Plot idea: Isekaied from 2026 into some date in the past. Only goal: get cryogenically preserved into the glorious transhumanist singularity. How to influence the trajectory of history into a direction that would broadly enable this kind of future, while setting up the long-lasting infrastructure & incentives that would cryogenically preserve oneself for centuries to come?
I’m not going to write this, but I think this is a very interesting premise & problem (especially if thousands of years into the past) and would love to see someone build on it.
Some thoughts:
It’s definitely doable if it’s to a century ago. The earliest cryopreserved human still preserved today is James Bedford, born in 1893 and cryopreserved in 1967. So just stay healthy, avoid wars, accumulate wealth, and use the decades to influence the field of cryopreservation to arrive sooner and stronger.
It gets harder (and more interesting) as the protagonist is transported further into the past, since they will have to bootstrap large parts of the technology pipeline that goes into making reliable cryopreservation possible, and acquire the relevant knowledge as they go. My guess is that there is a somewhat sharp divide in difficulty, depending on whether one isekaies with sufficient portion of their lifespan extending into the industrial revolution, or not—because that determines whether there will naturally exist large chunks of the basic industrial pipeline and science necessary for cryopreservation (eg science (thermodynamics) and practical engineering of heat pump, or just good metallurgy), or whether one will have to counterfactually bootstrap those pipelines into existence.
Beyond some point, a large chunk of the difficulty will mainly be in having to counterfactually bootstrap the relevant pieces of technology pipeline into existence, so that future generations have the technology and science to make it possible-in-principle to maintain the preservation long-term.
Besides the technological problem, the most problem is in setting up the infrastructure & incentive structure that would make future generations continue the cryopreservation for centuries to come. The most obvious and reliable solution is to just use a will—accumulate a large amount of wealth (this itself is probably pretty difficult, even with foreknowledge), set up a trust and a foundation that reinvests and grows the wealth and a will specifying its use for the maintenance of cryopreservation. I am imagining the best place to be the UK given their relatively long history of various institutions and succession laws?
These infrastructural problems will gradually get more difficult further back in time because:
just Rot, i.e. of course wills aren’t actively enforced by the government and someone must actively initiate a legal process to deal with violations of it, and a single mismanagement or simply just forgetting could irreversibly damage the preservation—so the protagonist will have to create some very strong institutional structures & culture (+ acquire resources required for it) that would incentivize the long-term enforcing of the will
periods of instability (eg war). Also includes religion—I don’t imagine a will based on wanting to preserve oneself to cheat death and live forever would go super well.
And sufficiently further back in time, there won’t be a reasonably stable line of governance and rules of law in any civilization that extends to the modern day to expect any sort of preservation of will that is this complicated—hm. now that I write this, I realize that having counterfactually accelerated the relevant pipelines for enabling cryopreservation pre-industrial-revolution probably already makes predictions of specific historical events based on basic foreknowledge of past events difficult, meaning the specific question of “whether there exists a civilization at the time that the protagonist got isekaied into that has governance structures that lasted (to our present) for centuries” is sort of moot—so they’ll have to extrapolate carefully the kind of impact their acceleration will have in the trajectory of current-to-protagonist-civilizations and strategize accordingly.
I’m sure it’s still possible even if thousands of years ago—still easier than the problems of Dr. Stone—just Shut up do the impossible! Skills and knowledge like physics, engineering (theory and the practical knowledge to the extent needed to bootstrap large parts of the industrial revolution), charisma and social skill, knowledge of older languages and dialects, history and anthropology, financial skills, etc etc would now all be pretty much necessary (and the amount of foreknowledge that the protagonist brings with them starts to matter especially more).
I would imagine being isekaied here would make for the most interesting story & problem.
All of this is plausibly much, much easier with chemical-based brain preservation, supposing the protagonist brings the relevant knowledge with them.
… actually, considering the much more realistic scenario of a protagonist not already being an expert in brain preservation (but perhaps knows some physics & engineering & chemistry & biology) and not knowing, for the case of chemical-based brain preservation, what specific fixative to use, and for the case of cryogenic preservation, what cryopreservant to use, the protagonist will have to acquire this knowledge with Science—and doing so has the common pipeline of bootstrapping sufficient chunks of the industrial pipeline necessary to get things like good microscopes or metals made. Given this scenario, I am unsure which preservation method is easier—though I’m sure our protagonist will pursue them both.
(your regular reminder that chemical-based brain preservation is free)
Worth noting that “Only goal: get cryogenically preserved into the glorious transhumanist singularity” is a pretty sociopathic way to orient to the world.
But it’s a fun premise and also more manageable/approachable than trying to write about steering civilization as a whole.
