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Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

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55 points arielzj | 8 comments | 08 Dec 25 22:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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michaelt ◴[08 Dec 25 22:48 UTC] No.46198721[source]▶
When it comes to cryopreservation the thing I find infeasible is the idea a provider would bother with the preservation, under the incentives of capitalism.

If someone pays millions of dollars to a company that promises to freeze their corpse for 200 years, the company can simply freeze the corpse for a decade or two, take the millions of dollars as dividends and executive bonuses, then declare bankruptcy. The dead can't sue.

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1. DennisP ◴[08 Dec 25 23:10 UTC] No.46198967[source]▶
One way to mitigate that would be to put the money in a trust which pays the preservation company a monthly dividend. If the trust stops paying, the company can sue it. If the company goes out of business despite its ongoing revenue, the trust can try to find someone else to take over the storage. We already have trusts that manage wealth for multiple generations.
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2. umpalumpaaa ◴[08 Dec 25 23:16 UTC] No.46199023[source]▶
This is exactly how Companies are doing it… they put the money in a trust and pay for the ongoing costs by using interests from that trust.
3. michaelt ◴[09 Dec 25 00:29 UTC] No.46199751[source]▶
Let's say there was a power cut and the backup generator failed. The corpse is gone.

What happens to the money in the trust?

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4. DennisP ◴[09 Dec 25 01:05 UTC] No.46200058[source]▶
Whatever you define when you set it up. Donate to charity, give to your descendants, etc.

Preferably the company would also have liability, giving the trust standing to sue. Then the trust spends some of their money on the lawsuit, and if they win, applies the proceeds as above.

5. vintermann ◴[09 Dec 25 11:45 UTC] No.46203837[source]▶
And how can you trust the trust? We also have plenty of trusts which are questionably aligned with their makers last wills, among them the Nobel peace prize (Nobel didn't just want the prize to go to anyone working for any kind of advancement of peace. He had a very particular instrument for peace in mind, namely peace conferences, which I don't think any laureate has arranged for fifty years.)

I think we have too many trusts already. Let the living decide what's important in life, not the dead.

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6. IAmBroom ◴[09 Dec 25 14:25 UTC] No.46205219[source]▶
The fact that we are talking about bodies supposedly preserved in a state of suspended animation, not yet really dead, refutes your premise.
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7. vintermann ◴[09 Dec 25 15:18 UTC] No.46205821{3}[source]▶
Not sure what premise you mean. But I'm pretty sure not even the cryo-optimists pretends those people are not dead.
8. DennisP ◴[10 Dec 25 02:49 UTC] No.46213454[source]▶
That's why I said "mitigate" rather than "completely solve." Incentives are aligned better with two entities who check each other and earn ongoing fees, instead of giving a lump sum to a single entity.

And the Nobels might not be awarded exactly as originally intended, but they are still awarded every year. Nobody has swiped the funds for executive bonuses, as the commenter above suggested.