I found it an enjoyable read.

From another one, different author, same theme:

"Case, promise me one thing: when this gig is over, erase me, ok?"

https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Dixie_Flatline

In the case of Stephenson, this is counteracted a bit by Stephenson improving his craft somewhat over the years. His earlier novels all had very weak endings in my opinion, and that improved somewhat. But his never novels could use tightening.

I've always found it interesting how for most people and in most religions the hope is to be resurrected, go to heaven, and/or live forever, while in Buddhism the point is to escape the cycle of death and rebirth.

It's a completely different approach, which sees more life as something to be avoided rather than desired.

Buddha shows the path forward; I'm walking slow.

Playing SOMA might have ruined it for me...

There is pretty much zero chance that a cryopreserved individual would be revived. They're frozen when dying or dead, the process itself causes significant damage (with every mitigation just trading in a different severe form of damage), and even if future technology could undo all that and somehow make this severely damaged body somewhat operational, why in the world would anyone bother?

The person is forgotten, replaced, and has nothing in their name any more. There is no gain for those reviving them.

Source? Based on my research, no cryonic institution has failed in this manner to date.

Even now it's a fringe psuedoscience with little support or even regulation. Expecting a company to be both able and willing to pay the bill to store and freeze your body in perpetuity seems... Naïve. Looking at average company lifetimes might be a useful metric here.

I'm not sure if any actual official institutions failed in this way.

Why do people want to resurrect the woolly mammoth? ;-)

I'm sure cryo companies offer this type of safekeeping of money or investment.

Spend that on the living instead. We're already too many as is anyway, no need to also bring the dead back.

As for who would want you back ... your children, hopefully. And if there's no repair before they die ... hopefully their children would want them back. Etc.

> why in the world would anyone bother?

I think that historians in a hundred years would find opportunity to revive Larry King to be priceless.

I've had these fantasies, too and then I thought, "Why wouldn't you just leave a few cells and then have someone re-clone you?"

The obvious answer is that your memories/experiences are wiped out and what I _really_ want is to continue on with my pre-existing memories/experiences. It would be more optimal if you could pickle your memories, clone yourself and then (at some appropriate time later in life) "re-implant" the memories into your clone. I think that's what people like Larry King are really hoping for.

But then there's all sorts of problems with this (e.g., your loved ones will presumably be gone, so who's going to give a shit about your memories? etc. etc.).

The prospect of death is frightening to most of us.

This reminds me of an interesting philosophical question.

To state the obvious, even if the clone had an exact copy of your memories/experiences, that clone isn't you, you've died. If I had a teleportation machine that could "teleport" you to work by destroying you painlessly and instantly at the source location, and reconstruct you particle for particle at destination, how many would use it? I wouldn't, however irrational that may be, because "I" would be dead.

This bias is pretty interesting since by that definition we all die multiple times, as the particles that constitute our body are literally interchanging with the environment over time. But we don't feel uncomfortable about that fact.

Also known as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

> This bias is pretty interesting since by that definition we all die multiple times, as the particles that constitute our body are literally interchanging with the environment over time. But we don't feel uncomfortable about that fact.

I've wondered about that, is it strictly true? Aren't there heavy metals and other elements that are accumulated in the body over time? Or at least, they are eliminated so slowly that you'd never rid yourself of them completely before dying. I guess bones replace themselves every 10 years so any incorporated metals would have a chance to be eliminated on that timescale. But what's to stop a few of those elements making their way back into another structure after being ejected into the blood stream? Maybe we've all got a few persistent cadmium or lead atoms hanging out in our bodies from birth to death. Ship of Theseus crisis averted!

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletransportation_paradox

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasons_and_Persons

Question though: when that thought experiment is applied to the physical body of a person, aren’t our cells dying and being replaced constantly? Does that mean our identity changes over time and with new experiences? (Mind blown)

Whereas in Pascal's wager you have to choose one religion, which by definition excludes other religions.

2. Many religions logically exclude other religions, i.e. if they are correct then other religions are not. This is not the case with cryopreservation, where there is a nonzero chance that more than one company may successfully resurrect you.

3. Various monotheistic religions don't accept "I think it's total bullshit but I'm going to act as if I believe it anyway" as belief (opinions vary on what exactly is required), whereas cryopreservation companies are happy to take your money regardless of what you privately think.

2. How do you revive the frozen heads from companies that couldn't pay their freezer bills three decades ago? You don't. Those heads picked the wrong company. Expecting a just god from some other religion to let you into the afterlife anyway is a common response to Pascal's wager.

3. Is the word you're looking for here "faith"? I don't think that word helps your argument. I will concede that there's probably no condition where the company unfreezes you and then kills you because you're not up to their standards. Well, unless they find those old bad reviews you left...

Which is obviously entirely different from My Religion which is Known To Be True.

At least religion offers people an excuse towards charity because ‘you can’t bring anything to the afterlife.’

I also think it's not something worth worrying about. I think it'll be decendents simulating you to learn about their history or for advice.

I'd also hope we can eliminate suffering to a greater extent in the future, for everyone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmetropolitan

If, and when, a real method for immortality/life extension emerges, we can jump on it.

Merely frozing a corpse with the idea of some bogus future ressurection technology (that will still retain memories etc) is wishful thinking.

Not to mention those cryo-preserves will be shut down with narry a thought in the first case of crisis...

The understanding of aging, disease, and death is progressing slowly but a few centuries of research will likely make significant discoveries.

Of the remaining important things that money can buy, I think cryogenics is a very decent gamble.

Probably the most successful at this that I'm aware of (morality aside) are the IVF doctors who use their own sperm to impregnate women.

Some with many biological children from this. Results from a quick online search:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertold_Wiesner

* https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/14/europe/jan-karbaat-fertil...

Oh, this looks relevant too and suggests some other approaches. Harem's and/or being a king seem like winners for those so inclined:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_the_most_c...

I do not remember the exact story but the idea was interesting to the 22yo me at that time (some 25 years ago)

EDIT: I think this is "The Refuge" (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TheOuterLimits1...)

ETA: what I meant by ‘mind virii’ ; https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mind%20virus .. certainly wasn’t being disrespectful towards anyone’s faith.

From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viruses_of_the_Mind .. the vocabulary of atheism from my younger days still lingers even though I am on search mode now.

I am not a news/media elitist anymore. Things have changed in the past few years.