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Wealthy 'Cryonauts' Put Assets on Ice
Carl Bialik writes "'You can't take it with you. So Arizona resort operator David Pizer has a plan to come back and get it,' the Wall Street Journal reports. Pizer is one of about about 1,000 members of the "cryonics" movement who plan to put their bodies on ice soon after death so that in the future, medical advances can save them. A small, wealthy subset of these cryonauts is exploring ways to leave their money to themselves. 'With the help of an estate planner, Mr. Pizer has created legal arrangements for a financial trust that will manage his roughly $10 million in land and stock holdings until he is re-animated,' the Journal reports. 'Mr. Pizer says that with his money earning interest while he is frozen, he could wake up in 100 years the richest man in the world.'"
he could wake up in 100 years the richest man in the world
Or he could wake up in 300 years in sick bay with no money at all.
Three words for you my friends: tax evasion scam.
Good night.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Mr. Pizer says that with his money earning interest while he is frozen, he could wake up in 100 years the richest man in the world. '"
Or, in the event that there is a market crash or the country in which his bank resides in collapses, the dumbest man in the world.
Duh, he'll just wake up in a few hundred years after his consciousness is transferred into the memrouy wiped body of a convict, and recieve RNA memory injections and learn to pilot interstellar world seeding ships.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
David Pizer wakes up in the future and calls his accountant to find out how his account is doing. "Good news!" the man says. "Your ten million dollars has grown to almost one billion dollars!" David is ecstatic and they talk a minute more. Suddenly the phone chimes. "Please deposit one hundred million dollars for the next three minutes..."
Before anyone says that this guy is greedy and should give the money to charity, I'd like to point out that there's little chance that he will come back to life unthawed, and if he doesn't spend the money it makes us all just a tiny bit richer.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Reminds me of the Star Trek Next Generation episode where they wake up people who were frozen. The doc cured them, and one guy wanted to check on his stocks. They thought he was nuts, because why would you need stocks when you could just ask the replicator for anything you wanted?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
There was a horror comic in the early 80's that has a story that I still remember.
A rich man who was dying had enough money to develop the technology to put himself on ice until medical technology was advance enough to cure his disease. He wakes up about 50 years later to find out that medical technology did indeed advance greatly over the years. But there was no cure for his disease. Instead, he was revived so the doctors could harvest his limbs for the veterans of the last World War who lost their arms and legs. Since he was beyond cure, the doctors figured his limbs were still useful to humanity. Advance technology rendered the rich man a basketcase.
The rule against perpetuities should probably stop this in most states. The point of it is to keep property from being tied up and being useless for long periods of time. I think it's probably a moot point until they actually manage to unthaw someone and then keep them alive for more than a second or two.
What?
I'd suspect that the legal status of someone that's, well, legally dead would be rather iffy. And for good reason- why should we set aside economic power for inactive (and potentially never-to-be active) members of our society? I think the burden of proof that this should be possible lies on them.
There's also things such as Adverse Possession that could throw a wrench into things. I'd recommend that any 'cryonauts' conceive of any post-death, pre-revival arrangements to be tentative at best.
Since he would have recently died before being frozen, he can wake up in 100 years and be the crappiest-feeling richest guy on earth! They say money can't buy everything.
Hope he hasn't got any greedy family members. The lawyers will end up with it all when the jackals decend.
This scheme was mentioned in at least one of Niven's books. It didn't work - surviving family members took the estate to court to get at their rightful inheritance. I think that's a pretty likely outcome. Another likely outcome is that the estate management will embezzle it (it's not like you can watch them closely when you're dead). It's also possible the government might decide to seize it, if it's a tempting enough target.
So your trust fund has guardians. Big deal. What are you going to do, audit them? You're frozen.
The funds will be slowly leeched until you finally thaw and die, and at that point someone inherits it.
Also, if there is any kind of "$#!+ hits the fan" scenario, the government will confiscate these trust finds to finance the war. Again, you will thaw and die.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
In "When the Sleeper Wakes," a guy is in a coma for a thousand years, wakes up and his money has taken over the world. Highly recommend it, but that's because I like Wells a lot.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
1) Get wealthy people to give you their money when they die so you can invest it for when they return.
2) Pay someone to accidently leave the door to the freezer full of people open over the weekend.
3) PROFIT!!!
I know they aren't put in a freezer, it just added to the joke.
Seriously though I wonder what would happen to the money if something catastrophic happened and the bodies were ruined.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
"Terry: Welcome to the world of tomorrow!
Lou: Why do you always have to say it that way?
Terry: Haven't you ever heard of a little thing called showmanship? Come, your destiny awaits!"
Futurama Pilot
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Wasn't this also the original plot for "Red Dwarf" - the BBC SciFi sitcom. Dave Lister a 3rd class technician on a Mining Corporation spacecraft gets put into suspended animation as a punishment for smuggling a cat aboard the spaceship. Something goes wrong on the ship and he isn't re-animated (the crew disappears). He wakes up 3 million years later and discovers he left 2 pence (or some equally trivial amount) in a bank account and from the interest accrued is now the richest man in the universe.
Diversification
Does that mean... frozen?
If this becomes a widespread practice, the government will find some way to tax the assets you leave for reclaiming.
This sig is false.
Reminds me of this little sequence from Red Dwarf:
Holly: They're from the NorWEB Federation.
Lister: What's that?
Holly: NorthWestern Electricity Board. They want you, Dave.
Lister: Me? Why? What for?
Holly: For your crimes against humanity.
Lister: You what?!
Holly: Seems when you left Earth, three million years ago, you left two half-eaten German sausages on a plate in your kitchen.
Lister: Did I?
Holly: You know what happens to sausages left unattended for three million years?
Lister: Yeh, they go mouldy.
Holly: Your sausages, Dave, now cover seven-eighths of the Earth's surface. Also, you left seventeen pounds, fifty pence in your bank account. Thanks to compound interest you now own 98% of all the world's wealth. And because you hoarded it for three million years, nobody's got any money except for you and NorWEB.
Lister: Why NorWEB?
Holly: You left a light on in the bathroom. I've got a final demand here for one hundred and eighty billion pounds.
Lister: A hundred and eighty billion pounds!! You're kidding!
Holly, wearing glasses, nose and moustache: April Fool.
Lister: But it's not April!
Holly: Yeah, I know. But I can't be waiting six months with a red-hot jape like that underneath me hat.
groklaw, wired and slashdot. The holy trinity of work based time wasting.
Mr Pizer will be dead for the next 100 years for taxation purposes.
My tired little brain aches for the cold sleep of a cyronics chamber.
The second step is always "?"
I have freaks! I did something right...
And in his future, it didn't work out so well for the "corpsicles."
Their heirs either made of with the dough or society cut them up to use as recycled parts (organ donation).
That's probably not the future the "cryonauts" would like to hear about. Corpsicle is a way better word than cryonaut anyway, and probably more descriptive, since won't their cell walls burst when frozen?
If he thinks his kids aren't going to pull the plug after 5 minutes he's nuts!
Hmmmm, Thank you, thank you very much.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You can't take it with you. So Arizona resort operator David Pizer has a plan to come back and get it.
Does anyone else think this sounds like a bad horror movie?
Unthawed == re-frozen, no?
As long as he doesn't waste it on the last anchovies in the world, he'll be fine.
In Soviet Russia, backwards is everything.
My greatest fear would be getting frozen, and then being successfully thawed, except that the freezing process leads to permanent impotency. Frostbite of the cock, one might say.
Then again, I have not sustained, let alone maintained, an erection in a couple of decades. So maybe getting cryogenically frozen wouldn't be that harmful after all.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
HOLLY: They're from the NorWEB Federation.
LISTER: What's that?
HOLLY: NorthWestern Electricity Board. They want you, Dave.
LISTER: Me? Why? What for?
HOLLY: For your crimes against humanity.
