X-Message-Number: 32001
From: Mark Plus <>
Subject: Wake from Cryonics
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:55:15 -0700

http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/forever-young/wake-cryonics

Wake from Cryonics

Wealthy from Your Own Life Insurance. You can too take it with you - and enjoy 
it when you get back

Written By: Stephen Euin Cobb
Date Published: September 16, 2009
    

The laws are complicated, and not stacked in your favor, but if done carefully 
it's possible to leave a huge death benefit payoff from your life insurance 
policy to your cryonically-preserved self. And since life insurance can also be 
used to finance your cryopreservation, you need not wait until you are rich to 
sign up. Most in the middle class, if they seriously want it, can afford it now.
So by taking the right steps, you can look forward to waking up one bright 
future morning from cryopreservation the proud owner of a bank account brimming 
with money.


Don't get me wrong. Leaving money to your future self is complicated. The courts
have decided that cryopreserved people are not suspended or preserved. Rather, 
they are irrevocably dead, and by being dead have no legal right of ownership or
inheritance. These laws may change if the first cryopreserved people are 
resuscitated and sue for some new kind of civil rights, but that could be 
decades away. In the meantime, those who are not yet being preserved have spent 
years pondering and discussing possible methods of self-inheritance. They call 
it Cryonics Estate Planning and there are now at least three ways to achieve the
goal.


One method requires individuals to join a foundation based in Europe that has no
website and generally avoids publicity (like the piece you are reading now). It
was created by wealthy cryonicists for the purpose of wealth preservation, as 
well as to fund both their cryopreservation and their eventual resuscitation. 
Meanwhile, Alcor - a more inclusive organization and one of the two main 
cryopreservation facilities in the United States - is in the process of 
developing a trust. And finally - for the use of his clients - Rudi Hoffman has 
created a trust.


Wake from CryonicsHaving written cryopreservation insurance policies for nearly 
a thousand people, Rudi Hoffman is well established as the world's leading 
cryonics insurance provider. As a certified financial planner, he also has a 
longstanding record of helping people leave money to their future selves, and 
thus avoid the worry of being revived from cryopreservation to discover that 
they are penniless in wonderland.


A cryonics activist, volunteer, speaker and writer, Rudi teaches cryonic 
preservation to the uninitiated. "I signed up for cryopreservation back in 
1994,” he said, "But being a transhumanist, it's my hope that medical science 
will advance fast enough and soon enough that I never need to be cryopreserved. 
I look at cryonics itself as a form of insurance. If I need it, I've got it. 
It's always good to have a backup plan.”


"The Hoffman Prototype Cryonics Trust,” he explained, "is a method of 
sidestepping the problem that cryopreserved people have no legal rights by using
a dynasty trust.” Dynasty trusts have been used for a century or more in estate
planning to make sure future inheritances are awarded only to specific people 
under specific circumstances - such as paying the tuition of a grandchild when 
they go to college but only if they maintain a B average. This separates the 
money from personal ownership, and yet allows the money to be awarded to the 
cryopreserved person after they are resuscitated.


"I just emailed a student graduating from high school who is signing up for 
cryonics,” Rudi said. "This points up the egalitarian nature of cryonics; and 
how the leverage of life insurance can mean a kid with minimal resources can 
fund both his suspension and a cryonics trust for under a dollar a day.” (Age, 
health, lifestyle choices like smoking, as well as the size of the desired death
benefit payoff cause rates to vary widely from one person to the next.)

Do You Need Money in the Future?

Money, some insist, will have no meaning in a future dominated by advanced 
molecular manufacturing or other engines of mega-abundance. In this case waking 
from cryonics rich or poor would be exactly the same.


The courts have decided that cryopreserved people are not suspended or 
preserved... they are irrevocably dead and have no legal right of ownership or 
inheritance.


Ben Goertzel, Director of Research at SIAI, and CEO of Novamente LLC and Biomind
LLC - both of which produce AI products for corporate clients - described it 
this way: "Most probably there will always be some issues regarding resource 
limitations, even in post-Singularity societies. But the reality we take for 
granted now, in which an individual needs to expend significant effort to 
acquire the resources to fulfill his basic physical, emotional or intellectual 
needs, is unlikely to survive after the invention of molecular nanotech, virtual
reality and other advanced methods.”


He added, "What seems most likely, if the future takes a positive path in which 
advanced tech is used in a generally benevolent way, is that a huge and rich 
variety of resources will be available for all sentient beings ... and 
negotiation for those resources that are still scarce will occur according to 
methods much more sophisticated than our current 'money economy'; methods which 
we have no current means to predict or understand.”


While Rudi Hoffman is aware that advanced nanotechnologies may well produce a 
post-scarcity era of unlimited bounty for all - and is eager for such a day - he
also knows that the cryonically preserved have no guarantee of waking into such
a world. "Having a personal abundance of money,” he said, "will preserve your 
options. And creating a pleasant and fulfilling future for yourself and those 
you treasure is all about choosing the best options.”


Stephen Euin Cobb is an author, columnist, futurist, game designer, artist, 
transhumanist and host of the award-winning podcast about the future called: The
Future and You.




 		 	   		  
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