You know I love the idea of cryostasis, and the idea of reanimating people after death is great.
But why the fuck would future humans bother bringing all these people back, even if they could? Even if they have a utopian society free of scarcity and inequality, they would be bringing back mostly rich people who lived in a super different and bad time and have literally nothing positive to contribute to the utopian future, since they were a large part of the problems of today in the first place. Plus the vast majority of them are almost certainly elitist assholes who nobody in a utopia would want to be around.
Maybe it would be a humanitarian thing, but if these people are dead and frozen there’s no real imperative to do this to end suffering or something. Or I guess maybe bringing them back to try and figure out what the hell their damage is that they felt ruining everything was a better option than working toward the betterment of all… but they’d only need a few brains in vats for that, no bodies, so sucks to suck, cryofolks.
If future humans don’t have a utopian society, the only real use for people from so long ago that I can come up with would be research subjects or slaves. And frankly there are easier ways to go about getting those…
So I see no possible future where people who cryopreserve get brought back en masse. Even if it’s entirely possible to surmount the technical hurdles.
To answer the questions of archeologists, obviously
And historians
And kindness.
why would future humans bother bringing all these people back
i think it’s worth reminding why doctors treat people now, in this time and space. they do it mostly because they want to save people. maybe a few do it for money, but past a certain point, the money isn’t why you do it. i think it’s a safe bet that doctors of a future would see these corpses as patients, and act accordingly. an analogy - think how we see heart attack victims as patients, and not how our medieval ancestors would have seen them (as corpses)
…literally nothing positive to contribute to the utopian future…
true, but, a good chunk of patients in hopsital today have nothing to contribute to society, and cannot contribute any more, whatsoever. we treat them anyway, because that’s what we do. humans have consistently cared for others that are sick and have “nothing to contribute” throughout history, and that shows no sign of going away anytime soon
Lmao, remember that revived 80’s douchbag business man on star trek TNG?
He actually appeared
again in a later episodein a couple TNG novelizations.He managed to adapt and fit in to Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, but eventually was called on to use his 1900s business prowess in
negotiationsbecoming Earth’s Ambassador to Ferenginar, and then eventually was named the Secretary of Commerce for at least two different Earth Presidents.*edit, I lied. I’m sorry for misleading you all, you gave me your trust and I squandered it.
I mean, he has the skillset. Honestly probably startled the shit out of the first negotiation.
that’s so based hoo lee I must’ve missed that one gotta do a rewatch
My only regret is that I have boneitis.
Medical research from before whatever plague or virus infects everybody.
Don’t they have problems today studying effects of microplastics because they can’t find a control group of humans who don’t have microplastics in them?
Though that’s a pretty grim future for the rich frozen elite.
Ever read Transmetropolitan? It has a whole sub-arc on just the absolute lack of concern that a future society would have for this resurrection obligation/burden imposed on them.
It is extremely unlikely that humanity can survive neoliberalism still long enough to birth that world. I think the sterile coming future will not view human life as a burdensome excess to be disposed of like so much effluvia.
we’d do it cause it’d be funny even if they weren’t tortured or nothing. can you imagine a little asshole running around the utopia being like “no, no, I’m supposed to own things, where are my stocks, where are my numbers, no!”. probably it’d suck that all their friends are deade though. I’m sure you thaw a couple cause the have rare diseases or certain kinds of DNA though.
Deade
That’s because you’re thinking in term of a society that views most people as a burdensome and undesirable liability. Something we wish we could get rid of faster if possible. It might be tgat in the future, human minds aren’t as poisoned by clubofrome population omb neoliberal billionaire thinking.
But why the fuck would future humans bother bringing all these people back, even if they could?
Because they don’t have rights, so no one will care when we upload their brains into street sweeping robots. If you’re lucky, you’ll get uploaded into an interstellar probe.
Someone should write a book about that, or even a series of books. A series I should reread before the 5th book comes out.
