Classic.
Freezing your own head. Reminds me of the sanatorium in Zork Nemesis.
Flee! Flee! It’s the return of the frozen heads! With childish inevitability, this steaming pile of perennial medi-nonsense is trying to stage a comeback. Walt Disney did it, and now your own bonce can jostle with his for space in the freezer at a fraction of the price. And it’s all going to happen within the next ten years. …
I love the frozen head idea, but realistically you'll be a cyborg with no money if you're ever revived. Now where would it be profitable to put a "technically dead" cyborg ? Somewhere dangerous that no living human would ever accept to go to. So basically you'll be managing a methane factory in Jupiter orbit, or harvesting Oort cloud debris. But you won't have a window to look out of. Fun!
I do wonder if there's a legal mechanism to retain ownership of an investment portfolio ( managed on your behalf by a firm, of course ) when your brain has been frozen.
You could "die" moderately well off and "wake up" outrageously rich ( or dirt poor if the fund manager put it all on black ).
The cyborg problem could be worked around with a head/body transplant ( which ever way you want to look at it ) from somebody who died from a brain injury.
"I would guess that your investment fund would be raided by your heirs"
More likely the government would suck it down to nothing using some kind of wealth tax. Logically it would have to otherwise everything would eventually be owned by dead people that pay no tax.
"> everything would eventually be owned by dead people that pay no tax.
If dead people are ever allowed to "own" anything, you can be damn sure they'll also be paying taxes.
Governments aren't _that_ stupid."
Dead people owning everything, and taxes, and not-very-bright governments are precisely the plot of Lois McMaster Bujold's book Cyroburn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryoburn
Unfortunately for the Bad Guys Who Would Be Frozen To Rule, they decide that running just one planet isn't enough, and want more... and the 'more' is one of the three planets run by Lord Auditor Mad Miles Vorkostigan's boss, Emperor Gregor Vorbarra. This means that they run into Mad Miles. Things don't end well for them. They should have picked a safer target... Cetaganda, say, or Old Earth. The not-bright government was owned by the bad guys, and they made the fatal error of assuming that all governments were as corrupt as theirs was, especially the government of a three-planet empire run from a notoriously backwards home world and including one system taken by conquest and another rather accidentally settled as a brand-new colony. They didn't know that the Vor Counts were, originally, the emperors accountants, and they really didn't understand just how powerful a Lord Auditor was, even if he was the youngest and newest Lord Auditor. Oops.
From the Norweb wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NORWEB :
"Holly, the on-board computer of the mining ship Red Dwarf, played a practical joke on Dave Lister. According to Holly, the Norweb federation were looking for Lister for his crimes against humanity; leaving two half eaten sausages on his table before leaving, which over three million years had gone mouldy and now covered seven eighths of the earth's surface, and also because he left his bathroom light on for three million years, resulting in a 180 billion pound fine."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEu0o62ycmg
Also reminds me of how people paid for their meals at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
"I do wonder if there's a legal mechanism to retain ownership of an investment portfolio ( managed on your behalf by a firm, of course ) when your brain has been frozen."
A trust would work (IANAL) I expect. In the UK they pay 1% tax every 10 years and allow avoidance of death duties if the beneficiary changes, even if that change is due to death.
I expect the problem would be in ensuring that the day-to-day trust management doesn't help themselves, or that your descendants (or worse, the state) decides to seize the trust, and expect you to file a response.
Perhaps a series of trusts, paying people to watch over other people, that sort of thing.
Personally it all sounds like a scam for extracting a lot of money for rich people with little potential downside. It's not like defrosting tech has been ever shown to work for humans, so there's no actual enforceable contract. Well, maybe the "keep you on ice until you can't pay the bills" part.
Larry Niven wrote a short story called "Rammer" and then turned it into a novel called "A World Out Of Time."
Both worth reading, IMHO. The State had confiscated all the wealth of "corpsicles," and when revived, they were put to work doing jobs that required "expendable assets." He also pointed out that their cells had been destroyed by freezing, so they actually extracted the memory RNA and put it into the body of a criminal who had been mind-wiped. And if the newly (well, "revived" isn't exactly the word - "reincarnated"?) don't pass their tests, they just wipe the mind again and start over with another candidate.
Works for me. My troubles are from the neck down. As for my prior life, well as the Reverend Jim put it on Taxi when Tony Danza's character was thinking of joining the Navy: "The Navy is like prison, with a chance of drowning." I'm attitudinally prepared.
That last YouTube video was my first FanFlic. Good stuff. Also good attitude adjuster.
miniature railway twice: once when I was 5, then again aged 52.