LISTER: You what?!
HOLLY: Seems when you left Earth, three million years ago, you left two
half-eaten German sausages on a plate in your kitchen.
LISTER: Did I?
HOLLY: You know what happens to sausages left unattended for three
million years?
LISTER: Yeah, they go mouldy.
HOLLY: Your sausages, Dave, now cover seven-eighths of the Earth's
surface. Also, you left seventeen pounds, fifty pence in your bank
account. Thanks to compound interest you now own 98% of all the
world's wealth. And because you hoarded it for three million years,
nobody's got any money except for you and NorWEB.
LISTER: Why NorWEB?
HOLLY: You left a light on in the bathroom. I've got a final demand here
for one hundred and eighty billion pounds.
LISTER: A hundred and eighty billion pounds?!! You're kidding!
HOLLY: (Wearing a Grouch-Marx glasses-nose-and-moustache) April Fool.
LISTER: But it's not April!
HOLLY: Yeah, I know. But I can't be waiting six months with a red-hot
jape like that underneath me hat.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Yeah, this obviously belongs to the "Your rights offline" section.
Editors, relocate!
It seems to me that the easiest way to do this is to freeze yourself, hopefully in a way that your DNA won't degrade. Once cloning technology is viable, have yourself cloned, and leave your money to your eventual clone.
If mind transfer technology is available, then do that, but that might be a ways further off.
Reeses
I bet that once this becomes a viable and popular option, banks will suddenly start putting limits on interest (or something like the fact that interest stops while you're dead).
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
"Like some 1,000 other members of the "cryonics" movement, Mr. Pizer has made arrangements to have his body frozen in liquid nitrogen as soon as possible after he dies"
I for one, welcome our new defrosted Stupid-Age overlords
So, he'll be dead in this time, but hoping that future generations will be able to provide life?
I think he's hoping for storyline of "The Time Machine" to come true. I'd LMAO if this shmuck gets Frankenstien'ed instead!
This space for rent
when you freeze a cell (single cell of your body) the water molecules will freeze, expanding the cell untill its walls break. just freezing this guy would kill him... let alone save him... test it with a daisy and liquid nitro
Perhaps rich people are the ones worrying about preserving their assets for the future, but I don't want people to get the impression that you have to be rich to be a cryonicist.
That mistaken assumption is what caused me to take so long to take the plunge.
I'm a grad student, I make 20k/year, and I have a cryo contract. As a full-time student I pay $199 annually and my life insurance policy ($90k coverage) premiums cost about $1k per annually. If I wanted to, I could have taken out a term life insurance policy and I'd be paying in the low hundreds, but since by definition this is an arrangement you'd want to make for the duration of your life, I thought it would be better to lock in a good whole life insurance rate while I'm still young and healthy. Plus my policy has a safety margin of $10k over the $80k neurosuspension fee.
And that's me, a starving PhD student. Some of you people with real jobs can fund your cryo policy, and toss some money into a trust fund for yourself, and have some left over for charity and heirs.
Cryonics is a long-shot, but unlike many other beliefs about life after death, it doesn't contradict the observed laws of physics. I don't ridicule those beliefs or take any action to restrict them, no matter how alien to my way of thinking they may seem. I therefore expect a free and pluralistic society to reciprocate this courtesy toward my own beliefs.
The one cool thing about freezing yourself that no one seems to mention is the process, if successful, will seem instant to you regardless of how many hundreds of years you're out for. Thinking of it that way makes it seem way more appealing. It's like a crude form of time travel.
... You've been frozen for 150 years, but your Cryo company went under about 80 years ago. Actually that company has been bought and sold a number of times. You actually spent a few weeks in a meat locker in Chicago until a new facility could be found. Unfortunately we were legally obligated to dip into your "inheritance" to pay for emergency cooling and relocation. You still have a few dollars left, but after converting them into American Yen, it looks like you will have to go back to work. Mr Pizer? Are you listening to me? Ah... yes, where is the rest of your body? Well, you see after the last market crash the Cryo industry was forced to make a few, um, cutbacks. What now? Well, Mr. Pizer, you've lucked into a wonderful Brave New World, you know. You've been assigned to the circus with all the others. You'll be pulled by trained monkeys round the ring on a special cart along with the other heads. It doesn't pay all that well, but it will keep the feeding tube flowing and cover any back taxes owing. And it does make the children laugh! Mr. Pizer? Now don't be angry with me Mr. Pizer...
Is this sig nificant?
Seriously, if the technology worked as planned, what would you do after being thawed? Go back to grade school to catch up on the basics? Would any of your skills be useful to anyone? Unless you were a popular historical icon, who would want to bother with you? An archeologist or historian?
Add to all of this the fact that the population of Earth is already expanding at an alarming rate.
signature not found
...I finally see a cure for Social Security problem. 100% Social Security Tax on the dead. They are going to need it once they are revived.
So... Even if we do get enough advances medically to do this, tell me why on earth would we /want/ to revive someone so selfish and materialistic as to want to do this?
Sorry, couldn't help myself.
FRY: My God, it's the future! My parents, my coworkers, my girlfriend--I'll never see any of them again! {pause} Yahoo!
Keep your eyes to the sky.
The difficult part would have to be deciding when to cut one's losses with life and be frozen. Persumably, if he waits until he's actually dead, it might be too late...
;-)
"I figure I have a better than even chance of coming back," he says. *laughing* based on WHAT?? Just goes to show - wealth doesn't corrolate with intelligence.
(personally, I reckon his chances are more like 42%...
As Robert Heinlein put it: "If you invest a substantial sum of money at a good interest rate, compounded monthly, it will eventually be worth nothing."
Oh well, what the hell...
In Kore^H^H^H^Hthe USA, only old people use cryogenics. Sorry.
I fail to see, why, on a site like slashdot, that some people can't see the obvious nanotech and biotech breakthroughs that are comming in 5, 10, 15, 25 years etc.
With most slashdotters being able to understand complex software and hardware systems, in the comming years it will be natural for future slashdotters to be able to handle the complexities of nano and biotech programming of nanotech assemblers and nanosensors and be able to do a lot of "matter" hacking even though there will, most likely, be a lot of corporations that would like to corner the nano/biotech market. For those of us who can remember the first Dr.dobbs and byte magazine (and other) magazine issues, and the earlier Radio Shack, commidor, apple, IBM pc's...the future is happening all over again, with the gradual acceptance that the emerging nano/biotech revolution will give us control of all the "computer" type DNA/RNA machinery inside our cells, we will be able to manipulate the aging process, fix (re-animate) frozen people. It may be hard to do, but, remember, they went to the moon in 9 years using slide rules and mainframe 32 bit computers with core memory, we should be able to advance nano/bio in the next 10 years to be able to demonstrate age halting/reversal in mice (the M-prize), and then, soon in people. Check out the CBS 60 min interview with aubre-de-gray a couple of weeks ago, it's too bad the Ray kurzwiel interview was also not included in that segment, maybe next time...
Bob spends 100 years in cryogenic hibernation and then is thawed out. His first conversation goes like this:
Bob: Just before I say anything else, I want to remind you that languages can change a lot in a hundred years, but I'm just going to talk like I did back then, so please don't take offense at anything, because I probably won't mean it that way.
Them: [acknowledges comment and assures Bob they understand his position]
Bob: So, the niggers still causin' all the problems?
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
Teller: OK, you had a balance of 93 cents... ... $4.3 billion.
Fry: Alright!
Teller: And at an average of two-and-a-quarter percent interest over a period of 1000 years, that comes to
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
We all know that your body is but a temporary home for your soul or your spirit.
When the body dies, your spirit (**you**) move on. This should be very familiar with you Pagans
out there. (Remeber that Sahman; Haloween; is the time when we re-unite with the spirits of our
dead ancestors).
Yes, science may be able to resurrect a dead body.
