Poll: If You Could Cryogenically Freeze Yourself, Would You?

[Arakasi]

Take the assumption that the freeze it is both free and risk-free (as in the cryo-machine won't die on you). I didn't put in a maybe option, because I want you to decide as if someone is giving you a one-time offer, but you have a long time to think about it.

As for me, I have no idea whether I'd want to or not, which is weird because I normally have an answer to these sorts of questions. I'm sure I'll figure it out sooner or later.

 

[JoJo]

I voted no. It's a tough choice since I'd love to see the future but I essentially see it as a risk. I might step out of that cryo-machine and walk into a technological paradise beyond our wildest dreams, or I could find a ruined smouldering Earth, or a society with values so different to our own that I find it impossible to fit in. I have roots in this time period: family, friends and resources, whatever problems there may be here I wouldn't abandon them all for the mere chance of a better future.

 

[Thaluikhain]

There's that XKCD cartoon and a sci-fi story by...(Sandy Mitchell? Barrington Bayley?) where everyone can go into suspension to see the future, but society can't progress cause everyone just wants to skip forward until someone else has done it.

Spoiler

 

[Elfgore]

I'd take the risk and say yes. I really don't want to know what I want to do as of now with my life, so why not wait a couple hundred years and see what pops up? And if society is destroyed, ah well. I picked wrong then.

 

[The Event]

This is an extremely tempting offer.

On the yes side are,
There are a number of technological innovations that I really want to take advantage of but don't expect to see developed during my lifetime.
If I leave some investments growing while I cryosleep, the compound interest for a few hundred or thousand years could make me fabulously wealthy when I wake up.

On the no side,
The world could be destroyed while I sleep or could be taken over by religious or political fanatics that I don't agree with meaning that I wake in a world I really don't want to live in. (Can I go back into suspended animation if I don't like the world I wake up to?)
I would miss my family and friends.

I think my answer would be Yes - but not quite yet. And when I do, wake me at around the 500 year mark so I can take a look around and see if I'm ready to stay.


I am actually signed up to be cryo preserved when I die so one day I will hopefully find out whether this was the right choice.

 

[Scarim Coral]

No, despite some uncertainty, the stuff that I want/ need is in the present like friend, family and my media etc. Ok sure I do wake up in the future I will have ALOT of catching up to do but the future itself is something you cannot predict (will it be a utopia or a barren wasteland or even a grim dark future?) so it's too much of a risk/ gamble to partake.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Nooooooo thank you. I mean, if you guys want to be around when humanity is cowering in caves, ekeing out a miserable existance while hiding from roving packs of hunting robosaurs, that's on you.

 

[Radeonx]

No. I'm already in my 20s, have a stable life, a nice job, why would I throw all of my current knowledge and experience away to try and experience a future where all my friends and family are dead and I don't know anything about the current world?
Also, you obviously have no idea what the future is like, so my no is if the future is a technological metropolis. And if the future is a shithole of post apocalyptic nuclear fallout, its still a no.

 

[geK0]

How can I be sure my cryo-chamber will be safe for such lengthy durations? I don't want to come out of my chamber buried, underwater, or in the middle of a wasteland (or crushed under a pile of debris)? Who is keeping the chamber safe, and how can they provide assurance that my chamber will continue being safe for 500+ years?

Logistical issues aside, and assuming civilization still exists (it probably would for a duration of less than 5000 years) I feel like the loneliness and culture shock would be too much for me to handle and I just would never be able to assimilate into society. I don't want to go into the future and end up being a homeless bum who can't speak the common language (not very well at least).

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

No.

At best I'm stuck in a future much more advanced than the current one, with significantly better technology that I have no idea how to use, and significantly smarter people, who I can't relate to. I'll be the walking caveman, completely out of touch with the world, marveling at even the smallest, most normal things, considered a complete and utter moron because my education is ridiculously out of date. I'd be useless to society and feel inferior every day of my life.

At worse I'd end up in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, where humanity has been mostly wiped out, and I'll die alone.

Neither of these options seems that great to me.

 

[Thaluikhain]

As an aside, you know how you can Carbon 14 date things, by seeing how much radioactive carbon remains in a sample?

We've all got radioactive C14 in us, but since we are alive, any damage the radiation causes is repaired same as any other small injury we get. However, turn the body off, and it's not repairing that damage anymore. After a while (not sure how long, though), this will cause problems.

Of course, you could just wake up every so often and then freeze yourself again to avoid this.

