Submitted by [deleted] t3_112mb58 in Futurology
Would you be interested in preserving your brain so that your identity may one day be re-incarnated? I honestly think its worth a try. In the coming decades, the preservation technologies may get even more advanced as well.
Yup, made me think about Altered Carbon "stacks" too. Stacks in the world of Altered Carbon are effectively bio-mechanical hard drives that store a real time updating copy of your consciousness. If you "die" you can always be put in a new body as long as the Stack is in tact. Effectively creating near, perceived immortality. Life expectancy in this world is hundreds of years rather than 60-80. Technically your organic brain still ceases if you die or are killed. No consciousness transfer is happening here, but to any other person "you" still carries on because all memories and feelings up till the moment of death are preserved in the Stack.
In typical dystopian fashion, the world is depicted as being horrifically capitalist with no social safety nets or help for the less fortunate. New bodies to have your Stack put into become products and what kind of body your Stack may get put into depends on your wealth and class. The poor get put into unwanted, ailment afflicted, elderly, disabled, etc, bodies. While the rich can afford the best bodies that are more geared toward youth and physical strength/prowess, and the uber wealthy can afford to clone and print their own bodies.
Any life extending or life re-starting tech will always go this way long as our society is how it is. So it's kind of tough to be excited about or be hopeful about it (which sucks because as a lover of sci-fi, i love this stuff as concepts in a vacuum).
I think these dystopian scenarios are actually unlikely. If the technology for mind uploading exists then the technology for human level AI also exists which means that the average quality of human life is probably very high.
A more realistic fear is that you may be revived and suffer a lot before the technology is perfected and you are able to achieve a stable incarnation. On the other hand if the procedure is eventually successful, you will be one of the first and likely oldest posthumans which might be something to be proud of, especially if you suffered a lot to get there.
I think they're fairly likely. Current society is already fairly dystopian due to advancing technologies we already have, enabled/exacerbated by bad politics. I think unless something drastic happened, that trend is more likely to continue and get worse than it is to somehow fix itself without something major happening.
From a historical perspective most of the developed world is relatively not that dystopian. Conditions aren't as disgusting as they were in the early industrial era nor are they as brutal as they were in the agricultural age. Modern ideologies are pretty awful but that can and likely will change fast.
However I do agree. Drastic technological improvements like fusion or space based solar power and human level AI will increase the quality of life by quite a bit.
Something vaguely similar happens in the 1976 novel A World Out of Time.
A wealthy guy with cancer pays for cryo. When they thaw him out centuries later, it's because they are looking for indentured servants to work as space-truckers: if he refuses, they'll kill him and try their luck with the next popsicle.
He agrees and is promptly subjected to some intense and uncomfortable training and conditioning for his new "job."
The cryopreservation techniques are getting better. We didn't have vitrification up until a few decades ago.
And the research continues.
The society of cryobiologists used to reject scientists who practiced cryonics, and now its president is Greg Fahy THE cryonics guy.
MIT TR uplooaded a somewhat non biased article about it recently.
Wikipedia's article is trash because a conservative clown keeps removing new info added and conveniently keeps his questionable "sources" that are against cryonics.
Hopefully in the coming decades people will start taking it more seriously. I really don't understand why some people are so against it. At the very least people are donating their bodies and money to valuable research which may save lives in the future.
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You've been able to cryogenically freeze your brain for a couple decades now I believe.
I mean, it's not like I purchased the service but I've noticed that it's been offered for well over 10 years and it feels like about 20 now.
I'm going to bed the Altered Carbon/Cyberpunk/Bladerunner/Mass Effect inducing world seems ever closer. 😬
DickweedMcGee t1_j8kzwgr wrote
I read a Sci Fi novel that delt with the concept of 'freezing' people. Cryoburn. It was more about the social practicalities of what would happen if this came to pass:
1.) Freezing people required ongoing $$ so eventually the families or endowments ran out of money and the frozen people eventually got unfrozen and unceremoniously kicked out onto the streets. Penniless, as it were.
2.) These 'time travelers' were SOL as their skills were outdated and required extensive re-education which they didn't have money for, or they were elderly anyway. Most became homeless as their immediate families were long dead.
3.) Eventually managing the frozen people kinda became like a ponzi scheme, which is the premise of the book...
Sorry, not the most uplifting tangent but I thought the author explored a really good angle on the 'freezing idea....