But, what soul will inhabit it at that time? Most likely it will be either someone else or perhaps
no soul at all. Perhaps you will end up with a 'living vegstible' with no spirit or soul.
When I move on, I will either still be in the spirit world or will have come back as another
being; not necessarily human; I could be a tree, rock, ocean, cloud, or animal.
Heck, when I move on, and someone decides to cryogenically save my body; I may have had my rest
in the spirit world and return to our world as a thunder cloud.
I am now in the sky over the university where the research is going on and they are trying to
ressurect my former temporary home.
I might feel a bit angry that they think they can ressurect me.
I might need to teach them a gentle little reminder.
As a thunder cloud. I just might reach out with a bolt of lightning and knock out the
power to the lab.
And my companion, who is the mighty Oak tree standing next to the emergency power generator
for the lab, might fall down and sever the fuel line.
Or, as a thunder cloud, I embrace my sister spirit, the rainbow. I tell the rainbow to
give inspiration to the eco-purists who then go in an sabotage the lab and gently return
my former home back to the land (yet another sister spirit) where it belongs.
Or picture this. I am in the spirit world; having not returned to your world. I learn of what
is about to happen to my former temporary home. I converse with the other spirits and gently
suggest that no one transcend to that particular body. They will end up with a vegstible.
Luv
Cleara
Richard Nixon has expressed interest in the procedure. It's his first step towards becoming the President of Earth.
I bet the only ones getting any money from that are the credit card companies. Imagine: you die, but you have a $100 balance on your Visa. And of course you cannot send just pay them: you're dead!
With interest rates of 25%-35% and late fees all your puny $10 or $100 million dollars will be gone the moment you wake up...
I at least want to wait until I know they can give me crazy improvments to my genome. Imagine it, combine it with some nanotechnology and for a large sum of they might be able to freeze you and enhance your genome for a set of tissue, so long as you dont mess with anything reproductive.
What the hell. If self-preservation has now become politically incorrect, our society has officially lost all touch with its evolutionary roots.
But any society or subset thereof that does survive the centuries will not be in such hopeless denial about its nature, and they will understand the point of view of a person who wants to do everything he or she can to survive and witness the future for themselves.
...or, he could let his savings accumulate for 1000 years and then spend it on a single anchovy.
Because wanting to keep the selfish and materialistic out of society despite the fact that you can help them is altruistic?
Maybe not, but evidently you're that insane.
Wow man. Just... Wow.
he could wake up in 100 years the richest man in the world.
but in 100 years, a can of coke might cost a thousand bucks.
then he would be the poorest frozen dude ever!
I'm not gonna risk trusting medical advances that will likely be overtaken by herbal remedies and holistic healing to bring me back from the dead, or trusting the law not to change to count corpsicles as dead people. Why not just do http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/06/27/19232 59.shtml?tid=191&tid=14 when the medical bills start pileing up? They'll probably at least have a cancer killer and cybernetic replacements for everything short of the prefrontal lobe alot sooner than a reanimator. Sure, the inflated money might not pay all of your medical bills, but it's a better shot than we have now. And once you are a brain in a mech your living expenses will be a little lower (cause you'll only need a little nutrient paste to feed your brain and some nuclear fuel rods!). I can't wait, sign me up now. I hate my pathetic malnourished pale skinny short weak and fragile body - I wanna look like the mecha in the Armored Core games. That'll kick ass.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
So what happens when the entire Earth is taken up by greedy dead people's land? Seriously this should not be legal it just takes up unused land. Also - as someone previously mentioned - tax evation. And he wants to do it so he can be the richest man on Earth?! What ever happened to enjoying life with your loving family and dying a peaceful death to go to Heaven? Mr. Pizer doesn't sound like he would be a /.er so I'm sure he has a family - especially if he has money with all of the money hungry women.
I hope he is married and when he dies his wife takes him to court (because if he can be considered alive later why not sue him in the mean time) and takes all of his money that she deserved via his will.
Watching all of the purported "nerds" in this thread trying to grapple with middle school level economics as if it were a greased boar.
Freeze a jolly good fellow,
Freeze a jolly good fellow,
Freeze a jolly good fellow,
And so say all of us!!
Since there is no longer any brain activity after death, there seems to be a problem. If the brain is anything like a Turing Machine, the majority of who the person is can be the software portion (the signals, not the goo that is your brain). I myself don't think that the hardware portion (physical) of the brain is who the person is or has the momories hardwired. He would lose all his memories, history, and everything. It would be like being born into the body of a old person (assuming it's not just his brain that's being frozen). Basically, it would be the same as if he just handed the money off to some stranger.
I'm not an expert on this of course, although I'd love to do related research in grad school. It's quite interesting.
Be frozen and put in some type of casing and shot into space!!! take some things with me.
Assuming for the minute that this will ever work (which currently is likely a crock of shit), why not just buy a bunch of gold, and bury it some random place in the ocean that you've memorized the GPS co-ordinates for? Gold is unlikely to decrease in value very much, so it should hold its value over a few hundred years. If you could somehow do this yourself (anyone you pay to help will likely just come back the next month of after you're dead and take the gold), it seems fairly foolproof.
AccountKiller
Soon after he dies, his estate will reorganize and decide that meetings must take place in the south of France, and other exotic locations. 20 or so years from now, the money will run out, the body will be thawed and put in the ground.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Okay - I can see where this is helpful if you're 35 years old and dying of incurable cancer. You just get frozen until they can cure it. No problem.
But, um, what happens if you die at the age of 95 of old age? In all seriousness, what is the point of being frozen if that happens? If it works and you're revived, doesn't this just mean that now you get to live in the nursing home of the future for another couple of years before you die again?
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
He's spending a year dead for tax reasons.
On the one hand, euthenasia being legalized in the US (or at least in Arizona) would make cryonics more reliable.
On the other hand, it would be a coup for the people I think of as the "pro-death lobby". It would set the expectation that instead of wanting to live, old people should politely step aside and take a lethal dose of sleeping pills to avoid inconveniencing the younger generations.
So I guess it's not so much the legality of euthenasia I'm concerned about as the cultural expectations it might create.
I just firmly believe that if its your time to die, you're going to die regardless. Sure, we may have the technology to fix 'er up one day, but would you really want to get dunked in liquid nitrogen only to wake up many years later in the same old decrepit body suffering of the same arthritis and whatnot? They would have to find cures for all of your ailments and old age, or they would need to clone you or place your memories and consciousness into a host body (be it organic or otherwise). Creepy.
I'll take my chances with dying naturally.
And if cryonics ever becomes a real problem, I'm sure there will be fanatics and anti-corpsiclists (new word) to mob in and torch the homosapien iceboxes.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
offtopic my ass, this story is off topic. it belongs in science, maybe even politics definitely not YRO
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
as a signed up Alcor member, please allow me to disabuse you of some of your mistaken ideas:
1. "all that money": Alcor is the best cryonics organization in the world. And there are only two...
But Alcor is a nonprofit, and no one working there makes much money at all. In fact, almost everyone working there is either poor or independently wealthy.
Also Alcor does not take in enough money to even cover its expenses. Most members are middle class, but some can afford to donate large sums, which is how Alcor stays solvent.
2. Cryonics, for cryonicists, ties into the hardwired religious-epiphany-ectascy circuitry in our brains. You know that many people (most?) get a rush from religion? Well, that same religious feeling is what makes cryonics tick. It gives us an "out" just as does religion. Except of course our "out" is something that depends on real world physics and human nature.
So, cryonicists who work at cryonics organizations are sort of like monks.They do it for the love of cryoncis, and in the hope that if they can build up cryonics enough so that society accepts it and we get a lot more members, we can make it a self sufficient enterprise.
So if cryonicists working at Alcor do something bad, they screw up their own chances to be revived in the future.