Oh sweet, 5th is confirmed
I think they’re frozen before they’re dead, so the reason to bring them back would be to not do that murder thing, and also to fulfill contractual obligations, and as a business showcase to the world that you’re ready to receive more customers for a freeze and bring you back service instead of a freeze and kill you service.
Admittedly I don’t know much about cryopreservation (looked into it many years ago as a curiosity) but my understanding, and the article says the same, is that they clinically die first and then it’s a rush to preserve them before too much breakdown happens. Since it’s quite expensive, most people only preserve their brain or head, which is removed before being frozen. I’m not sure legally they would be able to do this pre-death, since the harvesting/preserving would directly cause death as we currently understand and classify it, and assisted euthanasia of any flavor is illegal in most places.
Don’t worry the people performing the preservation don’t know much about it either.
That’s true.
I once read a sci-fi story (I don’t recall the title) that posed the same question you are asking. The short answer is “Historians would want to revive at least some of the frozen”.
Also, assuming mass media entertainment still exists in the future, I can see a reality show being created where someone is revived and cameras follow him around as he tries to adapt to the future.
To try them for crimes against humanity?
But why the fuck would future humans bother bringing all these people back, even if they could?
There are many valid issues to raise with this bring unlikely to work, but this point seems silly. Why would a road maintenance worker fix a pothole, he’s not from around and will never benefit from it? Because it’s his job he’s paid to do, and he’s not having a philosophical discussion about it. Whatever future lab technician will be just going to work in the morning as well, paid by their company, funded by the money the preserved people paid. There isn’t much to it.
But it’s interesting you said that future humans would kill these people because the preserved people are useless assholes. I’m not that sure you labeled the assholes right in your scenario. Your future humans seem ageist and elitist, thinking only they deserve to live.
There is at least one example I remember from the news of a 20-something girl with cancer being preserved, paid for by pooling money from the family and donations. Unlikely to work but she would have died anyway. So what did she do wrong that she doesn’t deserve to be woken up, in your future where the technology is there?
A financial, legal, or even just a tit-for-tat incentive is realistically all it would take. You assume that some utopia that has shed those ideas is the only one capable of such technology.
In reality, it’s greed and self-preservation that is running this show, and this is all that is needed to produce awe-inspiring feats.
okay but how do you establish any of those incentives with people who simply don’t exist? eventually the agreements fall apart as all parties involved are either dead or cryostatic, and the agreements will have to compel someone who was never party to them to take some sort of action. Like, I guess you could put a reward in trust but even then you’d need some sort of legal entity to manage and distribute it that would, itself, need an incentive in trust in order to continue, and so on in an infinite regression.
I don’t see a future utopia (or non-utopian) society a thousand years from now feeling at all compelled by a legal agreement between two independent parties a millennium ago. The law firms that set up the contracts will be long gone, the legal framework that established them will have evolved if not been replaced completely. I mean, compare where we are now with where “we” were in 1024, and then think about how much more quickly things change today. Any money is going to be more meaningless than 11th century money, but with no collector’s value since they’re just numbers in a database that probably won’t even exist in a thousand years.
I think we can legitimately view having your body/head frozen in the hopes of being woken up as a tech version of the Catholic last rites.
I certainly don’t think a utopia is the only option and even have a bit in there about non-utopian societies.
Utopian societies that are post-scarcity are just the most likely to have the resources and desire, and even then I’m not seeing it as realistic.
And how are you going to incentivize something decades or centuries down the line? I’m not seeing that one working either.
Star Trek episode, Picard was pissed they got thawed
I’m for reaimmating them to have them stand trial for their crimes. I’m hopeful for a brighter future, but I’m also hopeful people won’t lose their unrelenting pettiness. It’s part of what makes us human.
“Why would a society bring people back to life when they [describes why you think they deserve to die]”
Happy to know you’re not going to be solely responsible for bringing them back!
Is that what Walt Gisnep is right now?
Disney will soon announce the new movie Soup in an attempt to take over the top search results of “Disney Soup”.
So that’s why it’s called Frozen!
Let it goo
Ugh. Terrible. I love it!