Similar here - my primary school in Norf Lunnon (can't remember the name - 1/4 of the way up Cat Hill in New Barnet) took us on a week-long trip to St. Mary's Bay when I was a nipper.
Went back there a couple of years ago when I was 50. The accomodation was slightly better than before - ex-WW2 temporary huts converted into kiddie-barracks were not great.
But it was the 70's and we expected nothing better.
There is something about Dungeness I quite like. I popped round to Derek Jarman's 'house' last time I was there. I know he's passed on but I'd much rather think he was out watching a sci-fi space cowboy gunfight on the beach. Though knowing Jarmen; more likely filming half-naked sci-fi space cowboys splashing in the sea, slapping each other about the head with giant rubber willies, while shouting in latin.
Theorem 1:
Anybody who wants to freeze their head for the purpose of returning to life later, has a brain not worth freezing.
Proof of this is beyond the scope of this essay, but should be bleeding obvious to everyone with a brain worth freezing.
Corollary 1: All brains worth freezing will only be frozen for the above purpose against the will of the owner of said brain.
Corollary 2:Freezing of brains for the above purpose is either (i) a waste of space/time/energy, or (ii) evil
Of course, if you want to freeze your head for the purpose of scaring the willies out of your descendants, that is an entirely different matter
building a commercial hover bike
You mean, like these ones? ^^
If this one was photoshopped, the buyer should ask for a refund ^^
Here's the website of the maker https://www.hoversurf.com/
It can also be used as meat grinder if something goes wrong for the pilot.
Cutting off the head and freezing it is nothing to do with resuscitation as the subject is already dead.
Obviously it's to make sure the subject is really dead and also security if subject was really a werewolf / vampire / zombie etc that would have shortly run amoke.
It also ensures that fresh frozen brains can be sold at huge profit if there is a shortage. Like if there is a successful zombie apocalypse.
As a side note, why Zombies at Halloween. No connection to Celtic Samhain or Christian All Saints.
Vampires do have a slight Celtic connection (see where Bram Stoker is from and also "lennan shee" is female (fairy) Celtic vampire with human lover, hence the two earlier Victorian books than Dracula had female vampires. One was Lilith. I forget the other.
+1 for the Zombie question. I guess just the marketing bods packaging up anything they can flog at too high a price for a few days. But then festivals do seem to spread outwards. Round my way the Diwali fireworks all seem to consist of continuous bangs. No pretty lights in the sky for a festival of light . Weird.
Technically, Jesus.
May I present to you... Lucy Phurr's Imps. Meet Team G (Team D got introed much earlier on; the CEO of Team D likes lawyers... fried, boiled, roasted, on a stick...) http://luciphurrsimps.com/2011/03/29/team-g-03/ And, oh, here's the CEO of Team G: http://luciphurrsimps.com/2011/04/03/team-g-06/ He likes megachurch preachers... fried, boiled, roasted, on a stick... http://luciphurrsimps.com/2011/04/05/team-g-08/
Warning: may cause head explosions among religious nuts.
You forgot pumpkins - pretty sure they aren't celtic...if they were, there must have been a pumpkin famine in the 70's/80's in Ireland as I only ever saw them in Charlie Brown....
It's an 'underworld' festival - marking the retrograde cycle of the Wheel of the Year, which is generally associated with death and decay.
When I was a kid in Ireland (Dublin) we hollowed out turnips. VERY difficult. And too small. Basically a fail.
I doubt the idea came from American TV at the time.
We also had mashed potato with something green in it, and with a coin hidden in it. Who comes up with this stuff?
We also had mashed potato with something green in it, and with a coin hidden in it. Who comes up with this stuff?
People with not much money?
Anyway, in my childhood it would have been "green-coloured Smash with money hidden in it". Which is a whole other bucket of vomit.
"When I was a kid in Ireland (Dublin) we hollowed out turnips."
Nowadays everyone seems to insist that these should be called swedes and it's the cricket ball sized things that are turnips. But who'd make a turnip lantern out of those little runts.
"We also had mashed potato with something green in it"
Sounds like champ.
"When I was a kid in Ireland (Dublin) we hollowed out turnips. VERY difficult. And too small. Basically a fail."
I read a story as a child that had a character do that, and remember thinking "oh, that's where we got the idea from!"
I assumed that the turnips were bigger than what I saw in the grocery store.
Maybe for neo-pagans.
Not so much for Celts, who don't seem to have had the Greek concept of an underworld, but many "Otherworlds" only maybe some or one associated with the dead.
Certainly it was more important than the equinox.
All the (four) Celtic fire festivals were originally about 1/2 way between Solstices and Equinoxes. Various theories.