Do you now understand one of the major strengths of cryonics?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Maybe not, but the OP has a point: if and when you wake up, will it do you much good to wake up a) broke, and b) without a marketable skill? You'll be about as useful to the new society as a buggy driver is to ours.
I'd rather be living on the street 500 years hence than ever haven gotten the chance to see a world wholly different from my own. That would be worth a lot of personal discomfort.
As another poster said, it's a bit like really cheap time travel - if it works.
I wouldn't even necessarily get a cryo contract just for terminal illness kinds of situations - it would be cool to go under around 90 and then wake up many decades hence. Kind of like skipping to the end of a book to see how it all turns out.
I don't have a cryo contract myself but if the certainly of being de-thawed ever approached some decent probability I could see going for it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All he will do is use the money to buy the last can of anchovies...
Some woman is going to find a way to marry this guy while he's under and bleed him dry...unless of course there's a constitutional ammendment defining marriage as between a fully animate man and a fully animate woman.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
when he could say "broohroohroohoo! my assets are frozen!"
-- All your bass are below two Hz
You assume the person dying is dying of complications related to old age.
2 14.shtml could come into play about repairing the heart.
Assume instead it's a heart failure where the slashdot story http://science.slashdot.org/science/06/01/22/2126
Lots of people of various age have heart-related problems. I can see parents wanting their kids to have a chance at life instead of dying at an age of 5 or so.
Why might not memory be more like hard drive storage, lasting some significant duration after actual computation stops? Just because a program is stored on disc and not used for some time it does not just stop working.
It would be interesting to see research on this if they can ever successfully reassly place someone in suspended animation for a long period of time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Watching over money that will never be claimed, and getting paid an extra fee to do it, has to be the greatest get rich scheme ever.
Good grief. Is this what passes for economic wisdom on Slashdot nowadays?
I suppose you think a mutual fund is some kind of giant bank vault full of greenbacks, like the place where Scrooge McDuck hoarded and fondled his stacks of cash.
It doesn't work that way at all. If you buy a share of stock, you either buy it from someone who already owns it, or you buy it directly from the company. In the first case, the prior owner takes the cash you gave him and spends it as he sees fit. In the second case, the company takes the cash and spends it as they see fit. In either case, the money circulates just as if you had bought some tangible good from the other party.
Your stock certificate is basically an IOU, good for some defined fraction of a company's value. You have to forgo the opportunity to spend the cash on something else yourself, and you hope it goes up in value due to future profits, but in the end you are most certainly putting your own real money in circulation.
A mutual fund just adds one more middleman to the transaction, but reduces some of the risk and volatility from owning individual stocks. The circulation is the same.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I read a short story in Grade 7 English, about 3 people who cryogenically froze themselves to be revived later. One wanted to be rich, but found out inflation had made him very poor. One later was revived looking to be cured of his ailment. They had cured him, but when he coughed from the cold air, they "sterilized" him because he might have the cold virus they'd wiped out by exterminating the sick. The third was looking for a way to get out of jail-time, and when he awoke, society was no different from the prison he came out of.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
And if we never figure out to successfully "unfreeze" these people . . . who gets the money then?
How is this different from Egyptian Pharao's who would like to be mummified and buried with all there treasures, so that they can come back with all there wealth still around.
History does repeats itself, in so very funny ways.
Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y-chromosome changed to X
And when it is grown
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.
(Chorus)
Clone, clone of my own,
With your Y-Chromosome changed to X
And when I'm alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.
Asimov and Garrett
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
But when he wakes up, will he squander all the money on a can of anchovies?
He's saving up for a tin of anchovies.
I can't believe I'm getting a lecture about how stupid I am from someone who can't spell "Commodore". O brave new world that has such people in it.
So a guy puts money aside and freezes himself. Assuming everything goes as planned, he wakes up in aboud 100 years and has a lot of money. He then spends most of that money making sure if he dies again, he would be frozen again. With the mostly greedy type of people doing this, they will spend all their life trying to live longer. Some where along the line, a simple mistake will occur and the person dies. What a waste of resources.
Me Pfizer was quoted as saying "My only regret is ... that I have bone-itis!"
I thought it was pretty much impossible to revive a body post death, and it seems much more likely for reanimation if the person were frozen while still alive.
I'd say this guy is a tad bit optimistic of what will happen to him when the technology comes around to unthaw and reanimate him. Initially the technology will have flaws I'm sure and guess who will get to be the guinea pig? Or he could end up some awful frankenstein creation because some crooked drug corporation says its in the best interests of humanity to carry out certain experiments. Pretty scary I'd say. Or maybe they'll want to subject him to all kinds of research into age old diseases or genetic makeup. Who's going to care about the rights of some 200 year old frozen corpse? If he thinks he'll get a fair shake at a fresh start, that just makes me laugh I'm sorry to say.
Why would they? This scheme is basically substituting banks for government and legitimate heirs.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Yup, sounds like the futures going to be awesome
...
...
Giant Robots, Flying Cars, Cures to all diseases
But the only question I really have is...
What are we going to do with all the mansicles?
Oooooh, This one's Dumbass Flavored ^_^
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
All that will happen is that Mom and her three sons will somehow use Pamela Andersen's head to get his PIN number, and withdraw all his cash. Then he'll have to be a delivery boy.
If everyone follows his plan, I guess we'll have to find a "cure" to overpopulation damn quick.
$10 million is worth me telling my grandkids about this story so they can steal his frozen corpse, burn it, and say they are him mysteriously ressurected only to squander away the $10 million on 150 years of back issues of nintendo power.
If he has any family at all they (and the attorneys representing them) will get it all.
You heard me... Tax the icicles.
I just wish these guys would admit they got the idea from Hotblack Desiato.
Well, it might be instant from OUR or YOUR forecasting perspective, but imagine having and reliving a series of nightmares for that duration of years. I don't know about YOU, but I regularly "re-dream" dreams I've had from years back. I guess it could be a type of "dream sequencing", but fortunately for me, they're not horrors.
As for Pizer and the like, they might actually go gray and writhe in sleep. If being monitored, they might be pulled out of cryostatis to be "checked on". Plans might be disrupted.
Worse, he might decide to live out his final ill years or days (or -- if they botch the "wakeup procedure", minutes) rather than suffer repeat horrors.
Or, even worse, he might wake up into a quagmire of re-written laws which deprive him of his earnings or accumulations whereas if he's never awakened, he could be "perpetually grandfathered".
Maybe there could be a "reseeding" clause in the insurance policy so that every 25 years he's siphoned of some of his "jewell material" for procreation purposes. Might help him have some "external immortality" to accompany him on his sleeping journey.
But, in the meantime, it's likely he'll awaken to find his ass robbed as a form of "Sleeping Booty" (pun intended). If he's frozen over some blindness, then I guess sleeping booty would be "robbed blind"...
word image: tentacle (and, I was thinking "testicle"... Well, I guess to see if he's really asleep, they can give him a "test tickle", hehehe)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Personally I think the chance of this working is vanishingly remote for a whole bunch of reasons.
But that aside, has anyone considered that anyone reanimated by a future civilization likely will not understand human languages of the day? Unless you die pretty young, your chance of ever becoming fluent will be small. Old people don't do well learning new languages.
I think it's wonderful they're going to such pains to preserve themselvers for future intelligent beings to dig up and wonder about.
It's been about a decade since I read it, but I think there was a trust of his, and the managers invested reasonably well, and it eventually gained a majority of the world's wealth. Again, been a long time, so I don't want to swear on too many details.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
He'll have to spend it all for a drink of water and a ride into town.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
When they wake up to find themselves thawed broke.
I wonder if Uma Thawman would perform in a "Chill Bill" film...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Lookit man (woman/whatever), the only unnatural or incorrect thing about abortion is that we don't wait till they're born and then eat them as so many other species due in the natural course of life.
Yeeesh, seriously, get over it. It's not like anyone state institution iss forcing or even coercing you to getting pregnant and then aborting.
