Cryonics 2.0: From Immortalism to Indefinite Lifespan

From Immortalism to Indefinite Lifespan

Abstract

How has cryonics been affected by futuristic developments in AI and anti-aging medicine? Cryonics is the practice of perfusing human bodies with antifreeze solutions (cryoprotectants) and storing them at ultralow temperatures in the hopes of future revival. Cryonicists (those who practice cryonics) hope for revival by a variety of biological and digital methods, ranging from rewarming, healing, and rejuvenating the body, to adding digital and biological enhancements, to recreating the person or consciousness in digital form. Cryonics – once a very fringe phenomenon, only recently the topic of ethnographic manuscripts – have been mainstreamed by advances in the study of aging and AI and other cultural developments. Along with this mainstreaming and the growth in the number of cryonicists, there have been changes in how cryonicists learn about cryonics, how they self-identify, and how they present cryonics to others. Despite AI’s role in mainstreaming transhumanist ideas, such as consciousness outside the biological body, “beyond the carbon barrier” as Abou Farman writes, our ethnographic and survey data show that cryonics is popularizing along two alternative routes: through a surging interest in anti-aging research and treatment, and through “the Rise of Rationalism” and Rationalist-adjacent movements like Effective Altruism and Longtermism. Cryonics 2.0 is the name we give to this new context for cryonics, wherein many cryonicists shed the explicit language of immortalism and transhumanism in favour of longevity and Rationalist discourses.