this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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[–] BubbleMonkey@slrpnk.net 186 points 6 months ago (46 children)

You know I love the idea of cryostasis, and the idea of reanimating people after death is great.

But why the fuck would future humans bother bringing all these people back, even if they could? Even if they have a utopian society free of scarcity and inequality, they would be bringing back mostly rich people who lived in a super different and bad time and have literally nothing positive to contribute to the utopian future, since they were a large part of the problems of today in the first place. Plus the vast majority of them are almost certainly elitist assholes who nobody in a utopia would want to be around.

Maybe it would be a humanitarian thing, but if these people are dead and frozen there’s no real imperative to do this to end suffering or something. Or I guess maybe bringing them back to try and figure out what the hell their damage is that they felt ruining everything was a better option than working toward the betterment of all.. but they’d only need a few brains in vats for that, no bodies, so sucks to suck, cryofolks.

If future humans don’t have a utopian society, the only real use for people from so long ago that I can come up with would be research subjects or slaves. And frankly there are easier ways to go about getting those..

So I see no possible future where people who cryopreserve get brought back en masse. Even if it’s entirely possible to surmount the technical hurdles.

[–] clara 74 points 6 months ago

why would future humans bother bringing all these people back

i think it's worth reminding why doctors treat people now, in this time and space. they do it mostly because they want to save people. maybe a few do it for money, but past a certain point, the money isn't why you do it. i think it's a safe bet that doctors of a future would see these corpses as patients, and act accordingly. an analogy - think how we see heart attack victims as patients, and not how our medieval ancestors would have seen them (as corpses)

...literally nothing positive to contribute to the utopian future...

true, but, a good chunk of patients in hopsital today have nothing to contribute to society, and cannot contribute any more, whatsoever. we treat them anyway, because that's what we do. humans have consistently cared for others that are sick and have "nothing to contribute" throughout history, and that shows no sign of going away anytime soon

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