Goddamn! "Dying of thirst to avoid laws on suicide that'll screw with your body" is something our grandchildren might well think to be made up if someone told them; who'd believe our society could really be that insane?
Hmm, I'd heard that dying of dehydration was not a bad way to go, but now I read that's not true. There goes my hospice plan.
So being signed up for cryonics shifts my views on life and death, as might be expected.
In particular, it focuses my views of success on the preservation of my brain (everything else too, just in case, but especially the brain). This means, obviously, not just the lump of meat but also the information within it.
If I'm suffering a degenerative disease to that meat or its information, I'm going to want to cryocide to preserve the information (and the idea of living through slow brain death doesn't thrill me regardless).
What I don't know is: given the current state of science, what sorts of things do I need to be worried about?
In particular, I'm wondering about Alzheimer's; does it appear to be damage to the information, or to the retrieval mechanism?
But any other such diseases interest me in this context.
Thanks!
-Robin