Only a vanishingly small number of people sign up for cryonics—I think it would be just a few thousand people, out of the entirety of humanity. Even among Less Wrong rationalists, it’s never been that common or prominent a topic I think? - perhaps because most of them are relatively young, so death feels far away.
Overall, cryonics, like radical life extension in general, is one of the many possibilities of existence that the human race has neglected via indifference. It’s popular as a science fiction theme but very few people choose to live it in reality.
Because I think the self is possibly based on quantum entanglement among neurons, I am personally skeptical of certain cryonic paradigms, especially those based on digital reconstruction rather than physical reanimation. Nonetheless, I think that in a sane society with a developed economy, cryonic suspension would be a common and normal thing by now. Instead we have our insane and tragic world where people are so beaten down by life that, e.g. the idea of making radical rejuvenation a national health research priority sounds like complete fantasy.
I sometimes blame myself as part of the problem, in that I knew about cryonics, transhumanism, etc., 35 years ago. And I had skills, I can write, I can speak in front of a crowd—yet what difference did I ever make? I did try a few times, but whether it’s because I was underresourced, drawn to too many other purposes at once, insufficiently machiavellian for the real world of backstabbing competition, or because the psychological inertia of collective indifference is genuinely hard to move, I didn’t even graduate to the world of pundit-influencers with books and websites and social media followers. Instead I’m just one more name in a few forum comment sections.
Nonetheless, the human race has in the 2020s stumbled its way to a new era of technological promise, to the point that just an hour ago, the world’s richest man was telling us all, on the social network that he owns, that he plans to have his AI-powered humanoid robots accompanying human expeditions to Mars a few years from now. And more broadly speaking, AI-driven cures for everything are part of the official sales pitch for AI now, along with rapid scientific and technological progress on every front, and leisure and self-actualization for all.
So even if I personally feel left out and my potential contributions wasted, objectively, the prospects of success for cryonics and life extension and other such dreams is probably better than it’s ever been—except for that little worry that “the future doesn’t need us”, and that AI might develop an agenda of its own that’s orthogonal to the needs of the human race.
Only a vanishingly small number of people sign up for cryonics—I think it would be just a few thousand people, out of the entirety of humanity. Even among Less Wrong rationalists, it’s never been that common or prominent a topic I think? - perhaps because most of them are relatively young, so death feels far away.
Overall, cryonics, like radical life extension in general, is one of the many possibilities of existence that the human race has neglected via indifference. It’s popular as a science fiction theme but very few people choose to live it in reality.
Because I think the self is possibly based on quantum entanglement among neurons, I am personally skeptical of certain cryonic paradigms, especially those based on digital reconstruction rather than physical reanimation. Nonetheless, I think that in a sane society with a developed economy, cryonic suspension would be a common and normal thing by now. Instead we have our insane and tragic world where people are so beaten down by life that, e.g. the idea of making radical rejuvenation a national health research priority sounds like complete fantasy.
I sometimes blame myself as part of the problem, in that I knew about cryonics, transhumanism, etc., 35 years ago. And I had skills, I can write, I can speak in front of a crowd—yet what difference did I ever make? I did try a few times, but whether it’s because I was underresourced, drawn to too many other purposes at once, insufficiently machiavellian for the real world of backstabbing competition, or because the psychological inertia of collective indifference is genuinely hard to move, I didn’t even graduate to the world of pundit-influencers with books and websites and social media followers. Instead I’m just one more name in a few forum comment sections.
Nonetheless, the human race has in the 2020s stumbled its way to a new era of technological promise, to the point that just an hour ago, the world’s richest man was telling us all, on the social network that he owns, that he plans to have his AI-powered humanoid robots accompanying human expeditions to Mars a few years from now. And more broadly speaking, AI-driven cures for everything are part of the official sales pitch for AI now, along with rapid scientific and technological progress on every front, and leisure and self-actualization for all.
So even if I personally feel left out and my potential contributions wasted, objectively, the prospects of success for cryonics and life extension and other such dreams is probably better than it’s ever been—except for that little worry that “the future doesn’t need us”, and that AI might develop an agenda of its own that’s orthogonal to the needs of the human race.