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Would you freeze yourself?
electricitylikesme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Cryogenics!
The actual practice today is pretty silly, in the sense that the people who do it wait until they're pronounced dead, then get frozen, and the freezing technique then continues to crack and fuck up their cells. Of course, they may have the last laugh if it turns out that in the year 2200 a bunch of scientists start unfreezing these people and restoring them as a practical test of nanite healing technology. So who knows!
Anyway - the point of this thread is to ask what you think the consequences of a practical suspended animation technology would be. That is, a method by which we could effectively halt the processes of life safely, and chill your tissue to prevent long-term degradation. Exactly how this would be accomplished is up to your imagination in determining your response - I tend to imagine two plausible worlds:
(1) where the process is fairly invasive and surgical. Major organs have filtering clamps added to their blood supplies so the right preservatives can be targeted at each one, the brain is put on artificial life support and specially preserved etc. By the end of the process you're very much some type of cyborg, and you're going to be spending at minimum a month or two in recovery when you're unfrozen. This would be expensive.
(2) basically you get an injection or IV of preservative *stuff* (some type of nanotechnological drug delivery system to accomplish what we're doing above) and then you're frozen by whatever staged process is necessary to make it work. This would be cheap and accessible really, probably easier to recover from too.
The option I don't imagine (but you're free to) is the Fry "trip and fell into the chamber" one.
My question to D&D citizens though is n-fold: would you get yourself placed in suspended animation? When would you do it and why? And what do you think the wider social and fiscal consequences of a practical use of this technology would be?
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What a time to be alive!
but they're listening to every word I say
I've been kinda biding my time and looking around for cryogenic firms that would fit my needs, but I'm definitely going to grab the appropriate cryogenic insurance once I settle down (preferable one with a nearby cryogenic institution) as the price is low enough for me to jump on it if only to placate the sci-fi geek inside me - with a bonus of potential (no matter how small) resurrection in the future.
I'm not naive enough to consider the current technology capable of freezing down neurological tissue without causing irreparable damage, which is solved by the current cryogenic companies by only freezing you down when you're legally dead - at which point the "irreparable damage" to your brain wouldn't be your concern.
But with technology that actually work, I'd work long enough to save up a substantial sum of most would go into long-term bonds while I go for a long sleep for a couple of decades or centuries. The money would hopefully grow and I'd have an (hopefully) exciting future to look forward to.
No freezing for moi thanks!
Sense of moral obligation.
That's why they did it in Trans Met, anyway.
And then the poor bastards were tossed in the street and nearly went crazy with culture shock.
And then some of them were brainwashed to be used for assassinations.
...Kinda turned me off the whole idea, that.
Why I fear the ocean.
What if it was a really hot girl?
Actually, wasn't there a futuristic version of sleeping beauty based on this exact premise, where a spaceman from the future is searching for a special code or something to unfreeze an attractive young lady who had been frozen for hundreds of years and whose beauty had now become a rarity in the grim dark future?
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Besides, the things I care for in this world are in the now. Freezing and restarting in the future doesn't sound that cool if it means abandoning what I got now.
Like, I'd like to visit the future but as a tourist.
But if the future looks good smart people will want to be frozen and then the future becomes shitty because everyone left is dumb.
But I wouldn't do it unless I had a very, very small amount of time left to live. Like, on the order of days. Because I wouldn't want to sacrifice whatever time I had left on the off chance that maybe someday someone can cure me. I also wouldn't do it if I had loved ones, because I would rather spend every moment with them. And I would have to be relatively young and able - if I'm already bed-ridden, I see little sense in freezing myself just so maybe I can spend a few more years still lying in a bed.
wouldn't they basically become an object of study?
Either "frozees" (coining that term) end up being special cases or nobody will care. Which means it's either "ooh this animal is making noises, let's give it a flu-virus" or "woop, this world is batshit crazy and you won't be able to deal anyway"
edit: cool sci fi idea. kinda like Omega Man.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
The backlog of computer games that I would acquire in the meantime would take an entire life to work through.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Of course, this would require functional cryogenics, an assload of money, etc, etc. It's not reasonable or likely to happen, just something I always thought might be an interesting (if one way and ultimately tragic) experiment.
all it takes is a single generation for technology to befuddle most people
Freeze me the hell up.
if so, then freeze my ass. i hate, and am terrified by, the notion of ceasing to be. there is so much that i want to do, and i really really like being alive.
practically the consequences would be felt in overpopulation. however, it might be reasonable to suspect that should the technology exist to put human beings in a state of suspended animation, technology to colonize the ocean or outer space would also be plausible. in which case the human race would spread quickly to all the space that we could put ourselves. which would be cool on its own.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
No thanks. Even if I did get unfrozen with psychic powers.
If you are conscious, entropy is most likely proceeding apace vis your body so I wouldn't worry.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
I would be frozen in a heartbeat on the condition that they'd thaw me out once star travel was affordable however. Exploring works for me more than immortality.
I seriously think I may have been born 50 or so years too soon and will have just died before the whole "immortal" robot body thing is figured out.
I don't think they can cure aging, but robotic bodies hooked up to the brain? I think that is something that will happen...
I mean the beginnings are being tested right now: (IMO) (1:10 for the craziness)
The idea that humans may become immortal isn't really sci-fi anymore. It's getting close.
you know you can learn new technology
like how people born in the future will learn that technology
it's not some insurmountable obstacle, and a pretty tiny price to pay for living in the fuckin' future
kpop appreciation station i also like to tweet some
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
If you know your cell biology, this will prohibit any metabolic action, of which apoptosis (programmed cell death) is one of.
Everything halts, but nothing "dies", and if it is done in sterile conditions nothing decays. Right now the problems are getting rapid gas perfusion on large animals (works on mice, not on pigs).
I think it is some hydroflouric gas? I can't remember.
Anyway the point is that if I have control of myself until near the end of my life (assuming I don't snuff it in an accident) I would totally "suspend" myself if the tech has progressed far enough and nothing else can grant something close to immortality.
Displacing yourself from interpersonal relationships would be very sad.
Waking up in the future would be way worse than getting uprooted to a new highschool in tenth grade that's for sure.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
This makes sense for legions of freezers, which means freezing is probably a low percentage play. Still, I'm pretty sure a least a few freezers get defrosted as witnesses to the past.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
I was not so much expressing a fear that no one would defrost me (because they would think I was a dick) than I was expressing a desire not to be a dick in the first place. If the rationale for freezing is something like: "I have terminal cancer; maybe in the future they'll have figured it out," then sure, go nuts. But if it's strictly: "the future is probably awesome! Fuck the present," then no, not so much. Someone has to live in the present, and it looks like we drew the short straw on that one, so we might as well make the most of it.