Rich People Are Freezing Themselves to Stay Wealthy Forever | Hacker News Reader

Rich People Are Freezing Themselves to Stay Wealthy Forever

bloomberg.com

I wonder when is the right time to do it? Probably in your early 20s. I expect if any of them are revived they will be the decrepit state they were in before, though almost certainly worse.

Not if aging can be reversed in 100 years.

Then they find out their 40 descendants don't want to give back any money and are forced to work 900yrs cleaning toilets to pay off that reverse aging, only to end up dying of cancer, because they aren't immortal.

Aren't there trusts that can protect against this?

You're trusting the living to not overrule the dead. A trust is only as good as the system willing to enforce it.

That's why you leave your kids peppercorns in your will

You might enjoy reading Transmetropolitan - it's a comic where one of the aspects of the future it is set in is that people who are revived are pretty much unwanted nuisances that usually end up with severe mental problems. They do get nice new bodies, though.

The Bobiverse is entertaining also.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_E._Taylor#Bobiverse_(20...

Ah yes many such cases from history of human race, when monarch want to govern, but impatient son is willing to coup whole establishment, just to govern himself. In best case, parent will just get blinded Byzantian style.

These would make cool museum pieces a few centuries later. "Back on Earth, ancient peoples determined status based on how big their number was in a spreadsheet. Some big number people thought they could achieve immortality through refrigeration, like mummies skiing into the afterlife. Historians believe this was likely a religious adaptation caused by widespread climate changes of the era."

https://archive.ph/BH8bo

Until it's proven that one of those people can be relived (proof by doing it), I stand by the opinion that such ventures are nothing but a very expensive grift

I agree with you, but hey, money is useless to you after you die, so if you’re super wealthy why not spend 0.001% of your wealth on something with a very small but non-zero chance of working

From this point of view and, I guess, when you're close to death, it makes complete sense.

What if there’s a chance that you are supposed to die as a part of a larger meaning or purpose, but you screw it up? Or you get mind uploaded to some dystopian video game. It could cut both ways.

I guess, but something seems wrong with just setting a bunch of money on fire even if you have more than enough to spare.

I couldn't avoid thinking of all the better and more certain uses that money could go to.

I'd be impressed if they could even revive a mouse.

I can imagine rich people living past 100, maybe even 130, but you have to be pretty narcissistic to think you'll be able to cryogenically freeze yourself and be revived 500 years later.

Even if the chances are low, it's still better than the alternative.

Debatable.

What are the cons?

You are ripped out of blissful union with the Universe and thrust back into the world of flesh and suffering?

(As a billionaire though.)

Easy solution there

You are awakened in 1000 years and tortured for eternity by CyberGPT 1000.

Making it easy for Roko's Basilisk.

You’re revived in the year 2190 by a totalitarian state who wants to use you to fly a space mission that no sane person would volunteer for. (That’s the plot of Niven’s “A World Out of Time”.)

You're revived in the year 2190 by a totalitarian communist state specifically so that they can have a show trial and then torture and execute you.

You are revived penniless and have to jump a border fence to work for scraps cleaning a rich GPU's bathroom.

that physical/mental pain in the process (much like more severe surgeries) is a thing - especially if it's something you retain any amount of consciousness with.

there's also the elephant in the room of coming back as a vegetable. whether due to biological damage or the brain simply not being able to recalibrate.

There was a really horrible and thought provoking movie on this on netflix, I wish I could remember the name. Basically a guy is revived but they're still experimenting with the unrefined process so he lives as an experiment trapped in a hospital.

Is it? The alternatives include things like using that fortune to do good.

Yeah but that won't make me feel good

The alternative is dying a natural death of old age. This is apart of the human experience.

Getting frozen and brought back in the distant future, even if we assume you'll be in great health, means all your friends and family are gone. Maybe you'll wake up in a distopian nightmare?

> The alternative is dying a natural death of old age. This is apart of the human experience.

This seems almost comically lemming-like. Fear of missing out . . . on dying?

> Getting frozen and brought back in the distant future, even if we assume you'll be in great health, means all your friends and family are gone.

(Assuming none of your friends and family were also frozen.) But more importantly, I wouldn't suggest that people should aspire to death because of losing all their friends and family. If starting over (in what's likely an unfamiliar society and culture) is all one's got, that's still something.

Mainly I find it grotesque that it might be a way to slip past death, but only for rich people. But I can't bring myself to suggest that it would necessarily be a better universe if they took the normal death route instead.

That's not obviously the case at all. But unless someone actually does it, we'll never know either way.

> even revive a mouse

Actually, this has been done. Although that size seems to be about the limit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y

These poor people don’t understand the wonders of YOLO

Or they do understand very well, and thus why they freeze themselves.

Give me 11M$ and I'll freeze you pristinely for defrost at a later date of your convenience.

-> Satisfaction guaranteed or you money back!

This topic would make a wonderful, wonderful (and quirky) tv series...

But, how do they freeze their socio-economic ecosystem?

At least there's a last ditch source of preserved protein available when the dark times hit.

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