I would argue that cryopreservation is the belief in the increasing rate of scientific progress (which can measured and proven), and that it is far more rational than the tens of millions of people who attend church every Saturday or Sunday in search of salvation for their soul.
As /u/dublinben mentioned, I'd give my entire wealth to have the opportunity to live in the future.
> I would argue that cryopreservation is the belief in the increasing rate of scientific progress (which can measured and proven)
The problem is that you aren't just depending on future improvements in revival technology, you're depending on the current state of today's preservation technology (at the point you die).
And today's preservation technology doesn't have a lot of evidence suggesting that it can work to successfully preserve a kidney, much less a brain.
>In the summer of 2005, where he was a keynote speaker at the annual Society for Cryobiology meeting, Fahy announced that Twenty-First Century Medicine had successfully cryopreserved a rabbit kidney at -130°C by vitrification and transplanted it into a rabbit after rewarming, with subsequent long-term life support by the vitrified-rewarmed kidney as the sole kidney. This research breakthrough was later published in the peer-reviewed journal Organogenesis.[0]
The abstract makes no mention of -130°C, but digging into the actual paper (can be read here: www.21cm.com/pdfs/cryopreservation_advances.pdf), it does mention:
"Fig. 13. Confinement of ice formation to the pelvis of a rabbit kidney that was perfused with M22 at 22°C for 25min, bisected, and allowed to passively cool in air in a CryoStar freezer at about 130°C... The vast majority of the kidney appears to have vitrified and is indistinguishable from the appearance of the kidney prior to cooling." (Emphasis mine)
> The problem is that you aren't just depending on future improvements in revival technology, you're depending on the current state of today's preservation technology (at the point you die).
When the other option is straight ol' Death, I'm not losing much by playing the long game on science coming through at sophisticated cellular repair mechanisms/protocols. I'm definitely ahead of people getting buried or cremated.
By the time the technology comes around the revive the cryopreserved, the rest of technological advancement will change the dynamic of human interaction so much we cannot estimate what the world will be like, but we can assume that with technology advanced enough to repair the damage from the freezing process, you would probably be entering a world of almost any possibility.
As /u/dublinben mentioned, I'd give my entire wealth to have the opportunity to live in the future.