每天一小段英语（94）END_3
And if you decide that you probably would rather grab a parachute than stay in your seat, try not to fall victim to a common trap:可能你会选用降落伞，而不想因为一段普通的旅程而死。
Cryocrastination.
冷冻延迟现象。
That’s a real term used in the cryonics world to describe the phenomenon of people—especially young people—saying, “Yeah duh I’m obviously doing cryonics when I die” and then not actually going through the actions to sign up and start paying money. It’s natural—what could possibly be easier to procrastinate on? That item on your list—”sign up for cryonics”—tends to never find itself at the top of the to-do list. But no matter what age you are, unexpected things can happen, and if you never got around to signing up when they do, you’re out of luck. If you take a big step back, procrastinating on this is really shortsighted. Just do what I did—book appointments so you’ll actually do it.
这个词是在人体冷冻界描述人们的一种现象，尤其是年轻人：“我死时候要做冷冻”，但是接下来并没有去报名付款。很正常，什么是最容易拖延的呢？“报名冷冻”一定永远不会排在第一位。但是不管你多大岁数，难以预料的事总会发生，如果那时你也没有报名，好运就会离你而去。退一步看，拖延报名真是目光短浅。就和我一样去预定一个冷冻吧。
I hope you’ll do it the same way I’d hope you’d take a shot with an experimental drug if you were sick and it were the one chance you had. Because it’s worth a try. Because it just might work. Because why the fuck not. And because Dylan Thomas said it best:
同样的我也希望人们，重病无药可医了尝试一下试验性药品，因为值得一试，因为可能有效，因为为什么不呢？Dylan Thomas的一句话说的好：
Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
不要温和地走进那个良夜。 怒斥吧,怒斥光的消逝。 procrastinate on
拖延 take a shot
猜测；尝试；射击 作者最后的话：
If you want to learn more—the Alcor FAQ and Ben Best’s FAQ are great ways to start. Both the Alcor andCryonics Institute websites are full of information, and if you want to go a whole level deeper, dig into Alcor’slibrary (where you can also find cryopreservation case reports) or this collection of cryonics-related journal articles. Many more sources are listed below.
If you want to help or get involved—you can donate to Alcor or CI or volunteer to help at Alcor. Alcor lists some specific types of people they need help from at the bottom of this page.
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If you liked this post, you’ll want to read these:
What Makes You You? – A post that uses mind-bending thought experiments to dig into the weirdest, hardest cryonics question
The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence – Something that might be way better at helping us conquer mortality than cryonics (or the opposite and it’ll extinct us)
How (and Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars – Like cryonics except instead of trying to extend a person’s life, it’s trying to extend the species’ life
Or, for something less heavy, this makes me feel not that scared about cryonics causing overpopulation.
Sources
Alcor’s website is a great resource, especially their main FAQ, their science FAQ, and their library. They also have a substantial YouTube page. I got the idea for the plane going down / experimental parachutes metaphor from the video testimonial of Alcor member Andrew Popper – thanks Andrew.
The other thing from this post that was inspired from outside work is the concept of death as an overlord, which is loosely based on the storyline of Nick Bostrom’s The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, where the role of death is played by a dragon. If you liked that part of the post, definitely read the fable.
The Cryonics Institute also has a lot of good information, especially the FAQ of Ben Best, their ex-president.
I feel bad having focused only on Alcor and CI in this post and ignoring the smaller but spirited KrioRus outside of Moscow. Here’s a good article from FT Magazine (by Courtney Weaver) that focuses on them.
Here’s a collection of cryonics-related journal articles. Here’s another.
Here are a handful of cryopreservation case reports.
Scientist and cryonicist Ralph Merkle nicely articulates a bunch of the stuff I talked about on his website. A lot of people compare the “why the fuck not?” argument for cryonics with Pascal’s Wager. Merkle doesn’t think it’s a great comparison – here’s why.
This is a pretty riveting This American Life episode about cryonics. It focuses on the early days of the movement in the ’60s and ’70s, honing in on a notorious cryonics disaster. And here’s a Stuff You Should Know about cryonics.
A letter by 60 scientists arguing that cryonics should be taken seriously in the science world.
Eliezer Yudkowsky finds a way of popping his head into like a third of the posts I write as I research. He has a bunch of interesting stuff to say about cryonics. Here’s one thing. Here’s another.
Two great recent articles about cryonics: One from Motherboard (by Brian Merchant) about a dying two-year-old girl whose parents made her the world’s youngest cryonics patient. And one from the NY Times (by Amy Harmon) that I referenced at the end of the post about a 23-year-old who signed up with Alcor before she died of a brain tumor.
An interesting Reddit AMA with a cryonics member.
An article from Newsweek (by Anthony Cuthbertson) about the Feb 2016 rabbit-brain-vitrifying breakthrough.
I only read excerpts of this, but here’s Robert Ettinger’s famous book that launched the cryonics movement in the early ’60s.
An interesting New York Magazine article (by Kerry Howley) that explores the phenomenon of family conflict over cryonics.
An Atlantic article (by Rose Eveleth) about the cryonics process. Alcor has a good page on the procedure too. So does CI.
Meet Michael Hendricks, a smart scientist who thinks cryonics is horse shit. Here’s another skeptic. And another. Alcor refutes skeptics with this page and this page, and it admits problems with cryonics here.
Alcor’s pricing. And CI’s.
A video nicely articulating the case for cryonics by Alcor’s CEO Max More. 佩服作者，致敬作者 歇5天，毕业设计 And if you decide that you probably would rather grab a parachute than stay in your seat, try not to fall victim to a common trap: take a shot
猜测；尝试；射击
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