Cryonics

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Bryntyrch2016
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Cryonics

Post by Bryntyrch2016 »

Cryonics allows people to pay shed loads to privateers to store them till they can be reupped.
Lets not deal with the likelihood of this happening. Lets say that Person 1 is frozen for a while and then 'woken'.
Is Person 1: a. still Person 1 or b. Person 2, a new person?
If a. then how can it be said they had died, and been preserved. Surely, as in 'near death' cases Person 1 can not have died at all. Death means you are, as we say, dead. No longer a person, no right to vote, not eligible for taxes, can't enter X factor...though not sure the last would be true....in fact it could make a better show.
If this isn't so, whatever they 'revive' is a zombie - dead matter animated.

Any thoughts
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LuckyR
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Re: Cryonics

Post by LuckyR »

Bryntyrch2016 wrote:Cryonics allows people to pay shed loads to privateers to store them till they can be reupped.
Lets not deal with the likelihood of this happening. Lets say that Person 1 is frozen for a while and then 'woken'.
Is Person 1: a. still Person 1 or b. Person 2, a new person?
If a. then how can it be said they had died, and been preserved. Surely, as in 'near death' cases Person 1 can not have died at all. Death means you are, as we say, dead. No longer a person, no right to vote, not eligible for taxes, can't enter X factor...though not sure the last would be true....in fact it could make a better show.
If this isn't so, whatever they 'revive' is a zombie - dead matter animated.

Any thoughts
As usual the law trails science, so Person 1 would still Person 1. The reasons for this are numerous, the most logical and mundane one would be that Person 1's resources would be paying for the preservation and would go to Person 1 when he awakens to continue care through the future. One could make the argument that it would depend on whether Person 1 kept his memories from before, which is logical, though not legal. Even if Person 1 lost his memories he would be treated as a person with amnesia not as a new person, identically to how people with that malady are treated right now.
"As usual... it depends."
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Renee
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Re: Cryonics

Post by Renee »

Bryntyrch2016 wrote:whatever they 'revive' is a zombie - dead matter animated.

Any thoughts
Methinks we'd best go to the Bible with this.

Lazarus was dead. Dead as a doorknob. When he was revived by Jesus, he was still -- or again -- Lazarus.

Jesus died for us on the cross. When he came back, he was still Jesus of Nazareth, not Jesus of Zomb. He had no memory loss, no past-life experiences, no out-of-body experiences. He was dead clear and proper, and when he came back, he could still claim his food, his mother, his bed, as his own.

"And He created him in His own image." If Jesus was Jesus after turning dead and then resurrecting, then any man will follow the same steps in the process.

In fact, the Last Judgment, etc. Ask any of the Bible experts here, they know the bible.
Ignorance is power.
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Felix
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Re: Cryonics

Post by Felix »

Well, Philip K. Dick summed up my musings on this question in his novella, "Now Wait for Last Year," so I won't repeat himself.
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Bryntyrch2016
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Re: Cryonics

Post by Bryntyrch2016 »

Not sure my point has been addressed here. If Person A is frozen then reupped, the Law may say he is person A. If so he hasn't died. In English Law which is still the law of the USA, a dead person ceases to exist as a legal entity. So if a private company goes bankrupt (slightly more likely than discovering a cure for death methinks), what happens to the 'still living' people in their cages? Who would be responsible for these, still living, people. Or can the company 'liquidate their assets'? Or does the schmuck who paid sign to say he can be killed if it pleases the c.e.o. of the freezer company if it allows him to maximise his profits? If the answer is that Person A has already died, and the thing in the ice bucket is a corpse, this solves all the problems, but then, if the corpse is revived, how can it be Person A?
Interestingly, Lazarus was raised by the creator of all things, so that solves the issue, the Creator can deal in life as he sees fit. When Jesus died it got more complex. If he died (for our sins the saying goes), then HE couldn't revive himself. That he rose means there was a SECOND God at hand to do the resurrection schtick. The bizarre three in one God/ Jesus/ Holy ghost nonsense was necessary to explain this, if the pagan view of polytheism was to be replaced by one God.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Cryonics