Incidentally, the pro-abortion lobby consists of 3 people who like pointing out the idiocy. There are actually only two choices in this arena. Pro-choice (Better defined as pro-availability) and anti-choice (best described as mysogynistic anti-availability fundie nutbags).
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
I guess if you plan on skipping out on one of life's certainty's, you may as well plan on skipping the other!
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
important quotes ....
leave money to himself when he DIES
when he REVIVES...
guess they will answer the question of:
is there life after death?
wonder if this will also work if his head is smashed in
enuf jibberish.
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
How dare the courts ever render a legal ruling that this would be "Tax Evasion". To permit such a ruling to exist would set a "chilling effect", in effect, effecting a Tax INvasion. SO, maybe he better freeze his cash with him, and pray the currency is still legal tender.
In the mean time, if he sits too long, he might literally "freeze his ass off".
Now, if this system were from Scandanavia, (Skinned an Avian, for the birds) or "Iceland... hmmm, Ice Lan-*ick Preservations", (for men of large repute)... I guess females could have "Extrauterine Preservations" Oh. It's LATE...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
With a brain like that, he'd wind up blowing all that money on the last can of anchovies in the world.
Nope, checked your account profile just now, looked at your post history, and you're deefinatly crazy. I mean, I'm pro-life myself, but I know a wackjob when I see one.
Except for the fact that I think the probability of success is so small as to make it not worthwhile.
When the Pharohs were placed in their reincarnation devices (The pyramids) they tried to take it all with them, too. I expect the results will be similar for the modern day people who are trying to cheat death. I don't believe that our current level of technology can preserve a body well enough to fix it at some future date and I don't believe that the current infrastructure is reliable enough to keep a body frozen for 100 years much less several. In fact, I doubt the current bunch of frozen dead guys will hold up as long as the Egyptians who were mummified thousands of years ago. My money's on them all quietly ending up in some medical waste bin somewhere within 40-50 years time.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Nobody lives forever... nobody SHOULD live forever... and if thats wrong and there is some rare person who actually deserves to live forever, it's certainly not YOU. Having accumulated weath doesn't make you deserving - if anything, it probably rules you out.
This space available.
Or you can go create a corporation to do some of your holdings for you, if you've got enough money - buy a large ranch and turn it into a nature reserve with a deal that you can get it back if you get revived.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"We worked that out in the courts ages ago. The dead can't own property. It's not fair to the heirs."
Paraphrase from "A World Out of Time", by Larry Niven
It was a short story in Future Shock, IIRC.
I read it in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy first :)
But good reference.
What I got from Niven was that transplant tech gets MUCH better, and Congress passes a law allowing harvesting of organs from the human corpsicles. People go along because they see those that freeze themselves waiting for a better future as freeloaders, and heck it's more important for me to live forever than somebody else, especially a corpsicle. Then of course comes harvesting organs from prisoners and changing the law to increase the prison population until finally artificial organ farms catch up and solve the problem.
Why hasn't anyway made a Gil "The Arm" Hamilton movie yet...
-- John.
My cryonightmare is that they will wake me up in 500 years and I will find that all of the bugs in the software I maintain (still in use, mind you) are still frozen in time exactly as I left them. And of course, since I touched the code last and no one understands these archaic languages C and VB6 (or these ancient english comments) rather than getting to enjoy the benefits of our advanced civilization where no one works I will spend the rest of my life fixing bugs since they spent all that money to wake me up to fix them...
He may wake the richest man on Earth, but only because there will be marxist communism on Earth in 100 years and money will cease to exist.
The production means of mankind will be so vastly increased by then that poverty, hunger and homelessness would be eliminated long ago and everybody will be able to take according to his/her needs. People will create (work) not because of necessity, but because of joy, as to work (to transform the environment, to create meaningfully) is one of the three basic gifts that differentiates humans from animals: speech, thinking and work.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels calculated all this more than a hundred years ago! This will be the future of mankind, not Adam Smith. If the marxist aim is not realized, mankind will soon exterminate itself, because the destructive means are more and more advanced every year and greed will trigger them. In 50 years everybody will be able to build a pocket nuke at home. If there is no brotherly love and egality, either the tyranns or the oppressed will explode their ones. Communismo o muerte!
P.s. Let me tell you that it is not possible to wake up dead people, because that is resurrection. Maybe Jesus and his saints can do that, but not science. The millionare should have himself frozen while terminally ill, not after he is brain-dead, no matter how soon. What ceases to exist is pernanently gone.
in the comming years it will be natural for future slashdotters to be able to handle the complexities of nano and biotech programming of nanotech assemblers and nanosensors and be able to do a lot of "matter" hacking even though there will
No it won't. Replicating nanobots are pure sci-fi, and nano assembly is going to stay industrial for at least the next 100 years. Slashdotters are not going to be able to create a woman out of sand anytime soon.
we should be able to advance nano/bio in the next 10 years to be able to demonstrate age halting/reversal in mice (the M-prize), and then, soon in people.
Halting age is not the problem. Fatuige is. People could easily live until 150 if their body did not slowly succum to acumulated wear and tear. Free radicals will turn your brain to putty long before you ever had a hope of reaching 200.
It may be hard to do, but, remember, they went to the moon in 9 years using slide rules and mainframe 32 bit computers with core memory
That's because it was possible to go to the moon. Most of the stuff you mention is about as feasable as a perpetual motion machine.
May the Maths Be with you!
... but I read it first in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The Ferengi!
Seriously, in one of the Star Trek:TNG novels (I forget which one), the businessman from that first season episode had been made the Federation Ambassador to the Ferengi.
Since no one else in the future utopia could understand them, this 20th century businessman was all set for it! It was really quite fantastic. He was all dressed up in a tuxedo (with tails), top hat, and a walking stick with a massive (fake) diamond on the handle. And all of his gear was tricked out James Bond style, like a saw in the brim of the top hat, and a locator device/communicator in the walking stick.
...in 20,000AD, the carniverous species that evolved from chihauhas has discovered a new source of frozen meat snacks.
It would be "sucked out of the economy" if he stuck it under his mattress. He has it invested. Money that's invested is funding companies that pay taxes, produce products, and do all those other useful things that money that's part of the economy does.
He will wake up with a craving for anchovies, buy the last tin on earth and in the process lose all his money to an elaborate con
Looks like Futurama to me.
Otherwise you would know this is already happening.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The Replicator Industry Association Off America will sue them all
You mean he isn't going to put it in the stock market? My retirement account is already back to where it was in 2000.
And how does he know it won't cost $100 million for 1000 Chinese with fiberoptics and nanotools to repair his jelly pan back to where he can lurch and crave human flesh.
he could wake up in 100 years the richest man in the world
As a non-popsicle member of society, I now vote to pass a law that proposes:
(1) The cost of healing and defrosting should be proportional to the size of a popsicle's assets - possibly capping the remainder returned to the popsicle at, say, 10 times the median household income - enough to get set up again with a place to live, transportation and entertainment while they attend a 2-year manditory social, history and vocational training program to reintroduce them to society and the employment market.
(2) You may only be frozen and revived once. If you suffer a life-threatening injury again, you're not going back into the freezer if it can't be fairly easily fixed with technology of the time. So when you wake up cured of cancer, don't get in a motorcycle accident.
(3) The possiblity of being selected by the guardians of your cryogenic suspension to populate an off-world colony, to augment the survival of the species on redundant planets. You're already frozen for the trip out. You may be woken up on the Moon, Mars.. or somewhere else - possibly with your body having been adjusted to function well in a different gravity. I would suggest that it be prohibited to give you a radically different body (eg: a full-body cyborg) without your express consent.
(4) Protector Of The Terran Empire. I'm still unsure about this one - but basicly the terms of your defrosting should include a clause that prohibits you from knowingly commiting acts that are detrimental or negative towards the human race. You should have a moral obligation to uphold the law and contribute positively to society. I'd note that if we ever have alien contact, those frozen before the alien contact would make the most trustworthy and loyal intelligence agents, having never grown up to know aliens.
