I don’t think this quiet answers jtold’s problem though. What about when all these cryogenically frozen people will be unfrozen? What about refreshing each generation / where each generation starts anew so to speak?
When the people are unfrozen, it’s reasonable to think that medical technology will be advanced enough not only to cure them of whatever was about to kill them, but to do so fairly inexpensively. So, there’s a net reduction in resource usage by cryogenically freezing people.
One way for me to support that is by referencing the accelerating rate of technological improvement, but a simpler argument is that if it weren’t yet cheap to cure the frozen people at a given date, there wouldn’t be very much motivation for the people of that time period to unfreeze them.
Plus, even if the cost were the same later on as it is now, there’s certainly benefit in spending more resources to fix the problems that are immediate existential threats (i.e. environmental disaster, global nuclear conflict, some here would say unfriendly AI) and saving those problems which can wait indefinitely for later.
I don’t think jtold’s other reason really makes much sense: he’s concerned about reducing the rate of evolutionary change in humanity, but cryogenics wouldn’t stop new people from being born, just keep the old people around as well. The gene pool will keep on churning.
More importantly, and as other people on this thread have pointed out, why is evolutionary change worth preserving? Medical science is much faster and can arrive at all the same desirable goals, i.e. reducing genetic diseases and enhancing human capabilities. Plus, evolution punishes individuals with suffering in order to achieve its broader goals, while medical science advances both the welfare of each individual and of the species as a whole.
I don’t think this quiet answers jtold’s problem though. What about when all these cryogenically frozen people will be unfrozen? What about refreshing each generation / where each generation starts anew so to speak?
When the people are unfrozen, it’s reasonable to think that medical technology will be advanced enough not only to cure them of whatever was about to kill them, but to do so fairly inexpensively. So, there’s a net reduction in resource usage by cryogenically freezing people.
One way for me to support that is by referencing the accelerating rate of technological improvement, but a simpler argument is that if it weren’t yet cheap to cure the frozen people at a given date, there wouldn’t be very much motivation for the people of that time period to unfreeze them.
Plus, even if the cost were the same later on as it is now, there’s certainly benefit in spending more resources to fix the problems that are immediate existential threats (i.e. environmental disaster, global nuclear conflict, some here would say unfriendly AI) and saving those problems which can wait indefinitely for later.
I don’t think jtold’s other reason really makes much sense: he’s concerned about reducing the rate of evolutionary change in humanity, but cryogenics wouldn’t stop new people from being born, just keep the old people around as well. The gene pool will keep on churning.
More importantly, and as other people on this thread have pointed out, why is evolutionary change worth preserving? Medical science is much faster and can arrive at all the same desirable goals, i.e. reducing genetic diseases and enhancing human capabilities. Plus, evolution punishes individuals with suffering in order to achieve its broader goals, while medical science advances both the welfare of each individual and of the species as a whole.