Post by Sy Borg »

The legal situation reflects the fact that no one expects reanimation to work. At this stage I understand that the will would be distributed and, if by some miracle, the person reanimated later on, tough luck. Bilbo Baggins did not fare so well on return from his time away from The Shire :)

It's hard to imagine reanimation working out and cadavers remaining viable at this stage. The cells still break down after a while. Even if a person is awakened, will they be fully functional? On the plus side they would seem so alien they might not need assets from their former life since they could make a fortune sharing their story to media and a ghostwriter. A disadvantage would be living in a place to which you are not adapted, akin to moving to another country, possibly more profound again.
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Renee
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Re: Cryonics

Post by Renee »

Bryntyrch2016 wrote: Interestingly, Lazarus was raised by the creator of all things, so that solves the issue, the Creator can deal in life as he sees fit. When Jesus died it got more complex. If he died (for our sins the saying goes), then HE couldn't revive himself. That he rose means there was a SECOND God at hand to do the resurrection schtick. The bizarre three in one God/ Jesus/ Holy ghost nonsense was necessary to explain this, if the pagan view of polytheism was to be replaced by one God.
Bravo, I like this.

Now, as to your original question:

Can a person in his or her last will and testament bestow anything of value to someone who has not been born?

If yes, then the person who wills his or her body to Cryonics has to specify in his or her will that the person who is revived using the same body as his or hers, identified by DNA identity, will inherit the funds put in trust until the revival.

Of course clauses may be established, such as what to do with the funds if the body goes to rot and proof exists that the body can't be revived.
Ignorance is power.
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Kevin Levites
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Re: Cryonics

Post by Kevin Levites »

I would address your question in a different way.

I think of cryonics and the subject of personhood as something rather like a rheostat switch (often used for dimmers in household lights).

When someone sleeps, or is on drugs that slow metabolic activity, the rheostat switch is "dimmed down" partway.

In cryonics, we turn the rheostat switch all the way down to off.

When we wake the person up, the rheostat switch is gradually turned on brighter and brighter.

It this example, there is no reason to believe that anything is different before and after the rheostat switch is dimmed, any more than we must believe that if a rheostat switch is turned halfway down.....that turning it all the way up again means that half of the lightbulb, switch, or light has--somehow--been replaced.

A difference that makes no difference is no difference.
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Kevin Levites
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Re: Cryonics

Post by Kevin Levites »

One thing I would add to the cryonics discussion:

I think it's important that as many people participate in it as possible. It should be pushed by the government.

This is because--any number of times--frozen medical samples from the past have helped to figure out details about new diseases.

As an example, in 1918 there was an influenza epidemic that killed perhaps 70 million people in 18 months.

This strain of flu killed many Native Americans, including the Inuit and Inupiat of the far north.

The victims were often buried in mass graves in the arctic permafrost.

So, in 2010 or so, a team of scientists exhumed some of these bodies, and by taking samples from the frozen body of an Inuit woman, were able to faithfully resurrect this extinct virus in the lab.

Now, I question the wisdom of recreating an extinct airborn virus that killed 70 million people in 18 months....but putting that objection aside, these same scientists were able to figure out why avian flu is so deadly, and also how to better create a vaccine.

My point is that they were able to do this because of a dead body that was frozen for almost 100 years.

If cryonics becomes popular, then there will be a library of frozen bodies from different eras, and this will be a valuable resource for future doctors looking to combat epidemics.....as diseases change and mutate over time, often from a harmless form into a harmful (or deadly) variety.

As another example, medical researchers found frozen blood samples from a 1977 study on hepatitis (from gay men), and this gave them valuable data that helped them figure out details about the AIDS epidemic.

There are other examples.

Cryonic may be a good thing even if we never figure out how to resurrect the dead.
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