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Cryonic Preservation - The Last Perk You'll Ever Need

Hedge fund Numerai now offers the last employee perk you'll ever need - cryonic body preservation.

“We are allowing employees cryonic body preservation as a benefit,” Richard Craib, founder of Numerai, told Digital Trends. “Employees sign up through a life insurance policy and upon legal death, the life insurance claim is handed over to cryonics provider Alcor.”

While the idea of “whole-body preservation cryonics” being a benefit isn’t necessarily going to appeal to everyone, the hope is that it will appeal to the right kind of people, who will have something to bring to Numerai. That means folks with an interest (and, preferably, plenty of impressive qualifications) in artificial intelligence. “Strong education backgrounds in mathematics and statistics are also advantageous,” Craib continued.

The company is clearly doing something right in this department because it already includes former employees from Apple and Google DeepMind among its (soon to be frozen) ranks.

Of course , science fiction writers have been into it for generations. For example, the word "corpsicle" was probably coined by Frederik Pohl in the mid-1960's. Larry Niven used it in stories like A World Out of Time:

"Your newspapers called you people corpsicles," said the blond man. "I never understood what the tapes meant by that."

"It comes from Popsicle. Frozen sherbet." Corbell had used the word himself before he became one of them. One of the corpsicles, the frozen dead.
(More about corpsicles)

First (as far as I know) was The Senator's Daughter by Edward Page Mitchell, who described frigorific process - in 1879!

She inquired, "Is there not also a law providing for voluntary suspension of animation?"

"The Twenty-seventh Amendment to the Constitution," replied the lawyer, "recognizes the right of any individual, not satisfied with the condition of his life, to suspend that life for a time, long or short, according to his pleasure. But it is rarely, as you know, that any one avails himself of the right- practically never, except as the only means to procure divorce from uncongenial marriage relations."

Via Digital Trends.

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