Spike wrote:
> Now, perhaps some cryonicist can help me out on a topic that
> has come up before on this list, but I feel I can now add a new
> twist. Suppose I go in for cryonics, and 100 yrs goes by. Now
> my living descendants are actually demotivated to reanimate me.
> They have no emotional connection, they never knew me. I must
> figure out some way to make it profitable for those who would
> be burdened with my care, should I be reanimated without the
> essential job skills of the mid 22nd century. I still have not figured
> out how to squirrel away wealth in some fashion that my descendants
> (should I ever have any) would not rather try to inherit, after
> causing my accidental unsuccessful thawing. Ideas? spike
Here's what ALCOR has to say on the subject:
Who Will Unfreeze Our Frozen Patients? < http://www.alcor.org/01b.html#unfreeze >
Any cryonics organization has a moral and legal obligation to attempt to revive its patients. Of course, no one can guarantee that the organization will stay in business long enough; but at the Alcor Foundation, we have taken many steps to insure proper funding and management, so that Alcor will survive, financially intact, without losing sight of its goals.
Two thirds of the money that Alcor receives when a "whole body" suspension member is frozen goes into a Patient Care Fund, to maintain and eventually restore people who are in suspension. Currently, this fund contains well over a million dollars.
We believe that when nanotechnology is perfected, it will be subject to the same economies of scale that we have seen in microchips, causing it to plummet in price. Thus, cell repair should become not only feasible, but affordable.
Even so will people of the future want to revive patients from the past?
After twenty years of growth and advancement at Alcor, we feel confident that the determination to revive our patients will be strong, because those patients will still be *Alcor patients*, and Alcor will still be staffed and managed by *Alcor members*, many of whom like Alcor's present employees will have friends and loved ones that are in suspension, depending on them. Furthermore, the future management of Alcor, like the present management, will be motivated by the knowledge that so long as they are vulnerable to disease, accident, or aging, their own lives may depend on a powerful, ethical organization.
How Will People Adjust to the Future?
Immigrants from third-world countries have adapted to twentieth-century America without too much trouble. And cryonics patients, frozen today, will have a big advantage in the future: they already understand what technology is, and how it may develop. Also, if you are revived, you probably won't be alone. Other cryonics patients should be emerging with you as you explore a new world full of exciting possibilities.
I was also under the impression that ALCOR had an organization called Lifepact to deal with this issue. At least this used to be the case.
As far as squirreling money away, my CFP and fellow cryonicist, Rudi Hoffman, is working on the problem of trusts that can be maintained in perpetuity, and he thinks he is close to an answer.
Best regards,
Scott