You've been hosen if you don't get frozen

Philosophers have often asked that, while their ideas may be repugnant, listeners consider them for their substance before rejecting them for being repulsive. Yes, you may hate an idea; yes you may tell its author, anyone who will listen, and everyone who will not about your hatred; yes, you may even reject an idea in time for thinking it dangerous, foul, or downright stupid, but it is hardly fair to do so without hearing it out, and honestly thinking first. This tolerant consideration would suit other areas, say life choices, well, and I ask you to give the following modest proposal its due consideration. I accept all resulting blame should you at least try to see it my way first.

So let's be forward.

Your days are numbered. One afternoon, perhaps soon, maybe later, you will keel over, choke on a carrot, suddenly become the victim of an unthinkable tragedy, or otherwise perish. At this time, assuming no God, your time is up. Swoof, nothing more, Blackness. This is the regrettable human condition.

Or is it?

Blaise Pascal once made a famous and oft cited wager, that he would rather live his life a Christian than not, for if the atheists were right and God did not exist, he would pay only a meager cost in lost prayer time, but if the Christians were right, he would benefit from eternal salvation. Pascal's wager was both too unlikely to yield fruit, and too expensive in terms of actual-life-time commitment for my tastes.

I wish to point out two seemingly unconnected sets of facts.

#1: Modern technology is wonderful.
We are rapidly growing as a technological culture. Mere decades ago, we had no widespread access to computers and the things that came with them, and since then we have rocketed forwards in nearly all fields from medicinal practice, to chemical research, to energy production. Two particularly promising areas of study are those of brain research and alternative fuel. The MRI, among many other recently developed techniques, finally allows researchers to directly sight human brains in action, and make inferences about their function. Moreover, our ability to sequence genes, which seems to be growing at pace with the exponential expansion of digital storage and processing power, is at an all time high. Assuming that we humans don't decide to wipe each other off the face of the earth, soon, perhaps years, or decades from now, but inevitably in the next few centuries, we will have an understanding of the human brain. This may, among other things, allow us to either provide repair, or life support, to a brain, the only thing a human really needs to exist. On the note of alternative fuel, we are rapidly getting closer to effective renewable, and one day cheaper, energy sources. Energy sources are key for powering all manner of things. Industrial freezers are one fine example.

#2: Now is actually a moderately ideal time, financially speaking, to die.
In the US, the tax on your worldly assets as you cease to be worldly is, it turns out, very low right now. The democrats failed to renew it in 2010, and so at the moment it is zero, and even once we renew it, the tax will affect only moderately wealthy Americans. (Those with holdings of US$1million or more)

So how does this affect you? Well, if we are in agreement that at some point you will go kerploof, and also that nothingness, which we prefer to avoid, will follow, then perhaps you desire a way out? Given the present progression of medical technology, it is a safe wager to say that if you remain intact, and in possession of a funding mechanism until we develop more sophisticated medicine, then resuscitation is entirely possible.

How to get there though? Freeze your corpse. Yes, for a tidy sum, you can almost assuredly arrange for your corpse to be frozen once you lie deceased. To do so, create a post-tax endowment sufficient to accrue interest at a rate exceeding inflation by the annual costs of a body-sized refrigerator unit and corresponding site. (1) Attaining this, you lie only a stipulation on your endowment that your frozen effigy be revived as an un-aging robo-cyborg-person once possible away from a chance at immortal life.

You may laugh at first, or shy away over the prospect of leaving your children with nothing, or object on moral grounds, for surely the money could go to charity, or at the very least the energy use will haunt future generations, and you may even simply reject the concept at face value.

But consider that my idea is not so different than Pascal's wager. Once you are dead, your money is obviously doing you no good, so just like the wager, this plan has almost no cost; in fact it costs less because you need not attend church services to implement it. On the other hand, just like Pascal's concept, the potential benefit is immeasurable. If successful, you simply will have more of the only absolutely limited resource you must face, time, and that is worth all of the money, happiness, whatever, in the world, for with unlimited time, you may gain also whatever else you may seek.

Now as for the above objections... If you are a parent, your children have benefited by you enough already; they exist and have been brought up. Should charitable potential hold you back from spending your hard earned funds to buy yourself a chance at living in a future where medicine may provide you with delicious robotic support for your brain, just think of the good you could do with two, three, four and even greater multiples of your present life. It would be selfish not to opt for the robo-option. Have qualms about energy use? Devote some part of your life to the green movement to offset the cost. There is no real excuse for non-participation, so live life fully, meet each day as your last, breathe the fine nectar that is the running juice of the world, and also have a sweet backup plan. (2)


(1)You will have to reach the moderately wealthy bracket to do this, but if you are to kick the can soon, all is well with taxation, and if not, you are probably well off enough for such an endowment anyways.
(2)I have jokingly proposed this idea several times before, but never quite gotten around to putting it into lengthy text. Disclaimed.