To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised
Gisnep
Is this a thing I’m not aware of, or just a very strange typo?
Clearly says Walt Gisnep.
I’ll give you the p, but in which world is that a G?
ωal⅂ Әisnep
… or perhaps ⧢al7?
That ‘y’ has pissed me off since i was a child. I was always baffled as to why it was spelt Disnep but pronounced Disney, especially while learning digraphs at school and it didnt fit in with any of the sounds the letter combinations were supposed to make.
Well, that’s what their logo says, I don’t know what to tell you
I’d wager they meant Walt Disney.
Indeed, but it was spelled that way deliberately.
I see it now! Thanks for the nudge.
Humans are particularly difficult to preserve because of the delicate structure in (most of) our heads.
Nonsense. We are just too big to be frozen quickly enough that no ice crystals emerge. Every living thing turns to slush if frozen normally.
Yea. Turns out the biggest creature you can freeze and thaw again (in strict lab conditions) is a hamster, anything bigger just dies.
And that’s how we got microwave ovens. (For real, see the Tom Scott video)
Wonder what the icon caption he uses for this one is?
“SCIENCE played GOD here (and thank your stomachs they did)”
That was a (pardon the pun) cool read, if a bit morbid.
Ever seen DMSO solidify upon cooling? I wouldn’t even call it vitrification, it obviously has macroscopically large crystalline domains. It would be like putting rocks in your veins. I mean it kind of works fine for single cells because the failures* can be treated as a statistic, but anything on the scale of organs will become damaged just too badly.
* See e.g. what happens to frozen sperm cells: “chromatin disruption through protamine translocations, DNA fragmentation, and lesions to genes involved in fertilization capability and embryonic development […] are known consequences of the cryopreservation process.”
Reminds me of the time when I was younger, scrolling rotten.com and came across that picture of the dude who died in the bath, but had this thing that kept the water warm, so he just turned into a giant human stew.
Someone else from the old internet. I remember the post you speak of.
Oh yeah, 3000 years ago, I member too, def soup.
What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs taking a bath?
The reason I couldn’t eat stew for a decade?
Bob.
His name!
Username checks out
Bob?
What a classic
A couple days ago my milk was all chunky when I tried to pour it in my cereal, because refrigerated air that was supposed to go to the fridge got blocked.
Milk wasn’t expired, just went bad due to a random mechanical issue over the course of the length of time the milk was being preserved.
Anyway, what’s all this about cryogenics?
Blocked by stuff or frozen up? If frozen, you may have a defrost timer problem.
It was blocked by frost so uhh does sound like that second thing.
Did they get their money back? I didn’t read the article.
Well they’re dead
Wooooosh
It’s a generational loan. Their grandkids are paying
Reminds me of the Egyptian aristocracy, they would be pissed off if they knew their 4000 yo mummy will end up getting shown at a museum or destroyed by a tomb raider. But what would happen if they managed to revive them today, probably a temporary experiment on a lab, the pharaoh just lived in a closed environment for a couple of months and for most of modern day people it would be just some science news they scrolled by on tiktok
How about being ground up into powder and put into medicine? I’m sure they’d love that one.
or used for paint because the color is so nice
One of the more interesting aspects of history is the progression from the notion of a very limited and inaccessible resurrection of a body to the idea of a very accessible resurrection of the spirit/mind.
The latter is IMO probably best embodied (pun intended) in one of the early Christian apocrypha from a group that was known for rejecting the canonical focus on a physical resurrection of a body:
Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him.
- Gospel of Thomas saying 108
It’s such a wild march of progress from kings trying to preserve their bodies to a tradition rejecting the Eucharist of consumption of a body in favor of a Eucharistic consumption of words and ideas to resurrect the essence of the individual.
And looking back from an age where we are literally seeing patents granted to trillion dollar companies around resurrecting the dead digitally, the “resurrection of words and ideas” crowd was more on to a practical tract of thinking than the “resurrect my goop” crowd.
In fact, the Egyptians when embalming themselves discarded their brains thinking it was garbage filling of the skull. Not exactly the best strategy in hindsight.
