Why Don't You Cryonic?

Photo Credit: Jurii

Cryonics is a paradox to me. On its face, it is deep optimism for science and the progress of humanity. But it is surrounded by myths and an icky feeling of selfishness. Tim Urban’s comprehensive post goes deep on the subject, describing the current state of cryonics, how it works, the philosophy behind the movement, and dispelling common myths. I encourage you to read it before going further. He ends up defining cryonics as follows:

"Cryonics is the process of pausing people in critical condition who can’t accept the concept of death, in the hopes that people from the future will be able to save them."

Who wouldn’t want the option to live longer, be cured of disease, and keep enjoying life? Why not throw your hat in the ring and take the gamble to see if humans can conquer death? But thinking more on it, an irony emerged, the same scientific reasoning to make this possible also has reasons to not even bother. What if human fallacy is believing in the future, what if the future doesn’t care about the past?

Here are reasons why people invest in cryonics, and reasons the future may not care:

Family. People want to see their relatives, see their descendants and descendants want to meet their ancestors. But only up to a point. You may be extremely interested, but a descendant only cares if they have known about you or heard about you enough to be curious. Generally this tops out after about 3 generations. Most people never meet their great great grandparents, and barely know anything about them. A deep connection is hard to forge without any previous recollection. Many would not know to care about someone so far removed, let alone without a body.

Technology. People believe the technology to reanimate humans will exist in the future, not to mention the technology to cure cancer. It’s safe to assume that a civilization that could reanimate humans is quite advanced, possibly on par with superintelligent AI. However, the same tech that may save you, may also render you obsolete. What do the vitrified have to offer? They would be backward souls, a burden on the rest of society as they attempt to learn to live in a new world. What if the new world is no longer human-run?

To put this in perspective, if someone offered to give you the top-of-the-line supercomputer from 1968 in full working condition, for free, would you take it? No, nobody would. It wouldn’t be compatible with the modern world; the effort to maintain and upgrade it would be monumental compared to the value it would bring; it would just be trashed. Max Tegmark’s considers many of these scenarios within the realm of AI in his eye opening book, Life 3.0.

Put it another way, your net present value now, in the present, is much greater than in the future.

History. People want to see the future and all of its amazing advances. Let’s assume that the technology was there and people were willing to put up with you, ignoring the tech argument, what then? Well, most likely they will want to study you, or make you a form of entertainment, like a toy. You’d essentially be a museum piece that advanced lifeforms would pay to observe in your natural habitat. That means no new technology for you.

Don’t believe me? Think of any ancestral, or rare, species humans have encountered, where do those species end up? Typically in the museum, lab, or dissection. The exception is if you happen to be someone very consequential, like an Albert Einstein. And this is a tiny exception, how many famous people that lived before 1 B.C. would be of interest to you?

Live longer. Well, what if you’re fine with being an artifact, useless to society, and socially isolated? You just want more conscious years on this planet, and want to come back when your illness, ailment, disease is cured, then when should you reappear? Once the cure is discovered? Let’s say that’s 100 years from now, why not come back in 500 years to see more technological advancements? Or why not 5000 years? Do you simply go on for 50 years at a time then “re-cryonicize” in 500 year increments? Can society operate with buckets of people trading places, between a cryonic state and a normal state, and continue to progress? Does this make you an observer in the world, without the ability to affect it; a living version of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle? This is the underlying existential question around immortality, that I have no philosophical grounds of answering.

But after all that, I circle back to cryonics and the deep optimism that it brings. Perhaps, I’m not evolved enough to reason that my concerns will be rectified in the future and my assumptions are flawed. This is the strongest argument for cryonics because, at its root, the future can solve all of these issues. A belief that an ever evolving civilization will achieve perfect altruism and be able to save and restore humans from millions of years past, give them fulfilling lives, and allow them to enjoy the fruits of technological advancement. Maybe virtual uploads will suffice, or technology will enhance humans by orders of magnitude. Either way is possible in this scientific utopia, as long as the future wants it.