Robert Ettinger, a hero among many transhumanists for fathering the cryonics movement, has been cryopreserved at age 92 in Clinton Township, Michigan. He died on Saturday, July 23.
The Cryonics Institute press release is here. There are a few obituaries online, including one from the Telegraph. Chronopause, a cryonics blog, reviews the history of Ettinger and cryonics.
Ettinger’s 1962 book The Prospect of Immortality and 1972 book Man into Superman inspire many transhumanists to think beyond the “inevitability” of death.
Ben Best was quoted by KurzweilAI.net on the suspension:
“Robert Ettinger deanimated [Saturday] at around 4 p.m. Eastern Time,†said Ben Best, president of the Cryonics Institute. “He was under hospice care and had an ice bath sitting by his bedside. His pronouncement and initiation of cooling was very rapid. The perfusion went well and he is now in the cooling box. Much more later.â€
Ettinger’s 1962 book was a turning point in human history. It represented the first time when people acquired the ambition to preserve the fine-grained structure of the human brain at death. Although Ben Franklin had imagined suspended animation centuries earlier, it wasn’t until Ettinger’s 1962 work that the idea became real. Ettinger participated in the first cryonic suspension in 1967.
Ettinger’s first book was republished by Doubleday after it was sent to Isaac Asimov who said that the concept was scientifically sound.
I hope that Ettinger is revived in the not-too-distant future to “taste the wine of centuries unborn”.
I like Ettinger’s quote about “the wine of centuries unborn.” Hopefully his dream is feasible and he (and I and everyone else interested in the far future) can drink deep.
I just want to quickly add that Bob was also a good guy in general:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/291677/message/1311540296/Re-+Robert+Ettinger+deanimated+today
Hopefully, a duplicate mind instance of this good man won’t be reanimated only to be tortured by a superintelligence that will inevitably run the Universe. Future happiness of this potential mind instance will solely depend on whether Universe-controlling superintelligence remains humane or not. Obviously, every cryonics fan is wise enough to know that, right?
Indeed. Such a scenario would not be preferred :)
That said, I do not think it is likely. Though I am pessimistic and believe there’s a good chance we will be destroyed, the AI would probably not bother to even revive him; it would just arrange his atoms into !^§[f,}+ and move on with its day. For more on what I am referring to, here is Michael Anissimov’s post “Does the Universe Contain a Mysterious Force Pulling Entities Towards Malevolence?”:
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2011/02/does-the-universe-contain-a-mysterious-force-pulling-entities-towards-malevolence/
Does the Ben Best quote from Kurzweil’s site indicate that Ettinger essentially had a standby team, then?
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