Doing a quick read up on Wikipedia, my memoories on Egyptian mummies’ brains getting removed was correct. That alone would mean the best they could achieve is cloning, without any memory retention.
destroyed by a tomb raider
And not even a sexy, big breasted one with skintight shirt and very short shorts.
destroyed by a tomb raider
*And not even a sexy, big POINTY breasted one with skintight shirt and very short shorts.
OG Lara, or nothing!
Most mummies we found we ate
If anyone is actually interested in learning how this works, this is a great blog post, from an author convinced like many that it’s a stupid thing for the rich, until… Well have a read: https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html
Very interesting article. Reminds me of when I read We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
The author tries to disprove that cryonics isn’t limited to rich people, while also pointing our the $200,000 upfront cost. Sure, a middle class American could probably swing the $300 annual fees, but most would be hard pressed for the $200k upfront cost.
The $300/year annual fees would be for a life insurance policy that already covers the main fee. There isn’t a 200k to pay in that case.
So just to expand upon the article author’s one possible future of it being overwhelming which he briefly glosses over, please enjoy this animated reading of one of my favourite graphic novels: Transmetropolitan
This article looks really juicy! I didn’t even really ever think about the difference between cryonics and cryogenics.
Rich people are truly fucking insane.
Everybody’s insane rich people just have the ability to act on it.
Fair.
Forbidden soup
Here’s a link to the article in the screenshot, in case anyone else was interested in reading it like I was: https://www.freethink.com/futurology/cryogenically-frozen-humans
Thanks for this. Quite gruesome, but not at all unexpected. I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine a while back, where I made the argument that water expands when frozen and, since humans are mostly water, freezing a human would crack every vital organ. I’m actually upset to discover I was right.
This is true, which is why preservation does not involve freezing, except for the bad attempts in the 70s the article talks about, which could never work. The bodies are vitrified, not frozen.
Which still doesn’t mean it will work, the technology to revive them doesn’t exist, but it doesn’t have any freezing issue.
That actually doesn’t sound much better to me, but my understanding of vitrification is minimal, at best. Still cool, though.
there could be a way maybe, by freezing water while keeping it extremely pressurized (extremely), you can make “efficient ice” that occupies less space, called ice VII, I’m not kidding. It would cost literally billions of dollars so not yet feasible, but it keeps my sci-fi loving mind at ease.
Flash freezing can work, but it’s almost impossible for something as large as a human body.
Cryoprotectants also do this pretty efficiently – they prevent crystallization, which leads to “vitreous” ice, which has more or less the same structure as liquid water and so doesn’t expand much. I think they do use that when freezing people, but the problem is that even if you fill the blood vessels with pure ethylene glycol, it diffuses very slowly, and it takes hours to get into cells which are far from large blood vessels. They dont diffuse the cryoprotectant in that thoroughly, though, because that’d take so long the body would have started to decay too much.
Edit: oops, the article talks about vitrifying agents. They make it sound like they’re not effective, but as I said above, they’re very effective if you can get them in every nook and cranny of every cell, which is a losing battle.
It’s fine, as long as the temperature stays stable and no further damage is done. We’re not going to revive their flesh. Instead we’re going to chop them off in large chunks. Suspend them in a kind of agar. Then laser off 2nanometer at a time. Scan the surface with 1nm resolution PiFM or better method. That’s going to yield many terabytes of image data that you can turms into a neural map of the entire nervous system. Even mapping this data to today’s LLM would get something roughly able to speak like the corpse. The better this data processing gets the more real the resurrected sentiences will be.
That’s assuming the freezing process hasn’t irreparably damaged the brain structure, which I don’t think anybody can confidently assert at the moment.
This sounds pretty amazing. Do you have any sources (or process names that I can search)? I would love to read more into the LLM part of your statement. Seriously sounds like scifi, and I’m loving it.
