1967; how hard would it be to either collect or assemble a set of yearbooks, describing what's happened since then, and storing a small library of such reference texts at both CI and Alcor?
I think that, at least, is a solved problem, or at least as near-to-solved as we're likely to get, so no effort need be made on that front.
Wikipedia has encyclopedic overviews of each century - C20th, C21st - with further information available readily. And down to far more detail than a revivee is likely to want, apart from those areas and people that they had a personal/individual interest in. There are significant, well-organised and seemingly-sustainable efforts in place to keep this information up to date, to keep it safe, and to keep it readily available.
I think just giving them a tablet and a couple of minutes' instruction on navigating Wikipedia would work very nicely for that particular job. It'd also get them started with the online world, which is arguably the biggest shift in Westerners' daily lives since 1967.
(And if the process has temporarily impaired their vision or motor skills, happily Wikipedia is readily available in a wide variety of accessible formats.)
Promoting the idea that waking up from cryo will involve being enmeshed in a community rightaway. I'm not actually sure how this might be managed. (...) If someone was revived from cryonics tomorrow, would you be willing to at least let them crash on your couch for a few weeks?
It's not clear at all that there will be anything remotely resembling "ok, you can crash on my couch" at the point in time when the frozen dead can be reanimated. Will there be a community that would be recognizable to the freshly defrosted?
Cryopreservation advocates should not promote ideas that are based on speculation and wishful thinking ("you'll be enmeshed in a community [... that will fulfill your social needs]"), best not to oversell if you want to appear legitimate.
... [I]t remains just a subculture of a couple of thousand people or so.
Is this an accurate estimation?
... [M]ost of the objections people raise to cryonics seem to be off enough that, even if those objections were solved, those particular people still wouldn't sign up - that is, they feel some fundamental antipathy to the whole idea of cryonics, and unconsciously pick some rationalization that happens to sound reasonable to them to explain it.
Id est, "I observe that most people don't have a truly considered rejection to cryonics." Please...
I feel like you've hit upon a significant, salient objection with the whole "bereft of community" factor, but
...One possible alternative approach might be to take the thought experiment - what if we could revive someone from cryo not next century, or next decade... but tomorrow. What could we do to help them integrate into modern life, instead of merely waking up in a hospital bed with the day's newspaper and being shown the door?
...So: If someone was revived from cryonics tomorrow, would you be willing to at least let them crash on your couch for
So: If someone was revived from cryonics tomorrow, would you be willing to at least let them crash on your couch for a few weeks?
Yep. Anyone in that situation, send me a letter (or ask someone to "E-mail" me - they'll understand).
This may be somewhat besides the point of the OP, but "cryonics" + "social obligations" in the context of the old headache about the popularity of cryonics reminded me of this:
...The laws of different countries allow potential donors to permit or refuse donation, or give this choice to relatives. The frequency of donations varies among countries.
There are two main methods for determining voluntary consent: "opt in" (only those who have given explicit consent are donors) and "opt out" (anyone who has not refused is a d
I don't think that's what prevents cryonics.
For the vast majority of people, cryonics is weird. It's not something they would do, for the same reason that prevents them from moving to Australia, even if they agreed it would be far better for them and they had no strong communal ties.
This explains how, even after LWers are convinced that cryonics is the rational thing to do, there's still a strong alief against doing so.
most of the objections people raise to cryonics seem to be off enough that, even if those objections were solved, those particular people still wouldn't sign up - that is, they feel some fundamental antipathy to the whole idea of cryonics, and unconsciously pick some rationalization that happens to sound reasonable to them to explain it.
I really would sign up for cryonics if I thought it was at all likely to work. Even at a 1 in 30 chance I'd take it. But there are so many ways for it to fail that I just don't think the odds are good at all.
What's even more interesting is that if this idea has any actual basis in reality... then it offers the possibility of coming up with approaches to counter it: promoting the idea that waking up from cryo will involve being enmeshed in a community rightaway.
Do we expect that to really be the case, though?
A society that isn't willing to put energy into reintegrating individual is unlikely to spend resources on reviving cryonics patients.
I have a strong hunch that one extremely strong reason people feel an emotional revulsion to cryo is, simply, that even if they do wake up in the future, they will have been cut off from all their social connections
[pollid:396]
This is a good point and worth making, but if I can mega-nitpick your writing style for a moment, I think this post overuses ellipses. It's noticeable and distracting, and I don't see how it adds anything to the post.
If at some point a working cryonics technology is invented (eg. instant vitrification), it makes financial sense to create a new company, without enormous potential liabilities from hundreds (thousands?) of damaged frozen bodies. After a successful demonstration, existing companies without this technology are going to become bankrupt. The old bodies are useless - reviving somebody after a year of being frozen has roughly the same value as reviving somebody after a hundred - it proves to the public that it's possible. Media coverage is going to be roughly e...
