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Comment by s_q_b | Hacker News Reader

Who's to say that the choice to survive in the distant future is desirable?

Everyone you know and love will have been long dead, and any society with both the means and will to revive you may have undesirable objectives in mind, e.g. a life of slavery or military conscription. From a global perspective, what are the potential impacts on the species of an eternal elite, obsessed with life extension, creating an ever-growing class of ancient capital holders?

Assuming both constant human nature and the lack of an self-reinforcing intelligence cascade (i.e. no singularity event), survival is not an obviously rational choice.

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> Who's to say that the choice to survive in the distant future is desirable?

Each individual for themselves, obviously.

> Everyone you know and love will have been long dead

This obviously contradicts the original assumption that you might actually get revived. Because if you can, so can others.

> may have undesirable objectives in mind, e.g. a life of slavery or military conscription

I find it hard to believe that it will ever be cheaper to revive dead frozen humans than simply let living humans breed new humans for free. And plenty of people now living aren't even cost-competitive against the machines of 2014 or 2024, nevermind the machines of a society capable of reviving the dead. Both as a slave and as a soldier, you're likely to be horribly inadequate.

Honestly the bigger question is why the future people would bother to wake you up at all. Maybe history buffs would be happy to talk to you. Maybe the world gets so rich that a few weird enthusiasts can afford to do it on their own.

But the bottom line is that if the future turns out to be awful, you can always choose to die again. Plenty of people would be willing to have a look around first.

>> Who's to say that the choice to survive in the distant future is desirable?

>Each individual for themselves, obviously.

Agreed. Merely pointing out the choice does not have a clear answer.

>This obviously contradicts the original assumption that you might actually get revived. Because if you can, so can others.

Only those with spare wealth and foresight, which comprises a vanishingly small part of the current population. Most people's loved ones are unlikely to be part of that small population.

>But the bottom line is that if the future turns out to be awful, you can always choose to die again.

Any society that has mastered the technology necessary to revive you can certainly master the technology necessary to physically or chemically restrain you.

>Honestly the bigger question is why the future people would bother to wake you up at all.

That is the question. And I fear, upon waking, one may not like the answer...

I would personally expect "everyone you know and love" to be the reason any of us schmucks have a hope of being revived.

Even if there is no economic or scientific reason to revive a frozen, preserved person, there could still be sentimental reasons. If my grandfather were frozen and reviveable, and not dead and buried, I would want to revive him. If it were remotely within my financial means, I would save for decades, mortgage or sell everything I own, take on any debt I could trick people into lending me, if it technologically possible to bring a parent back to life.

It is not difficult to imagine a chain of un-freezing in some distant future. Children unfreeze parents; parents unfreeze grandparents; grandparents unfreeze great-grandparents. As long as there is some tenuous connection between the preserved and the living, at some price point a living old friend or third cousin will want to revive the preserved. Add in the odd charity for the few friendless frozen and it is not hard to imagine any frozen person eventually being revived, technology permitting.

> If my grandfather were frozen and reviveable, and not dead and buried, I would want to revive him. If it were remotely within my financial means, I would save for decades, mortgage or sell everything I own, take on any debt I could trick people into lending me, if it technologically possible to bring a parent back to life.

Of course you feel this way. Everyone does. And that's the problem. Imagine most of the world's productive output being redirected to the massive project of unfreezing generations of cryogenically preserved ancestors.

This is one of the cheerier possibilities. Most of the reasons that occur to me that an advanced society, lacking an intelligence cascade, would want to conjure a large number of functioning highly-educated consciousnesses are decidedly darker.

This possibility, and a thousand other unforeseen individual and societal implications of cryogenics, deserve debate.

We are already on the cusp of rapid automation of our current economy. Traditional models of how labor is distributed or utilized will, and have been, going out the window for quite some time.

But I think you can approximate well enough that by the time the technology arises to resurrect the cryopreserved, it won't require the entire effort of humanity to revive their frozen forbearers, because most of humanity won't be putting out any effort to begin with. We are already 20 years away from half the working population being rendered obsolete by automation. If it is something machines cannot do, it just lets us utilize untapped human labor in the future. If it is something machines can do, we will rapidly deploy the necessary infrastructure to enable the automation of revival, and it won't be a problem of anyone "affording" revival, the machines will just revive all the people they can.

The next step in your calculation is to ask, "What are the constraints on production in a society that has ultra-high automation but no artificial intelligence?"

There is only one: intelligence. I can see such a society going to great lengths to obtain that resource. The incentives to revive an individual for unfortunate purposes in such a society would be very large.

How are the purposes unfortunate? I see the connection between the cryopreserved often being smart folk, so that in the future at some point it might be adventageous to revive them for their intellect, but...

Consider that by the time they can perfect the nanotechnology to repair the brain damage dealt by the freezing process, they will easily be able to genetically engineer a near maximally capable brain. Why not just genetically engineer humans that have high cognitive potential than try to reintegrate those so long dead they cannot function in this futuristic society?

It won't cost them much to revive people, but I don't expect the preserved to be sought after for their intellect.

It'd be fantastic if an industrialized nation devoted 5 or 10% of its GDP to revival. We've been suffering dearly from a lack of aggregate demand for nigh on a decade now. A massive medical bubble would hardly be worse than a housing bubble for backfilling demand.

>survival is not an obviously rational choice.

It's a reversible choice though.

Yeah, future may very well be worse than death, but I personally estimate the expected utility of a future life to be more than zero.

On that note, this (http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Lazarus) is worth watching if you can get hold of it. It appears to be on 4od for uk viewers.

Well... Unless something prohibits the subject from self-terminating, it still beats death.

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