Chapitre 3 : La cryogénie est-elle faite pour moi ?

The value proposition of continued existence

Human consciousness represents an extraordinary accumulation of experiences, relationships, knowledge, and personal development acquired over decades. Each person embodies a unique perspective shaped by their specific cultural context, historical moment, and individual journey. The argument for cryopreservation rests on a fundamental premise: if life holds value now, it likely retains value in the future.

Most individuals don't tire of existence itself, they tire of suffering, limitation, or loss. The distinction matters. When people express readiness for death, they typically reference pain, diminished capacity, or exhaustion rather than satisfaction with consciousness itself. Cryopreservation addresses a different scenario: preserving the option to continue when biology fails but the desire to exist remains.

‍

The asymmetry of irreversibility

Death presents an absolute boundary. Once biological processes cease and information degrades, no known intervention can restore what's lost. Cryopreservation, conversely, creates a conditional state, preserved structure awaiting technological capability.

This asymmetry creates a decision-making framework. Choosing death when preservation exists eliminates all future options. Choosing preservation maintains agency: a future version of you, with access to advanced medicine and greater context, can still opt out. But they cannot opt back in from oblivion.

The rational question becomes not "will future technology definitely work?" but rather "is the probability of success worth preserving the option?" For many, any non-zero chance exceeds the guaranteed zero of conventional death.

‍

What future versions of you might experience

Projecting forward requires acknowledging uncertainty while recognizing historical precedent. Medicine has repeatedly transformed fatal conditions into manageable ones. Technologies once deemed impossible, flight, computing, genetic engineering, became routine.

Future capabilities might include:

• Comprehensive cellular repair at the molecular level
• Elimination of aging as a biological constraint
• Neural interfaces expanding cognitive capacity
• Solutions to current terminal conditions becoming trivial procedures
• Extended healthspan matching extended lifespan

More speculatively but worth considering: civilizations capable of cryopreservation revival likely possess sophisticated technologies. Your preserved pattern might interact with post-scarcity economies, space-faring civilization, or intelligence-augmentation tools we cannot currently conceptualize.

‍

The personal projects argument

Most people maintain unfulfilled aspirations, languages they want to learn, places they want to see, relationships they want to develop, creative works they want to produce, questions they want answered. Death interrupts these projects arbitrarily, often mid-development.

Cryopreservation reframes mortality from inevitable interruption to conditional pause. Your curiosity about how humanity develops, your desire to see your grandchildren's grandchildren, your partially completed creative work—all become potentially continuable rather than definitively terminated.

‍

Relationships and continuity

Human bonds create much of life's meaning. Cryopreservation cannot guarantee reunion with specific individuals, but it preserves the possibility. If multiple people you care about choose preservation, shared timeline continuation becomes viable.

Even without specific reunions, future revival means potential for new relationships, communities, and connections. The capacity to form meaningful bonds doesn't diminish simply because centuries pass—it's a fundamental human capability that could persist regardless of temporal displacement.

‍

The "naturalness" objection examined

Resistance to cryopreservation sometimes invokes "natural order" or "acceptance of mortality." But humans consistently reject natural limits. We use antibiotics against infections, set broken bones, perform surgery, wear glasses, use anesthesia. We heat our homes, fly across oceans, and communicate instantaneously across continents.

Medicine itself represents systematic rejection of "natural" death. Every medical intervention delays what would otherwise occur naturally. Cryopreservation extends this existing pattern—using technology to circumvent biological limitations.

The question isn't whether to interfere with nature (we already do constantly) but rather which specific interventions align with our values and goals.

‍

Risk tolerance and personal philosophy

Individual responses to cryopreservation reflect broader philosophical positions about risk, agency, and value:

Risk-averse perspective: Conventional death guarantees loss of everything. Cryopreservation offers uncertain but non-zero probability of continuation. From expected value calculation, even low success probability exceeds certain termination.

Agency-centered perspective: Preservation maximizes future autonomy. A revived person can always choose discontinuation. A dead person cannot choose revival.

Curiosity-driven perspective: The future will answer questions about technology, society, and existence itself. Preservation maintains the possibility of witnessing these answers.

Experience-valuing perspective: If consciousness and experience hold intrinsic worth, their continuation holds worth regardless of when they occur.

‍

The deferral of decision

Choosing cryopreservation doesn't require certainty about wanting to live forever. It requires only:

1. Valuing continued existence now
2. Recognizing that future circumstances might differ from present ones
3. Preferring to delegate the continuation decision to future you, with more information

Your future self, potentially restored to health, living in an advanced civilization, possessing knowledge of that future context, becomes better positioned to decide whether to continue than you are now, facing deterioration and lacking that information.

‍

Practical considerations about "enough"

Some argue for "natural lifespan" or "enough time." But these concepts lack objective grounding. What makes 80 years sufficient but 90 insufficient? Why is technological life extension at 60 acceptable but at 90 problematic?

Lifespan satisfaction correlates more with health, engagement, and relationship quality than with absolute duration. People rarely decide they've lived "enough" while healthy and engaged—they make peace with decline.

Cryopreservation targets the gap between desired continuation and biological capacity. It asks: if you could maintain health and engagement indefinitely, would you? For many, the honest answer is "yes, with periodic reevaluation."

‍

Existential insurance

Think of cryopreservation as existential insurance—a hedge against the ultimate loss. Like other insurance, its value lies in providing options during extreme circumstances. Unlike other insurance, it addresses a loss that affects literally everything about your existence.

The "premium" (membership and storage costs) buys potential rather than certainty. Whether that trade-off makes sense depends on how you value continued existence versus other uses of resources. But for many, preserving even a small probability of continuation justifies significant resource allocation.

‍

The default question reversed

Our culture defaults to accepting death. This frames cryopreservation as the choice requiring justification. But reversing the default proves illuminating: if life holds value, why wouldn't you preserve the option to continue if possible?

The burden of proof shifts. Given that:

• You value consciousness and experience now
• Future technology may enable restoration
• The alternative guarantees termination
• Future you can still choose discontinuation

The question becomes not "why choose preservation?" but rather "what specific reason compels acceptance of guaranteed termination over possible continuation?"