Visible human project for the 1993 first experiment 2013 slice culture modeling of central nervous system 2019 visible human body slice segmentation method 2022 scalable mapping of myelin and neuron density inthe human brain with micrometer resolution
In fiction We are legion, we are Bob Fun book but novice writer
Probably covered by futurist youtuber isaac arthur, probably part of the mind upload episode
I’m familiar with some of those, but they don’t digitally map thought and then read that map. At least not the last time I looked into them… Do they now?
Here is something close to tge cutting edge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSG3_JvnCkU
What they are creating is a connectome. A list of all neurons and their connection.
They are down to 34nm slices.
I said 2nm because the smallest features are 5nm inside the gap between neurons called synapses.
Presumably, there are no features enconding information smaller than that in the brain.
But just the connectome might be enough to replicate a consciousness.
Very interesting! Maybe once we understand the structure, we can recreate what’s behind the structure. Not sure if that’s a good thing, but it certainly is intriguing.
Posting my favorite cryogenics story of all time.
They paid good money for those soup tubes.
As long as Simon Phoenix doesn’t get defrosted I’m good
Mellow greetings, sir. What seems to be your boggle?
MURDER DEATH KILL MURDER DEATH KILL MURDER DEATH KILL
Gazpacho, non-vegan.
But eating the rich is vegan, no?
Normally yes, because you can’t do more for nature & people than that.
But in this case it’s just too late, the rich already turned into regular (tho toxic) meat as it neared the end of its life.
Now, if you get a regular not-about-to-die rich and turn it into a smoothie, then yes, vegan gazpacho.
Is it an expensive thing to do ? Can only rich people do it ? I want to buy freezers and sell people into being cryogenically frozen, but affordable
Yes, it is expensive, as your freezer has to be set at temperatures below -80°C/-112°F, down to -196°C/-321°F, and maintained this way for decades without single interruption.
This requires expensive equipment and draws insane amounts of power, and also necessitates multiple power backups.
There is currently no way to do it on a budget.
There is currently no way to do it on a budget.>
Launch the capsule into space in an orbit around earth that’s always obscure from the sun?
Not a “budget” option but definitely a hell lot cheaper in the long run (decades, or even centuries).
Even better, just incinerate the them and tell them they’ll be floating in space!
TIL things still get hot in space under direct sunlight. I always assumed space would be cold even in sunlight but apparently not.
anyway, I would think you could still be in a sunlit orbit as long as you had a reflective shield for shading. You’ll probably still need power to maintain temps and monitor status, so solar energy would still be helpful.
Fun fact! During the Apollo flights to and from the Moon, the spacecraft would perform “Passive Thermal Control” or “barbecue roll” where it would rotate around its long axis about once per hour, to distribute the thermal load from the sun and keep one side from heating up too much
Is there such an orbit? That should be an orbit with a period of 1 year, which is far outside Earth’s sphere of gravitational influence.
You could just attach their frozen heads to the dark side of the Webb telescope if they can afford it!
Imagine an operation to retrieve those heads
That sounds like a job for future-people!
if we’re at the point that we can revive a frozen corpse, I think we can easily retrieve a floating capsule orbiting earth.
Yup! Larange point 2, where we parked the JWST!
If you read the article that explains it this is incorrect. Once it’s set up it requires no power, only liquid nitrogen. So it’s black out proof too.
You’re not ‘frozen’ you’re ‘vitrified’, the main difference being your cells don’t get damaged (as much)
Also there is currently a way to do it on a budget, see aforementioned article.
(basically you can do it with a life insurance plan of around 40 a month if you’re reasonably young).
Aside from cost there’s also the issue of law, requiring people die of natural causes beforehand means most people will turn to soup before their brain can have any hope of being preserved.
I have cynicism for lots of things involved here, but if I had the option from some shady person who seems like they are capable and vaguely aligned with me I’d probably take the chance especially if we could make some sort of a post-revival agreement. What a brain (put into a small machine and ideally alongside symbiotic systems) can do for the people who are still alive. Probably with my brain in a jar living in VR until the details are worked out.
And if it doesn’t work out that way, well… That’s gooood soup!