I'd also suggest that everyone thinking about signing a freezer contract has to read Transmetropolitan first. There's a subplot involving defrosted cryogenic suvivors, who re-enter the world in a state of psychological trauma - and are extreme outcasts of society, facing segregation and violence. The world was already strange to them when they died at an old age - but now it's absolutely insane - making it difficult to them to keep their own sanity intact.
Of course, I'm still hoping for the singularity to hit within my natural lifetime and that our conciousness can be instantly transfered into an ethereal nanomachine entity on event of the death of our physical body - then we can spend the rest of the universe playing among the stars until the universe dies a heat death.
That is Futureama, not Red Dwarf
I think this is what you meant:
Holly: "Busy, Dave?"
Lister: "Well, yeah. I am, actually".
Holly: "Oh, then you won't want to know about the two super-lightspeed fighters that are tracking us".
Lister: "What?!"
Holly: "I'll leave you to your bubble blowing, mate".
Lister: "No, Hol, come on, come on".
Holly: "They're from Earth".
Lister: "Three million years away?"
Holly: "They're from the NorWEB federation".
Lister: "What's that?"
Holly: "The North Western Electricity Board. They want you, Dave".
Lister: "Me? Why? What for?"
Holly: "For your crimes against humanity".
Lister: "You what!"
Holly: "It seems when you left Earth three million years ago, you left two half-eaten German sausages on a plate in your kitchen".
Lister: "Did I?"
Holly: "You know what happens to sausages left unattended for three million years?"
Lister: "Yeah. They go all mouldy".
Holly: "Your sausages, Dave, now cover seven-eighths of the Earth's surface. Also you left seventeen pounds, fifty pence in a bank account. Thanks to compound interest you now own ninety-eight percent of all the world's wealth, but since you've hoarded it for three million years nobody's got any money except for you and NorWEB".
Lister: "Why NorWEB?"
Holly: You left a light on in the bathroom. I've got a final demand here for £180 billion.
Lister: £180 billion? You're kidding?
Holly: (wearing Groucho Marx disguise) "April fool".
Lister: "But it's not April".
Holly: "Yeah, I know, but I could hardly wait six months with a red-hot jape like that under my belt".
Stupid.
When you are frozen, the water in your cells (and your body is mostly water) does FROZE. When this happens, the shards of that frozen water puncturate your damn [censored] cells, destroying them.
So you are in even worse biological "shape" once frozen than just dead. By frozing you destroy your cells when water freezes there.
I am amazed how this simple stupid fact is never explained to people that want to get frozen.
I bet that he'll blow it all on a can of anchovies.
Make love, not reality television.
Assuming that this person could be raised from the dead a couple hundred years from now, what kind of life would that person have? This reminds me of a movie "Shawshank Redemption" when a prisoner was finally released after 40 or so years. The world around him had changed so much that he could not cope so he killed himself.
Who is to say that money will even be used in the future?
Everything this person loves so much that drives them to want to live again or live forever will probably be gone. Including friends,loved ones and their money.
They could wake up a vegetable, or wake up with some of their body parts that did not survive the trip. They could wake up without arms or legs, or sight and sound. Now, they are broke, they are desolute, and they are alone in a world where they are not comfortable AND they have no arms or legs!
Then again, science of that day may turn them into a lab experiment. A kinda living time capsule. Many dieases may be cured by then and they dont want the persom around to infect everyone with dieases of the past.
How did these people ever make enough money when when they were alive to pay for cryo since they obviously cannot think the issues through!
HEll, Apes may be running the planet!
This has to be the funniest get rich quick scheme.
This has been another valuable and informative opinion from:
Catahoula!
You get to decide what you should do and what you deserve. Other people get to decide what they should do and what they deserve. And the burden of proof is on you to show that the decisions someone else makes about their life or death have more of a negative impact on you than regulations prohibiting that class of behavior would have on everybody.
I think it was Stephen Baxter explored this idea as well in "Manifold: space". People take advantage of relativistic effects to travel a few centuries forward in time, to find themselves rich from the interest on their bank accounts. However, when the scheme becomes popular it start to seriously mess up the economy, and governments start seizing the assets of these time travellers.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
There would just be people that sold you one candy bar/computer/car along with enough material to make new ones, for a profit. I haven't thought of this extensively, but I think the world would be better (you could have anything you want, cheaply).
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
"A World Out of Time" by Larry Niven. For the people around here who, say, actually read the sci-fi by the masters, it's an amusing reference. An in-joke for the geeky thinker.
It's totally meaningless to you, I'm sure.
Could you collect your own life insurance?
Remember Hotblack Desiato in The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (the radio series / book) spending a year dead for tax reasons? The best SciFi always comes true.
shin phantomflanflinger
Even if the subject was frozen before death, the real problem is that when you defrost certain types of organic matter, it doesn't retain its original state too well; anyone who's tried to freeze strawberries will know that the resultant mush is not very appetising.
No matter how great the future advances in technology, anyone frozen now will lose all the structure of their brain cells in the process.
As far as science is concerned, cryogenics is actually a recent example of an ancient and respected art- that of separating silly people from their money.
>So coming out of cryosleep is like graduating with a
... that is a good one :) (seriously)
>liberal arts degree, then?
Hee hee
But seriously, what is this "useful to society" crap? Who gets to set that standard, and how many of us would meet it?
The parent is referring to the Star Trek TNG episode The Neutral Zone, where some people who were cryogenically frozen in the 20th centry are awaken on board the Enterprise. Hilarity ensues when the wealthy stock-broker tycoon discovers that "the economics of the 24th centry are somewhat different" - money is no longer used on Earth and his vast "fortune" is worthless.
You don't have to step into the realm of Sci-Fi to see how a perpetual trust can deviate from its founder's intent. Do you think Henry Ford would approve of what the Ford Foundation is doing today? More recently deceased rugged individualistic-type philanthropists (John M Olin, for example) have reacted by requiring thier charitable trusts to spend themselves out of existence after a period of time.
$10,000,000 at 4% "safe" interest for 100 years will total about 1.04^100*10000000= $500,000,000. Big deal, not even billionaire status! Also adjust for inflation and its really closer to $300,000,000
..but it is easyt o detect forgerties, because replication results in single-bit errors in the quantum structure of the molecules.
Or something like that.... it's been awhile since I read my TNG technical manual. But that is basicaly how they explain that they can't just replicate a person - the replicators only work at molecular level resolution, whereas the transporters use quantum level resolution, and they can't store the data.
Generally states limit the lifetime monies held by nonliving entities (trusts) to living beneficies or one generation thereafter. Family/dynasty trusts like the Rockefellers or Kennedies have to renewed each generation.
To be blunt, the even the dead cant avoid taxes forever. The concept of the dead and unborn owning assets is alien to current law.
.. when you're going to blow it all on a can of greasy anchovies anyways?
Mmmmm..... anchovies.
Imagine they had the technology and forethought 200 years ago to freeze people on the assumption that some time in the future someone would come up with the technology to thaw them out and "save" them from their terminal illness. Imagine also that we in 2006 now had the requisite thawing technology. Why should we bother to use it? The world already has enough of its own problems without reanimating a bunch of ancient aging rich snobs who are just going to complain that the music is too loud and the transport too fast. Will the modern day company, which evolved out of the company that signed the original contract 200 years ago, even bother fetching that contract from its display in the British Museum? Why should we think it will be any different 200 years from now?
The joke was originaly from a radio sketch comedy show from the early 80s called 'Son of Cliche', with the Red Dwarf writers and Chris Barrie among the cast. Barrie was the original Dave Lister.
