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advancedatheist comments on Stupid Questions (10/27/2014) - Less Wrong Discussion
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Why would people in the 27th Century want to revive other people who went into some kind of biostasis in the 24th Century? Wouldn't that make the 24th Century people selfish or narcissistic for wanting to take advantage of the more advanced health care of the 27th Century?
In general, Cryonics organizations have funds and people whose duty it is to revive frozen people. It's not like they're left in a random ditch to be found. Alcor (I don't know about the others) tries to only recruit people to this body who have relatives or loved ones in cryo, and are signed up themselves, therefore having an incentive both to unfreeze existing people and to cause the organization to unfreeze people in the future.
But even were they tossed into a ditch, there are several possible reasons:
1: Research. People from 300 years ago will have a wealth of interesting genetic, bacterial, possibly physiological, psychological, and other differences to study. They'll also have relatively privileged information about archaeological finds and historical manuscripts. I'm not sure how much that part will apply to the future, considering many more records are kept now than were 300 years ago, but the biological parts of the point hold regardless.
Profit: Reviving people from the past (at least the first time) would make whoever did it famous and respected, which will lead to more grants and other forms of remuneration. You could also put those weird primitives on a reality tv show.
Charity: People regularly pay to save stray dogs, cats, etc. from starving to death outside. They not only usually don't receive anything out of this, but in fact contribute to overpopulation of said animals as well as losing money. It would surprise me, assuming the process was not too costly, if there was no one in the next few centuries who felt it their calling to reanimate the frozen altruistically.
Experimentation. To perfect a revival procedure, you need to test it out on people. Depending on the availability of future corpsicles, there might be a limited supply, which would bump up people frozen centuries ago into the ranks of the potential scientific revivals.
Your second question is more a matter of morals but plenty of people do selfish things and yet we don't punish them with death for it.
Sidetrack: If you're cryonicly revived, what are the odds of getting your gut bacteria back?
I'd imagine that if you can be revived, the reasons you want your gut bacteria back would no longer apply.
What's your line of thought?
My guess is that if you're being revived as something much like your current self, you will at least need simulations of gut bacteria.
I'm not sure whether I'm grossly ignorant of the biology here. Supposing they'd still be helpful, would it be important to get your gut bacteria back, rather than some other gut bacteria? Would that be more akin to replacing a kidney, or replacing part of the brain?
Or a simulation of their beneficial effects.
A lot of cryonics is head-only cryonics, so pretty low.
Good point, but what about whole-body cryonics?
I think very high if they're trying to preserve them, otherwise very low. We know bacteria can survive freezing fairly well in many cases, but if they're not trying to preserve them I imagine the revival process could be deadly to gut flora.
I think you missed the point of my question. Why does wanting something at time index A, before that something has become technically feasible, make you a bad person, but not at time index B, when that something exists, works and has become socially accepted?
In other words, presumably people in the 24th Century could have the means for reviving cryonauts from the 21st Century, and they could have started to make progress on their own radical life extension as well. Would they go around calling each other narcissists for taking advantage of what they consider the current standard of health care? If not, would they say that about visionary people in biostasis from earlier centuries who expressed the wish to benefit from what the 24th Century people know how to do? Or if some of them survived to the 27th Century and had they friends and relatives in biostasis who wanted revival using the more advanced health care in the latter century, would they say something like, "We're morally okay with our life extension, but those people we knew a few centuries back in biostasis are selfish for wanting what we have. Screw them."
In other words, why does wanting something at the "wrong" time reflect badly on your character?
This sounds closer to a rhetorical question or a moan than to an actual question, and specifically moaning about negative perceptions of cryonicists is not a very high-value thing to do in a forum that's generally pro-cryonics.
I don't think it does. I'm confused. Am I missing some piece of context?
I'm used to seeing the assertion that cryonic revival almost definitely cannot happen unless a society has already Solved Biology, so the hypothetical "revival but no life extension" society feels contrived. Could the people of the future be hypocrites? Sure, I guess.
no
although an argument can be made that the wrong time is defined in terms of opportunity costs: Wanting something when that money could more easily and better be spent on other things. Some might say it's wrong to want a brand new car when you could buy a used car that works fine and spend the difference on mosquito nets. Wanting Cryo when it costs 200 grand is arguably more wrong than in the distant future when it costs 10k
Wait a second, who exactly is calling pro-cryo people bad names?