I don't know to what extent fear of being isolated in an alien culture is a motivation for people opposing cryonics. I don't think it's an irrational fear-- it's a thing that could happen, especially if few people from your own time choose cryonics, and there's been a fair amount of science fiction about being the only one from your time.
On the other hand, I've never been revolted by cryonics and the people who hate the idea don't seem terribly good at explaining their premises.
Whatever is going on, it seems to be on the alief level.
You've got me wonderin...
That's certainly the first time I've heard of such a rationalization for people avoiding cryo. I usually just assumed it was because of lack of public knowledge (most people I've talked to assume that once you're dead, you're dead, and there's no way to bring you back) and a abhorrence of being stuck in a refrigerator at the mercy of anyone who happens to be passing by (something I can certainly understand - I wouldn't sign up for cryonics if I didn't have some assurance that my body will not be messed with until the revival time comes).
This social isolation is definitely a part of why I'm not signed up. I've heard it suggested that females are more prone to this reasoning, thus the lower rate of sign up.
Beyond personal relationships, if you are resurrected all f your knowledge and skills will be obsolete. For most people their identity is strongly tied to what they know about the world and what they are good at, having to start again is dispiriting. At best you have decades of retraining, more likely you'r a glorified historical artefact.
Have you read Transmetropolitan? This is actually a major sub-plot. There is a significant quantity of people who had cryonics, were thawed, were released under their own recognizance in to an unrecognizably bizarre future, and promptly became homeless, desperate vagrants.
edit: ignore this comment, redundant with discussion from DataPacRat
even if they do wake up in the future, they will have been cut off from all their social connections. This may not sound like much
Not much? If I don't get to interact with my friends etc., how is being revived as a cryo patient any better than being revived as a Boltzmann brain or something?
People are fully capable of making friends in wildly different cultures - consider the children of military personnel, who move around a lot, or other people who move far from their birth culture for a job.
I'm about a third of the way through "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber, and am enjoying the feeling of ideas shifting around in my head, arranging themselves into more useful patterns. (The last book I read that put together ideas of similar breadth was "Economix: How and Why Our Economy Works" by Goodwin.) "Debt" goes into the origins of debts, as compared to obligations; and related topics, such as exchanges considered beneath economic notice ("Please pass me the salt"), debts too big or unique to be repaid, peaceful versus violent interactions, the endless minor obligations that form the network of social connections, and even the basis of whole societies.
The reason I'm posting about this book here... is that it's giving me some new perspectives from which to consider the whole cryonics subculture, and, for instance, why it remains just a subculture of a couple of thousand people or so. For example, a standard LessWrong thought experiment is "Is That Your True Rejection?"; and most of the objections people raise to cryonics seem to be off enough that, even if those objections were solved, those particular people still wouldn't sign up - that is, they feel some fundamental antipathy to the whole idea of cryonics, and unconsciously pick some rationalization that happens to sound reasonable to them to explain it.
I still have two-thirds of "Debt" to go... but, at the moment, I have a strong hunch that one extremely strong reason people feel an emotional revulsion to cryo is, simply, that even if they do wake up in the future, they will have been cut off from all their social connections. This may not sound like much - but the part of "Debt" I'm currently reading discusses how one of the more fundamental aspects of slavery is that becoming a slave involves being cut off from one's family and society; and another fundamental aspect is that being a slave is being without honor, and in many senses literally having died (eg, in some societies, when someone was taken as a slave, their will was read and their spouse considered a widow). On a certain emotional level, many people really do seem to think that being probably-permanently cut off from all their loved ones is a fate no better than simply dying outright.
What's even more interesting is that if this idea has any actual basis in reality... then it offers the possibility of coming up with approaches to counter it: promoting the idea that waking up from cryo will involve being enmeshed in a community rightaway. I'm not actually sure how this might be managed. The Venturists seem to be heading in the general direction of that idea - but don't quite seem to be capturing it; maybe its the annual fee, maybe it's the dearth of concrete plans about how to help cryonic revivees, maybe it's something more abstract.
One possible alternative approach might be to take the thought experiment - what if we could revive someone from cryo not next century, or next decade... but tomorrow. What could we do to help them integrate into modern life, instead of merely waking up in a hospital bed with the day's newspaper and being shown the door? Bedford was frozen in 1967; how hard would it be to either collect or assemble a set of yearbooks, describing what's happened since then, and storing a small library of such reference texts at both CI and Alcor? Perhaps the cryonics providers' boards of directors could offer their members a revival fund that could be donated to, specifically targeted to help future revivees to rejoin society? I'm not even scratching the surface of possibilities here, so even if these particular ideas turn out to be wrong, at least they suggest further possibilities.
So: If someone was revived from cryonics tomorrow, would you be willing to at least let them crash on your couch for a few weeks?