During my recent visit to the Cryonics Institute I had the chance to do a video tour of CI and learn more about their vitrification procedures and membership policies. I also had the unique opportunity to interview David Ettinger, whose father Robert Ettinger is the “father of cryonics” because he pretty much started the field with his seminal book The Prospect of Immortality. I was also happy to interview David for my Singularity 1 on 1 podcast because we had not only an informative but also very frank and deeply personal interview as to his own story and motivation.
During our 1 hour discussion with David Ettinger we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: what is CI, how and why he got involved in it; how his father – Robert Ettinger, came up with the idea of cryonics; my wife’s journey to embracing the idea and my evil plan to sign up the rest of our family; the definition of cryonics and the process of vitrification; why people are often cryo-convinced but unfortunately not cryo-committed; prices and procedures for joining the Cryonics Institute as well as options for people outside of the US; the slow pace of progress in cryo-biology and related research; betting on life vs betting on death; volunteering and the CI business model; David’s take on transhumanism and the technological singularity…
My favorite quotes that I will take away from this interview with David Ettinger are:
“Being frozen is a horible thing, it’s just that the alternative is even worse.”
and
“If you’re counting on something other than cryonics extending your life, you are not covering your bets.”
See the full video interview here: https://www.singularityweblog.com/david-ettinger/