Yes, America imported Halloween and corrupted it. Turnip lanterns were fine, there are different kinds, the largest are near football sized and there are others that are no use for lanterns being only a bit bigger than a sliotar (a little like a cricket ball used for Irish ice hockey, which doesn't bother with ice). Harder to dig out turnips, but at least the waste goes in stew. Pumpkin has little flavour in comparison. The important thing was the bonfires, the apple ducking etc, not shop bought "candy" nor going round the houses begging.
In the 1960s the fireworks were still legal in N.I. (made for England's Guy Fawkes) but illegal in Ireland (Republic). England seemed to do Guy Fawkes rather than Halloween (Celtic) or All Saints Eve (the too Catholic appropriation of it) then.
was cremated. Sorry, only found out the other day, when one of my children asked about cryogenics (well, she didn't use that word, just mentioned some people who get frozen after death. So, naturally, we said: WALT DISNEY. And, to back up this claim with real evidence we went to wikipedia, what else. There, cremated. But then, the verdict comes with a tiny question mark, as the reliability of wikipedia is known (to us all) to be somewhat... questionable. To prove that, I had once gone with my daughter to edit a wikipedia page, and she did put in something silly, saved - not a trusty source, see, qed. Only that we got distracted and only remembered, a few days later, that, bugger, we didn't reverse the change, but at that point we already forgot what wikipedia page it was, of course. Pretty embarrassing. So, multiply that by a few (hundred) milion parents eager to teach their kids how unreliable wikipedia is, and there you have it. Cremated, frozen, might even be still alive. Or never existed in the first place.
A library you say? Well, they have access to the same wikipedia pages, gocha there!
The Further Adventures of Walt's Frozen Head
Apparently a crowdfounded feature-length comedy, currently in post production.
From the website:
About Our Film
Playing off the urban legend that Walt Disney had himself cryogenically preserved, a new feature film produced and shot in the Orlando area.
Currently, we’re in post-production, but expect to see screening of the film starting as early as next year!
Synopsis
The Further Adventures of Walt’s Frozen Head is a quirky comedy about the unlikely friendship between the frozen head of Walt and Peter, a low level theme park employee.
During his yearly thaw to oversee the direction of his company and guard his creative legacy, Walt demands to be finally allowed up to see his park, Walt Disney World. When management scoffs, he recruits Peter to kidnap him for a day in the Magic Kingdom.
The movie was made without the knowledge or permission of the Walt Disney Company or family. It has not been authorised or approved by either and those organizations have no responsibility for its content.
-----
(There also is a "Glove and Boots" vlog featuring a puppet version of Disne's frozen head, but I can't remember which.)
Is the benefit to the rest of humanity in reviving frozen corpses (or select bits of same).
The underlying assumption is that the most extreme damage can be reversed, the most extreme diseases cured. Effectively (probably) eternal (or at least very extended) life.
Given the population pressures that must produce, why would you want even more people on the planet, especially those with an archaic outlook and an immense sense of entitlement. Face it, if you want to be frozen and revived you think you are worthy of eternal life.
Invest your fortune to grow whilst you are dead, you say? That strategy progressively ties up more and more of the world's wealth as the richest 1% park themselves for a few decades (or centuries) and hoard all their money to use when they are thawed again. Why would the other 99% of the world tolerate such destructive selfishness?
Of course, once all the wealth has been taxed into oblivion (Trying to avoid death duties. eh?Penalties!) why would you want to revive and angry pauper with nothing to offer a world which has moved on?
A great con game. "Give me all your money and I'll wake you up when things get better. Honest I will!"
One reservation. If this was really feasible then there could be a case for certain special cases being preserved. Iain M Banks, Terry Pratchett to name just two. However this does establish a dangerous precedent.
I recall reading The Far Arena which is a good revival and reintegration into society story. I can't remember much of it except it's about bringing back a frozen gladiator who has a penchant for disembowelling people. Probably worth a read before turning the heaters on.
But if you're buried or cremated your odds of being revived are zero so even if the chance of cryonics working is only 1%, it's worth a punt surely?
Of course that logic only applies if it's free so the real question is which number is higher.
{cost of cryonics}
or
{prob of revival} x {benefit of being revived in a future where death is cured}
The latter is a very very small number times a very very large number so difficult to evaluate.
WBW has a try
https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html
No, it's 0%, because they only freeze dead people AND the process destroys the integrity of almost all the cells.
To work at all, you'd need to have induced hibernation via chemicals & genetic manipulation. WHILE ALIVE. Then ALL your blood & other fluids quickly replaced with an oxygenated non-water fluid that would permeate all the cells and not kill you. Then you can be gradually frozen. Being already absolutely dead is too late.