I think the big problem in cryonics is that after 5 minutes of hypoxia, synapses start to degenerate. I really think this is a significant information loss, not something repairable. Even if you could put some of the neurons back together, you will have a hard time figuring out which neuron is connected to which and with what strength.
Perhaps your body could come back, but unless you are frozen pretty much immediately upon onset of lethal hypoxia, the brain you come back with will not be much like your own.
Eventually all the wealth on earth will be tied up in a bunch of dead people.
// This is not a sig.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Essentially, if one could just be cryogenized for a long period of time, for the sake of making money, more and more people would do it, thus reducing the economic activity and the interest rates, in the end, you'd have a balance between the loss of "losing" a few years and gaining not so much more interests. Arbitrages using cryo would soon disappear.
\u262D = \u5350
All I can say is, let it go. You don't own anything in perpetuity, not even the water and dirt your body is made of.
So true. That is what corporations are for.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Has anyone seen a population graph? It looks like a perfect exponential curve, and it skyrockets in the past century.
If we start bringing people back to life, we're only going to make the overcrowding problem much, much worse.
Two other thoughts:
What obligation do you have to unthaw people? Maybe I've got your frozen body from 150 years ago in my lab. But who would know if I just threw it out instead? Prepaying for it does you no good when you have no idea if the company will be around, and no one who was a witness to your contract.
And what does this do to religion? People struggle to reconcile evolution with the bible's stories of creation (well, mostly, people just argue with the other side, but some try to reconcile the two beliefs). What will the religious ever do when we start bringing people back to life?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
"That's because it was possible to go to the moon. Most of the stuff you mention is about as feasable as a perpetual motion machine."
How remarkably ignorant. Nothing is ever known to be possible until it is done. Having a living being go to the moon and return home safely had not been previously known. No previous case demonstrated its' possibility.
Those items you mention are demonstrated within natural biology. It is most certainly possible. Assuming we amass enough knowledge and skill. If they were not possible, you and I and all other forms of life would have died from old age many generations before multicellular life could have formed.
The chance that any of these people will ever be re-animated is zero. It's not like the world has need for more people, the world population will be 9 billion by mid-century. Further, there is no ability to reanimate frozen fish, let lone frozen people, and I cannot imagine a less urgent area for bio-medical research.
At some point the heirs of these people (or the government, which always need more money) will turn off the refrigerator, cremate the remains and take the money.
Come on folks, learn to deal with the fact that when you die you will be dead (physically at any rate, no opinion is expressed herein on religious doctrines) and your things will belong to others. You can give them away wisely or unwisely, but you can't take it with you.
P.S. the article did not say whether the frozen had filed an estate tax return or whether they were still paying income taxes, but they have to do one or the other. Since a human body in liquid nitrogen is dead, whether or not it may live again, I am going with the likelyhood that the IRS will be wanting their Estate Tax.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
True. But if they play D&D, they can make a porn golem out of soapstone. Or simply cast "Summon sex partner".
Moderators: if anyone answers and actually knows from which supplement this reference is from, mod them informative. They've earned it ;).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Just think, if he'd frozen himself five years ago, and invested his trust in southern Louisiana land and Enron stock.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
The state-of-the-art in cryonics today is *vitrification*, not freezing. Very high quality brain preservation is possible when freezing is prevented with cryoprotectants
v ation1.html
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S upport.html
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/braincryopreser
Changes in dendritic spines cited by one poster as evidence that 5 minutes of clinical death is irreversible are in fact known to be *spontaneously reversible*!
http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/25/
The world record for recovery of large animals without brain damage after intervals of clinical death at normal temperature using advanced resuscitation technology is now 16 minutes, not 5 minutes.
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/annals.html
Even just post-resuscitation hypothermia, hemodilution, and hypertension will get you to 13 minutes
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
The brain doesn't go "kaboom" after a few minutes of circulatory arrest. Foreseeable technologies will likely eventually extend the reach of resuscitation medicine to one hour or more of clinical death at normal temperatures. A person with a stopped heart is fundamentally A SICK PERSON that doesn't really die until much later.
On top of it all, all this is moot for cryonics patients who suffer attended cardiac arrest, for whom the preservation process is started immediately, the first step being restoration of blood circulation and oxygenation.
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/Cardiopulmonary
People should do at least some minimum checking before making confident pronouncements about the stupidity of others. There are some very sharp people behind this field
http://www.cryoletter.org/
I really don't think of myself as being more worthy of life than other people, or somehow so special as to be worth preserving for the future, or anything like that.
I just really like being alive and I don't want to die. I've never once wavered from this desire, and I honsetly don't think I ever will, no matter how much hardship life offers me.
Very early in life I faced this, and admitted to myself that I will do whatever it takes to survive as long as possible as long as I don't have to harm other human beings.
Then, and now, there are three basic options open to me: studying aging, participating in cryonics, and faith in the afterlife. I keep an open mind about all three, but given the lack of hard evidence for the existance of an afterlife in the literal sense, I am concentrating my efforts on the first two.
I don't begrudge other people a long life. In fact, the more the merrier... and the sooner we grow enough balls to admit that we want to LIVE, the sooner we'll force ourselves to solve the technical and social obstacles that stand in our way. And the sooner people will really start taking the long view about how we should be living upon our as yet only planet.
Money, yes. Land, no.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
If I had a spare $10 million, I would use it to hedge my bets, but not by putting it in trust for myself. I'd give it to Alcor right now on condition that they use it to build a windfarm and solar array large enough to operate compressor units in order to produce their own liquid nitrogen should there be any disruption in the supply.
The second biggest threat to Alcor after legal harassment is extended disruptions in the energy supply or the transportation/distribution networks. From my conversations with other cryonicists, the consensus seems to be "let's ignore the problem and hope it never, ever happens". If they believe that, they really are the wishful thinkers that "normal" people accuse them of being. I feel that given a period of centuries, it's a near certainty that Scottsdale, AZ will experience at least one disruption of one sort or another in its liquid nitrogen shipments lasting a month or longer.
The one indispensible input Alcor needs from the outside world is liquid N2. As long as there's plenty of that, the dewars can function without electricity. By paying for a robust local renewable energy grid, Pizer could have made himself not only cancer and heart disease proof, but also peak-oil resistant and economic chaos resistant... along with all the fellow cryonicists interred at the Alcor facility.
If he isn't at least renting out the land he owns for the hundred years he's dead, then he's stupid (or at least making suboptimal use of his resources).
Right ... but it means that someone else is *not* owning it and receiving the benefits thereof. I'm all in favor of property rights, but this is ridiculous!
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
> Then how do you explain the f'ed up Copyright system??
Apparently, they do not think that retroactively extending copyright terms in a scheme where every 20 years we lengthen it by 20 years (thus, not allowing anything to escape copyright) is perpetual.
This is most likely because the heat death of the universe will prevent life from living in this universe forever and while copyright may last untold trillions of years (and perhaps much longer), that amount of time is still very finite. Further, life on Earth will probably be doomed by something or another long before that.
In other words, don't worry: copyright isn't forever, even if it would seem to be destined to outlive us all.
This is correct. You name Alcor as the beneficiary on your life insurance policy. That's what pays for your suspension.
I'm sure that the trust fund Pizer set up is much more elaborate than that, and goes far beyond just paying for suspension. His might not even involve life insurance, dunno. Most of us are in a very different situation than he is.
If, after you're done with your Futurama jokes and "moral" indignation you secretly want to look into this further, read the cryonics funding information page. If you're uncomfortable explaining the whole thing cold to an insurance agent (they're not the most inaginative and open minded people in the world, after all) Alcor also maintains a list of insurance agents who have worked with Alcor members in the past. A phone conversation with one of these folks, a physical checkup a week later, pay your premiums and Alcor fees, and *poof* you too have a cryo contract.
As far as I can tell the main arguments against cryo are "It probably won't work" and "It feels wrong, somehow, and I don't want other people doing it".
