I think some people likely were thinking that. Others might have been thinking about it as a hypothetical with no real detail as to how anything comes about. I would hope that people who would rather die would be willing to think about what that actually means.
In a similar vein, what’s worse- being physically fit but unable to care for ones self due to dementia or nearly completely disabled with a clear mind? I’m not sure I could take being unable to feed, dress or go bathroom by myself or possibly be unable to communicate while being mentally intact.
I’d say dementia is worse. If I am at least able to read, or enjoy listening to books/music, watching movies - I would see there as being SOME point to my continued existence. If I were able to communicate, that is even more. But I imagine if I had - say - ALS, at some point I’d probably want to take active steps to kill myself - or cease life preserving technology.
As I said upthread, the base of how I perceive myself is as a thinking and independent being. If either of those were taken away, I would have to seriously consider whether I would wish to continue. The problem is, if your mind goes, you are no longer able to make that decision.
My personal decision - not prescribing anything for any other impaired individual - is that if I were sentient, I’d probably be willing to continue existing, totally dependent on others for my needs - provided I did not feel that caused too much of a burden on my loved ones emotionally or financially. I guess I don’t really hold to that “sickness or health” part of the vows! 
If I have enough funds to maintain me in a pleasant enough place, where people are paid a decent wage to care for me, yeah, I’ll keep going.
But if my body is just being maintained and my mind is gone, get me outta here!
Yes it does. Smaller scale experiments show the structure is there, this company is now checking a complete brain.
And for the poster above who mentioned power failure : obviously if we were keeping people frozen on a large scale, you’d have licensed people doing the work. Also you’d use dewars with a large coolant reserve, such that it would take several weeks after you stopped refilling them for the contents to not be immersed in coolant.
The cost of the coolant is about $10,000 a century. Most people have enough wealth left over at the end of their life to be worth that. Not to mention you could skip several weeks or years of futile end of life care, it would probably be cheaper.
A society that doesn’t keep people “of marginal use” around is going to face internal difficulties because everyone alive in that society will know that eventually they too, will be old and in need of help.
For instance, I’m about 50 years from possibly needing this service, but would gladly pay whatever it takes for those of the present day to be taken care of properly so that when it is my turn, I can also benefit.
This is the only treatment for dementia that current science supports. It’s obviously highly experimental and risky…but a small chance of success is better, in my book, than a 100% chance of failure.
And that’s why I spend all my money on lottery tickets. A small chance of winning the lottery is better than a 100% chance of not winning the lottery.
If buying lottery tickets was the only way to increase your present amount of money, and the money you have now is useless unless you get 100 times as much, then yes, this is a completely reasonable action to take.
My grampa was in that situation towards the end of his life - he wanted to ensure future support his ailing daughter unto perpetuity, and had no reasonable way to do it. It was sad. You made me sad. Damn you! 
I lost my grandparents as well. From my worldview, had their minds been frozen in liquid nitrogen, I think there is an entirely reasonable chance they could have been brought back in some form. But of course my gramps and immediate family swilled down the societal bullshit we’re all taught (afterlives, death is inevitable, all that claptrap) and they’re gone now.
So I’m sad too. I’m also sad for the 1.6 million times this happens a year. If my worldview is correct - and I think advances in technology I will see in my own lifetime will vindicate me - it’ll turn out that our society has ignorantly committed the greatest crime in human history.
We’ll have allowed 50-100 million people to go to the grave we could have saved. I just hope I’m not among them.
And for the overwhelming majority of you, on this message board and elsewhere, who disbelieve me, well, better hope I’m wrong. Better hope hard, because that article I linked from MIT technology review doesn’t look good.
But the choice isn’t between “spend all my money on a long shot for immortality” and “just die and have an eternity of nonexistence”.
I’d rather use my savings to help my kids than blow it all freezing my goddam brain. And again, there’s a kid in Nigeria right now dying of malaria. No point in helping him, I guess, if he’s just going to die in a couple decades and have an eternity of nonexistence.
Life doesn’t lose all value just because it is finite. And even if you could bring someone back from the dead, that’s not immortality, because eventually something is going to happen to end their existence. Yellowstone supervolcano goes off eventually.
Ok. Then get a life insurance policy, and kill yourself as soon as the suicide provision expires (usually about 2 years).
Have the money donated to the kid in Nigeria or your own kid.
The root of your objection is that society has ignorantly taught you that what I am proposing isn’t socially acceptable, any more than kissing someone of the same gender was in public a couple decades ago. Also, society has taught you that the odds are zero, that what I am talking about is impossible, or that even if you could be brought back in some form you would be an evil zombie.
Anyways, I can’t argue with a brick wall. What I am talking about is the actual truth, as supported by the overwhelming majority of methodically collected evidence about the rules of our universe over centuries. You can just ignore me and join the rest of your peers in the ground.
You are correct that infinite life, according to our current understanding of physics, is not possible. But I’ll raise you that numbers matter, and thousands of years is a fuckton better than just a few decades.
This isn’t even a question for me. I have no desire to “persist” rather than live.
Weirdly enough, just this morning I was having shower thoughts that I should make sure I eat enough bacon to be sure to pre-decease my spouse (selfishly leaving her with burial detail). 
