LESSWRONG
LW

Personal Blog

14

Terminally ill teen won historic ruling to preserve body

by NancyLebovitz
18th Nov 2016
1 min read
9

14

This is a linkpost for http://www.bbc.com/news/health-38012267
Personal Blog

14

Terminally ill teen won historic ruling to preserve body
23James_Miller
1Luke_A_Somers
0morganism
-1ernestdezoe
1NancyLebovitz
-2James_Miller
3g_pepper
0Lumifer
1James_Miller
New Comment
9 comments, sorted by
top scoring
Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 12:09 AM
[-]James_Miller9y230

The dad said "Even if the treatment is successful and she is brought back to life in let's say 200 years, she may not find any relative and she might not remember things and she may be left in a desperate situation given that she is only 14 years old and will be in the United States of America."

Those of us who have signed up for cryonics should consider putting together a statement that when we are revived, we will check to see if similarly revived children are being looked after, and if they are not we will consider it our moral duty to help the children.

Reply
[-]Luke_A_Somers9y10

There's a big reddit thread on it. Predictable comments.

Reply
[-]morganism9y00

An interesting blog article too, and it points out that Majaresh is still "deeply meditating" in the Himalayas, in an open source cryonic facility....

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2016/11/18/cryogenics-and-the-courts/

"It turns out that a person cannot control what happens to their body after their death – because a dead body is not property, so you can’t state in a will what is to happen to it. Williams v Williams 1882. The wishes of the deceased may be relevant, but they don’t bind third parties. "

Reply
[-]ernestdezoe9y-10

What utility would future humans find in reviving cryonically preserved humans ? Besides a cryonically preserved person can't fight to protect his/her own interest to have the cryonic facilities spared during economic crisis , wars , social unrests..... which would surely happen in the future , history has shown time and time again how those who don't or can't fight to protect their interests stand no chance of having their preference on the status of the world met (other agents would force their preference on the status of the world instead)

Reply
[-]NancyLebovitz9y10

No guarantees, but cryonics companies will want to protect their reputations, and I expect pressure groups of family members, friends, and fans doing somewhat to support reviving preserved humans-- perhaps even supporting a principle of reviving people rather than just one's favorites.

Reply
[-]James_Miller9y-20

Since Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, why is she not going to be President? Because of the dead hand of the past.

Reply
[-]g_pepper9y30

David Harsanyi gives a spirited defense of the electoral college over at Reason. I'm not sure I agree with his entire argument, but one great observation that he makes is that, had the 2016 election been a popular election, it would have changed the voting dynamics - people in strongly red or blue states are disincentivised from voting under the current system and would not be under a popular vote, and people in swing states would be less strongly incentivised to vote under a popular vote. Similarly, campaigning would be done differently under a popular voting system - under our current system the candidates focus on winning specific states with more attention being paid to swing states whereas under a popular vote, the candidates would have focused their efforts more uniformly.

The takeaway is that the fact that Clinton won the popular vote in an election based on the electoral college does not imply that she would have won the popular vote in an election based on the popular vote.

Reply
[-]Lumifer9y00

Because of the dead hand of the past.

But not a cryogenically preserved hand.

Being dead is a well-solved problem.

Reply
[-]James_Miller9y10

As is creating institutional values that outlive the institution's founders.

Reply
Moderation Log
Curated and popular this week
9Comments