The "won't work" argument falls flat immediately because even though there are a lot of risks, nobody has yet proposed any options more likely to work which are mutually exclusive with cryonics. The worst thing that can happen is that you'll die anyway, and be no worse off than if you never got a contract.
I think the "feels wrong" argument will not be able to prevail either, because the will to live is stronger than the will to stop living, and even more so than the will to prevent others from living at no benefit to one's own self. Furthermore, individuals who are so weary of life that they think death is a good thing may also be too passive to win out over the numerically smaller but more determined individuals who want to indefinitely postpone their deaths.
So they can't cover their expenses well? So what is there to assure a person that Alcor will still be around in even 100 years? What happens to the corpsicles if they go bankrupt?
Alcor is actually two separate legal entities: the Alcor Life Extension Foundation and the Alcor Patient Care Trust. The Patient Care Trust is financially independent. It owns the property and the entire facility outright, as well as the actual insurance payouts from suspended members (before anyone even goes there, it's set up such that it can't be raided Enron-style). The Trust's sole concern is the care and maintenance (and eventual reanimation) of patients who are in suspension. The maintenance costs are less than most people think (for example: the dewars don't use electricity, and only need to have their liquid nitrogen topped off periodically), and the interest that the Trust earns is more than enough to meet those costs in perpetuity without dipping into the principal. In short, barring a total collapse of society it's not going anywhere.
Alcor Life Extension Foundation is the "face" of Alcor, and handles the actual suspensions, as well as research, PR, training, publishing Cryonics magazine, etc. It rents the facility from the Trust, employs the majority of Alcor's staff, and has significantly higher operating costs than the Trust, without the benefit of a self-sufficient source of income. This is what the grandparent post was referring to.
I think it's important to understand that ALEF needs the PCT, but the PCT does not need ALEF. In the unlikely event ALEF were to fold (I say unlikely because they've been around for over 30 years and have only grown more stable over time), the patients currently in suspension would not be affected one bit. Given that they are the most vulnerable people in the entire operation, I think it makes very good sense that the organization is structured in this way. I wouldn't be wearing this funky bracelet if it were otherwise.
As an aside, almost without exception every concern or objection that I've seen brought up in this thread directly relating to cryonics is addressed on Alcor's web site. A little research goes a long way.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
Actually, the body is "ruined" when the original relevant cell structures can no longer be inferred from the current structure. Given that even with current technology tissue samples, fetuses, and some entire organs can be preserved for an arbitrary period of time, thawed, and successfully used it's clear that the issue isn't so simple.
A lot depends on the quality of the suspension, and that can vary significantly depending on the circumstances surrounding the patient's "death". If a body is found after several days then yes, the outlook is grim. Generally a patient isn't just "frozen", but instead goes through a rather involved process to minimize cellular damage using either "standard" cryoprotectants or, more recently, a vitrification solution. There is abundant information available on these processes and their outcomes.
Please get your facts straight. I suggest starting here: http://www.alcor.org/sciencefaq.htm but by all means, go elsewhere and do research from other sources! Just please educate yourself on the topic before spouting off about it here.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
You might wake up someday, but you'll be broke, jobless, a relative idiot, nowhere to live, no friends or family, and maybe will have a crushing medical bill.
;-) By this I assume you mean "will have great difficulty adjusting to life in the future." It seems to me that the traits which will make someone better able to adapt- curiosity, a sense of adventure, zeal for life, willingness to think outside of the world they were originally taught- are the same traits which make one more likely to sign up for cryonics in the first place. It's a self-selecting group.
:-)
Actually, after the first one or two people have been revived it's likely that the technology involved will be commodity and not to terribly expensive. Regardless, the cost is covered by the Patient Care Trust. If you don't have a trust set up then yes, you may come out of it broke, but not in debt.
Broke? Set up a trust like in the original article. There are a couple of different avenues to take in this regard.
Jobless? Probably at first. In all likelihood though, after the first successful resuscitation the rest of the patients (at least the ones who were sufficiently well-preserved as to be recoverable) will probably come out of the tank pretty quickly, allowing them to provide a support structure for each other as they're re-integrated into society.
Idiot? Speak for yourself!
No friends or family? Again, speak for yourself! I have a few close friends who are already signed up for cryonics, and most of my closest loved ones are in the process of signing up right now. Additionally, the cryonics community is pretty small, and relatively tightly-knit (given geographic diversity). I've met many cryonicists, and despite varying backgrounds, personalities, ages, and "kookiness levels" (I'm being frank here), I've noticed a single commonality between them: I like them. Every one I've met has struck me as an interesting and friendly person, and I'll happily go into the future with them. Even the kooky ones.
Thanks, but I think I might prefer to stay dead.
To each his own, I suppose. Best of luck with that. To my way of thinking, cryonic suspension is the second worst thing that can happen to you, but still worth the nearly trivial cost.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
It's only selfish and materialistic if you think that the world is better off without you. Personally, I don't think it's at all arrogant to believe that I'm capable of being a productive member of society- present or future.
I may not be a "great man", but I'm not a parasite on society. I have a lot to contribute. Your comment indicates that you feel otherwise about yourself.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
I take objection to so much of what you're ranting about here that it's a challenge to keep this from becoming a counter-rant, but I'm going try by focussing only on your basic question.
u nd.html
The Alcor Patient Care Trust is legally obligated to care for those in suspension until they are repaired/revived. The maintenance costs for the patients in suspension is low, but at some point it becomes cheaper to revive them than to keep them perpetually suspended.
Additionally, in order to be on the board of the Trust it's a requirement that you be a signed Alcor member. Additionally, of the 5 people on the board, at least 3 of them must have a relative or significant other in suspension.
Check here for more information:
http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustf
-Cybrex
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
I just firmly believe that if its your time to die, you're going to die regardless.
I'm really not sure how to respond to this, as the basic premise is completely alien to me, but since it's a philosophical viewpoint I think that ultimately everyone needs to decide for themselves what value they place on their own life, so I respect your right to make that determination for yourself.
would you really want to get dunked in liquid nitrogen only to wake up many years later in the same old decrepit body suffering of the same arthritis and whatnot?
Given the alternative, YES! However, that's a misrepresentation of the situation. The technology that will enable us to cure old age- doing cellular repair at the molecular level- will be a precursor to the technology that will be required to repair and resuscitate cryonics patients. You won't wake up in a decrepit body.
They would have to find cures for all of your ailments and old age, or they would need to clone you or place your memories and consciousness into a host body (be it organic or otherwise).
Well, yeah. No argument there.
Creepy.
That's a subjective assessment. In my opinion, rotting in the ground and having everything that I've learned and become being reduced to worm food in truly creepy!
I have to ask- do you find organ transplants "creepy"? How about artificial limbs?
And if cryonics ever becomes a real problem
A real problem? Huh? Kindly explain to me how saving lives is a problem. Do you have any suggestions for solving the heart surgery problem or the vaccinations against polio problem? After that maybe we can work on a solution to the problem of doctors washing their hands before operating, since this rampant "problem" is needlessly saving countless lives each year- far more than cryonics will ever hope to!
I'm sure there will be fanatics and anti-corpsiclists (new word) to mob in and torch the homosapien iceboxes.
Fanatics indeed. I'm willing to accept that you feel an urge to die at some divinely-determined time. In return, I respectfully request that you keep the torches and pitchforks to yourself and allow the rest of us to live our lives as we see fit.
-Cybrex
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
Whenever anyone owns anything exclusively it means nobody else is owning it -- but whether there's still value to the economy is a completely separate matter. Remember, the argument I'm opposing is that this kind of action is somehow an economy-damaging "loophole", removing value which could otherwise be used productively, which government can and should be rightly used to fight.
Consider the case where the land is rented or leased out (to some entity presumably getting value from it): The income from said rent or lease is going to go into investments, which feed the economy by making funds available for business use... [same argument as in the earlier post in this thread goes here].