Plot idea: Isekaied from 2026 into some date in the past. Only goal: get cryogenically preserved into the glorious transhumanist singularity. How to influence the trajectory of history into a direction that would broadly enable this kind of future, while setting up the long-lasting infrastructure & incentives that would cryogenically preserve oneself for centuries to come?
I’m not going to write this, but I think this is a very interesting premise & problem (especially if thousands of years into the past) and would love to see someone build on it.
Some thoughts:
It’s definitely doable if it’s to a century ago. The earliest cryopreserved human still preserved today is James Bedford, born in 1893 and cryopreserved in 1967. So just stay healthy, avoid wars, accumulate wealth, and use the decades to influence the field of cryopreservation to arrive sooner and stronger.
It gets harder (and more interesting) as the protagonist is transported further into the past, since they will have to bootstrap large parts of the technology pipeline that goes into making reliable cryopreservation possible, and acquire the relevant knowledge as they go. My guess is that there is a somewhat sharp divide in difficulty, depending on whether one isekaies with sufficient portion of their lifespan extending into the industrial revolution, or not—because that determines whether there will naturally exist large chunks of the basic industrial pipeline and science necessary for cryopreservation (eg science (thermodynamics) and practical engineering of heat pump, or just good metallurgy), or whether one will have to counterfactually bootstrap those pipelines into existence.
Beyond some point, a large chunk of the difficulty will mainly be in having to counterfactually bootstrap the relevant pieces of technology pipeline into existence, so that future generations have the technology and science to make it possible-in-principle to maintain the preservation long-term.
Besides the technological problem, the most problem is in setting up the infrastructure & incentive structure that would make future generations continue the cryopreservation for centuries to come. The most obvious and reliable solution is to just use a will—accumulate a large amount of wealth (this itself is probably pretty difficult, even with foreknowledge), set up a trust and a foundation that reinvests and grows the wealth and a will specifying its use for the maintenance of cryopreservation. I am imagining the best place to be the UK given their relatively long history of various institutions and succession laws?
These infrastructural problems will gradually get more difficult further back in time because:
just Rot, i.e. of course wills aren’t actively enforced by the government and someone must actively initiate a legal process to deal with violations of it, and a single mismanagement or simply just forgetting could irreversibly damage the preservation—so the protagonist will have to create some very strong institutional structures & culture (+ acquire resources required for it) that would incentivize the long-term enforcing of the will
periods of instability (eg war). Also includes religion—I don’t imagine a will based on wanting to preserve oneself to cheat death and live forever would go super well.
And sufficiently further back in time, there won’t be a reasonably stable line of governance and rules of law in any civilization that extends to the modern day to expect any sort of preservation of will that is this complicated—hm. now that I write this, I realize that having counterfactually accelerated the relevant pipelines for enabling cryopreservation pre-industrial-revolution probably already makes predictions of specific historical events based on basic foreknowledge of past events difficult, meaning the specific question of “whether there exists a civilization at the time that the protagonist got isekaied into that has governance structures that lasted (to our present) for centuries” is sort of moot—so they’ll have to extrapolate carefully the kind of impact their acceleration will have in the trajectory of current-to-protagonist-civilizations and strategize accordingly.
I’m sure it’s still possible even if thousands of years ago—still easier than the problems of Dr. Stone—just Shut up do the impossible! Skills and knowledge like physics, engineering (theory and the practical knowledge to the extent needed to bootstrap large parts of the industrial revolution), charisma and social skill, knowledge of older languages and dialects, history and anthropology, financial skills, etc etc would now all be pretty much necessary (and the amount of foreknowledge that the protagonist brings with them starts to matter especially more).
I would imagine being isekaied here would make for the most interesting story & problem.
All of this is plausibly much, much easier with chemical-based brain preservation, supposing the protagonist brings the relevant knowledge with them.
… actually, considering the much more realistic scenario of a protagonist not already being an expert in brain preservation (but perhaps knows some physics & engineering & chemistry & biology) and not knowing, for the case of chemical-based brain preservation, what specific fixative to use, and for the case of cryogenic preservation, what cryopreservant to use, the protagonist will have to acquire this knowledge with Science—and doing so has the common pipeline of bootstrapping sufficient chunks of the industrial pipeline necessary to get things like good microscopes or metals made. Given this scenario, I am unsure which preservation method is easier—though I’m sure our protagonist will pursue them both.
(your regular reminder that chemical-based brain preservation is free)
Plan A: guillotine my head into a pre-prepared vat of formaldehyde and propylene glycol somewhere in the middle of the Greenland ice sheet.
Further refinements may be necessary.
Worth noting that “Only goal: get cryogenically preserved into the glorious transhumanist singularity” is a pretty sociopathic way to orient to the world.
But it’s a fun premise and also more manageable/approachable than trying to write about steering civilization as a whole.
If more people were egoistic in such a forward-looking way, the world would be better off for it.