The tricky part about aging, is that only rarely do we find ourselves coming up to a bright line with a sign stating “After this point, life isn’t worth living to you”. Many of us on this board know we are on the downhill slide, but it’s a gradual decline and we can still do lots we want to do. By the time it’s time, it’s too late. Even if you have discussed things in advance with your loved ones, it still falls to them now. Even if you would approve euthanasia, they may not. Who wants to be the kid who killed Mom & Dad?
Let’s say I agree than 1000 years is 10 times better than 100 years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.
But how much of your life are you willing to invest on the chance of living 10 times longer? If living 10 times as long is 10 times better, but the odds of getting your frozen brain revived to live 10 times longer is less than 1 in 1000–and it’s actually much much lower–then where’s the odds in that?
Yeah, 10 is better than 1, and 1 is better than 0. But a 1 in 1000 chance of 10 is not better than 1, it’s worse than 1. Your math only works out if you say that the real comparison isn’t (10 * 0.001) > 1, it’s (10 * 0.001) > 0. But it’s not zero for most people, especially the people you’re expecting to revive your brain in the future. What’s in it for them? Oh, you paid them to do it? Yes, and they have your money now, so why can’t they just dump your frozen brain in the trash?
Yes, any finite number is better than zero. But most people don’t think “when you die you hit zero.” Even atheists. I’m an atheist, and I’d rather spend my money enjoying my life now and maybe making my kids lives better rather than spend everything on an infinitesimal chance at immortality. You come from nothing, you’re going back to nothing, so what have you lost? NOTHING.
This was what I was trying to express at the end of my post.
That’s where we disagree. I think that a peer reviewed method of brain preservation, the one being worked on by that California startup, one that is actually shelf stable, has vastly better odds than “under 1 in 1000”.
I hope the odds increase as my life goes on and people like me become more prevalent. I expect this to happen. As AI gets more and more advanced and the fundamental feasibility of doing this becomes more and more obviously possible, more money should get invested, better techniques developed, and so on in a virtuous cycle.
So I may personally “make it”. Maybe not, but it ain’t a 1 in 1000 longshot.
My discontent comes from the fact that there’s going to be several hundred million people we could have saved that we didn’t. That is, the date at which we’re basically preserving everyone will use technology that probably was achievable many decades before.
You really need to read some good science fiction. I’m not sure that the world is ready for total commitment to a freezer society.
It’s going to happen whether the “world is ready” or not. Basically nobody is ok with dying, except for a rare small group of weirdos. There just isn’t a really credible, socially acceptable alternative.
Ok, I skimmed the wiki description.
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The first story is nonsensical. People defer gratification all the time to later in their first life, and it doesn’t cause problems
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In the second story, after 200 years, they haven’t found a way to recover any of the ‘dead’ - even though they can apparently use their organs. This is silly and unrealistic in several ways.
The point of the first story: People were relying on their investments to grow to support them after their revival, but everyone figured they needed a ton squirreled away to be able to financially compete with everyone else who was also squirreling away their money. This does go to the point that people who are revived will need resources to survive and thrive in some future society, even beyond maintaining their frozen status, reviving, and curing them (or translating them to silica, or whatever).
The point of the second story: Same thing, the revived will need resources. In this case, they also ARE resources, making the decision to terminate them easier.
I haven’t read everything you have ever posted on this board by any means, but I have to say it’s odd to see you describe a technological prediction as “silly and unrealistic”.
SamuelA-
Paraphrasing the OP (replacing death with freezing), would you:
A. Volunteer for freezing at the first sign of dementia? (or even before?)
B. Persist in a seriously demented state, with an option to freeze shortly before death.
I don’t know how this freezing thing will work, but I have a hunch that even if it can be pulled off, that mapping the circuits of a demented brain will yield a demented result. So to work, freezing might require option A. Those sound like tough odds to me.
This is the only choice that makes sense. It would be a hard one to make. Nearly impossible to make today, since the organizations offering freezing are not very credible. I really hope by the time I need it, it’s offered in a licensed hospital with solid proof it’s going to work, but I’ll get whatever I can get.
This is what we should do for every patient. It seems cruel. Some might even see it as evil. But if medical science is supposed to do what the science says, and a doctor damn well knows that giving a patient air and food will just cause their brain to continue to self destruct, then this is the right decision.
Modern medical ethics says that doctors shouldn’t make the decision instead of patients, I don’t really know if I fully agree with that, but the point is, this is what every licensed doctor should be recommending. Already, today.
Also, if we weren’t collectively morons as a society…you know that 600 billion we waste on defense spending? To “defend” Americans from what, terrorists or invading armies? 1.6 million Americans are dying internally annually, and no bad guys lay on a finger on them. This exceeds the death rate from enemies by many orders of magnitude.
If we weren’t morons collectively, we’d be spending maybe 400 billion on researching better ways to preserve brains and on preserving Americans before they die or right after, and 200 billion on a much smaller military, sufficient to keep people from stealing our stuff.
Every year.
Do you know how much money has been spent researching brain preservation, in total?
It’s probably about 20 million. For all time.
Yeah, we’re fucking stupid as a nation. We don’t deserve to live. And most of us won’t.
(sorry for getting a little out of hand with the profanity but this problem is ridiculous)