(This may or may not be why my plans to unleash a monster that had been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years never even made the news)

 

[Alexei F. Karamazov]

I answered no, because really, there's no real benefit for jumping ahead in life. Aside from my potential academic career, I also have a somewhat large and close group of friends that are a large part of my life; my girlfriend is an equally large part of my life as well. And I'm supposed to willingly say goodbye to them for no appreciable gain? If I don't off myself out of loneliness/ guilt once I come out of the freezer, I'll probably get offed through one of the infinite possible alterations to the work that would take place while I'm frozen. So in the end, the question is really asking me if I want to commit suicide or not, assuming the guilt and loneliness and such was crippling enough, which it very well could be, for me.

 

[Avaholic03]

Yes, but not until the end of my life.

I do want to see what happens, how things play out. But anyone who wakes up in the future is going to be so overwhelmed by the changes they will basically be useless for the rest of their life. I wouldn't want to spend the best years of my life being "that idiot from the past".

And please, don't quote me with some Idiocracy reference.

 

[Riddle78]

Could? Maybe not. Had to? Certainly. Cryonics is NOT a thing to be taken casually. I would like to make absolutely certain that there are no other options. Don't wanna end up like Fry,though his was accidental. After all... Who would want to abandon the world they know for the unknown tomorrow? What horrors could it hold that were mere shadows in the dark today?

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

If I was around 80 years old, or found out I had a disease that would slay me in a few months, then yeah I would, just to experience something interesting at the end of my life. I'd probably go forward 5,000 years just to see how the world is like, how humanity has advanced. Worst case scenario, my cryo pod is destroyed before that time, which is no big deal since I'll never know anyway. So yeah.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

No thanks. I already feel like I'm falling behind technologically, freezing myself would magnify that.

Also family, friends and potential love and stuff.

I'm fine living my life in the decades that have been laid out for me.

 

[debtcollector]

No.

While the future has potential to be amazing, it also has massive potential to be awful. If I'm to wake up in a bombed-out crater, a famine-stricken personality cult, or the bottom of the ocean, I'd rather not bother. Furthermore, I rather like my family and friends, so I'd rather not sleep through all their lives.

On a more pragmatic level, I'd rather not expose myself to what wild and wacky new viruses and plagues with which the future wrestles, and I figure I'll spare the future people what diseases I carry as well.

 

[Saltyk]

I would do it in a heartbeat. Just long enough to have Star Wars/Star Trek style space travel (Went 500-1000 years). Because I would love to travel the stars easily and see what is out there. Getting up close and personal to a star, viewing planets with completely different ecological makeup, and perhaps even meeting alien lifeforms.

Oh, sure, I would lose everything I have today. Family, friends, and plenty more. But, I just can't help wanting to see the universe. Besides, they can always freeze with me if it's free, safe, and easy.

Also, not at all worried about a horrible future. If anything, it will only get better. People really don't realize it, but the world has only steadily improved. There will always be conflict in some shape or form.

 

[mysecondlife]

When I go bald, gain 50 pounds of beer belly and divorced about three times, I'll say "Sure, why the heck not?"

 

[Saetha]

Hell no. I wouldn't know anything about the future. If it's a radioactive wasteland, or robo-apocalypse, or some other dystopia, I'd be screw simply by nature of the the fact that I don't know how anything, on top of having awful survival skills. Even in a utopia this would be a problem - I don't know the technology, the history, the language. They might still be speaking English, but think about how different Shakespeare sounds to us today - and that was only about four centuries ago. If we're talking millenia, there's no way I'd no anything. At worst, I end up homeless or dead. At best, I get whisked away by future archaeologists dying to talk to a living, breathing artifact and have to spend the rest of my life explaining iphones and lolcatz memes or something.

I have a support system here, friends and family and a life. It may not be an awesome life, but it's nice enough. Why give it up for a few days of wonder followed by a lifetime of ignorant misery?

Oh, sure, I would lose everything I have today. Family, friends, and plenty more. But, I just can't help wanting to see the universe. Besides, they can always freeze with me if it's free, safe, and easy.

Also, not at all worried about a horrible future. If anything, it will only get better. People really don't realize it, but the world has only steadily improved. There will always be conflict in some shape or form.

That's assuming they'd want to go with you. And assuming we've discovered space travel. The world only seems like it's steadily improved because the present just so happens to be the technological pinnacle of mankind. That doesn't mean we've been on an upward swing forever. I mean, look at European history. The Romans were pioneers of arts, architecture, technology - but it was all lost when the empire fell (Well, lost to Europe, at any rate) and wasn't uncovered again until the Renaissance. In the meantime, the various European peoples were back to mud houses and dictatorial monarchies. So the world isn't steadily improving, really. We just happen to live at it's most improved, but that doesn't guarantee it'll be even better in the future. Rome could fall again.