1) Preserving dead people or heads is never going to work.
2) Cryogenics of mammals without modification and basically hibernation destroys too many cells. Even if they are alive.
Only people mostly dead* can be revived.
[*i.e. they may have stopped breathing and pumping blood, but otherwise enough intact to be revived, being not quite frozen may extend the period of being a little alive]
@Mage
0% is a big call. Yes we know we couldn't revive those people now. If we could revive them now, we wouldn't be freezing them in the first place. But how can we be 100% confident about all the possible medical and technical advances between now and the point when someone accidentally trips over the freezer cord? Even if it's true that the brain is destroyed beyond any possibility of repair by any future civilisation (which I don't think is a certainty), isn't it at least possible that someone in the future could cut it in to very thin slices, scan the whole thing with an electron microscope, simulate it in software and stick it in a robot body? It seems outlandish but I don't see anything there which is fundamentally impossible. In fact not only is it theoretically possible it's actually being done right now (but only for flatworms).
http://www.artificialbrains.com/openworm
You might think it's unlikely to ever be possible, fair enough. You might think that even if it becomes possible, a future immortal civilisation will have enough overcrowding problems that it won't see any value in reviving 21st century brains, fair enough. But those are reasons why it's unlikely, which I fully accept (hence 1%). Not reasons why it's impossible.
@Charles 9
I doubt there's a legal definition of death other than "has been declared dead by a doctor". Even if there was a legal definition, if someone recovers and is walking around talking then it doesn't really matter what the law said does it? A hundred years ago we'd have said, if your heart has stopped beating, you're dead but now there are loads of people walking around whose heart had at some point stopped. In another hundred years, declaring someone dead just because there had been a lack of blood to their brain for a few hours might seem absurd.
"I doubt there's a legal definition of death other than "has been declared dead by a doctor". Even if there was a legal definition, if someone recovers and is walking around talking then it doesn't really matter what the law said does it?"
Then why is a person who is Brain-Dead (though still having a beating heart, etc.) considered legally dead? There must be some medical evidence to support that once a brain stops functioning it's past the Point of No Return in order for the legal declaration to have standing.
They are considered legally dead because we know we have tried reviving people from similar states and always failed.
Doctors are ruthlessly pragmatic (with good reason). They take a great interest in what's going on internally but they don't care about it for its own sake at all, they are only interested in where it is relevant to the questions of "How do I diagnose this?" or "How do I treat this?".
Death means the patient is unconscious and there are no treatment options which have a chance of making him concious. That's it.
It is possible to do scans on the brain to look for activity directly but that would be very very rare. 99% of the time people are declared dead because we know there's no chance of revival. This is a super important point for cryonics because if death is just an arbitrary point along the "a bit under the weather" spectrum, it shifts every time there is a medical advance. That means that the people we freeze today who are 'dead', a 2050 doctor might say had never died at all.
First they will raid the freezer banks. After those run out, live people will be captured to make more. When our species is destroyed by carnivorous aliens for whom frozen Human Head Pops are the ultimate dessert treat, I hope someone is left to scream "I TOLD YOU THIS WAS A BAD IDEA!"
> they should be able to revive your brain if it’s iced immediately after your death and safely stored as far from the Haagen Dazs as possible.
Yabbut, why would they? Just suppose that ol' Walt is in a revivable condition when the technology becomes available to revive him. What's the incentive to get the geezer out and pop him in the hugely expensive human popsicle defroster? You'll just end up with an old, terminally ill Walt Disney that will immediately require yet more hugely expensive medical treatment to become an old, moderately healthy Walt Disney. If Walt believed that his heirs and assigns are going to thaw him out in the future, he just didn't think it through. Oh, and if it becomes necessary to fit disembodied brains into spaceships and asteroid mining gear, then some still-warm individuals are going to find themselves involuntarily drafted. That'll be so much easier than defrosting somebody who's been dead for ages.
"Millennials reading this may be wondering why you’d want to freeze your head. You may also be wondering what a "Walt Disney" is but let that pass."
I'm a Millennial, I’m 32. The Lion King came out in 1994 when I was a kid, I even remember watching Aladdin which came out in '92. You need to go forward a generation for this statement to work. Lazily applying "Millennial" to anyone under 40 despite it being 2017 is lazy.
Apparently they need half a million coders in the next 4 years so it said on the news.
So - with 30 years programming experience - I won't be ALLOWED to die - when the time comes I'll be decapitated, my brain will be wired into t'interned and forced to write software forever.