This TED talk on suspended animation by Mark Roth captivated me when I first saw it last year, and I have been eagerly trying to follow developments on the subject ever since.

My question for the lesswrong crowd is, if suspended animation were available today in such a way that you could "skip" years, decades or even centuries in a de-animated state while not aging or aging only slightly, would you go for it? Would it be the rational thing to do, or would it be more rational to wait until you really needed it, for example, when you are nearing end of life or if you get diagnosed with an incurable, terminal illness?

What about friends and family? I can see people not wanting to use it because it would mean "waking up" in a world where the people they care about no longer exist. This is also an issue with cryonics, and I believe was the main reason Heinlein chose to be cremated rather than cryopreserved. However, the moral dilemma is more complicated, because with cryonics, it happens after you're dead, but with suspended animation, it must be done while you're still alive, so unless you get de-animated towards the end of your life, you've made a conscious decision to spend your remaining time on Earth in the future with other people rather than with those around you in the present. However, I could also see it being easier to sell people on than cryonics, if it worked as advertised, because it would be more of a sure thing, and might even be cheaper. I could even see it becoming so popular that a large percentage of the population opts out of their present life and the problems it presents them, hoping to "sleep" their way to a better future, causing problems of population imbalance.

I'm bringing this subject up here because I find the concept fascinating, and it doesn't seem to get nearly as much attention as cryonics, yet it will be much more disruptive if/when it ever arrives.