Here's the thing I never see addressed in any hypothesizing about cryonics: The future doesn't want YOU.

Ok. So, tomorrow we figure out how to thaw people reliably.

Who wants to go into the freezer, pull out a bunch of coke-addled lawyers from the 1980's, a couple of whacko "visionaries" from the 1970's, and Walt Disney's head?

None of these people could do anything as simple as make a phone call, today. Hand them an iPhone, and they'd be baffled.

Sit them down in front of a computer with a mouse, and they wouldn't know what to do with it.

Try to get them to send an email. "Icons? What are icons? Click? What do you mean?"

And those 70's/80's visionaries? Free love? They've never heard of HIV/AIDS. Acid and weed? They are completely unprepared for the power of the shit any high schooler can get today.

Hell, credit cards didn't even come into common use until the 1990's.

These people would be useless drags on our society, rather than some sort of gift to the future. Other than being some sort of vintage curio, their only value would be as museum exhibits, or ethnological exhibits in zoos.

Hey! I'm gonna freeze myself so I can be useless burden on the future, as well! Woohoo!"

Speaking as a verbose mutherfucker, Tim Urban can not get to the point with a gun to their heads. Let's take a look at the "plane crash" metaphor:

There’s been an explosion in the engine, and the plane is going to crash in 15 minutes. There’s no chance of survival. There is a potential way out—the plane happens to be transferring a shipment of parachutes, and anyone who would like to use one to escape the plane may do so. But I must warn you—the parachutes are experimental and completely untested, with no guarantee to work. We also have no idea what the terrain will be like down below. Please line up in the aisle if you’d like a parachute, and the flight attendants will give you one, show you how to use it and usher you to the emergency exit where you can jump. Those who choose not to take that option, please remain in your seat—this will be over soon, and you will feel no pain.

Let's paint that up a little more accurately to reflect the facts at hand:

There's been an explosion in the engine, and the plane will crash at some point in the future - one of our flight crew says fifteen minutes, one says an hour from now, but the stewardess is amazed we're in the air right now. Fortunately we're carrying a shipment of jetpacks powered by Bose-Einstein condensates which, IN THEORY, should fly. Unfortunately the manufacturer won't get an insurance claim if they're used so he wants a quarter million dollars each for them, which is money your heirs won't get, money that won't pay for your kids, money that won't establish an endowment at your university, money that's going to a shady company you've never heard of before with no track record at making jet packs or working with Bose-Einstein condensates. Also, there's going to need to be a software update to the jetpacks before they descend below 10,000 feet or they'll explode. Which will hopefully come over a cell tower that the company has access to. And will be able to write before all the condensate returns to quantum normalcy. Also keep in mind that the longer you wait to buy a jetpack the less likely it is to come in for a safe landing. And if you do land, everything you've ever known will be gone and everyone you've ever loved will be dead and hopefully there's been an indeterminate amount of banking stability throughout your entire flight so that you don't come down destitute.

Know what nobody envisioned a dozen years ago? Zero Interest Rate Policy. That nasty thing where the government charges banks money for keeping cash in their coffers. Every woo-hoo cryonics story ever written involves your meagre deposit in an interest-bearing account paying for your future fabulous life through the magic of P=e^rn. Nobody foresaw a future in which you get broker and broker the longer you're in the hole.

And that's just the money side. Remember - you're dead. You have no legal rights. You're a vitrified thing, not a vitrified person. It's up to the company you're banking with to wake your ass up and treat you like a citizen and what does that look like? Let's say eight generations from now there's you in the tube and your descendants and suddenly they cure cancer or whatever ailed you. Are you sure that your kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids are going to want to wake your ass up and give you financial fealty over all of them? Or are you legally giving all that up by being dead and then alive again?

Jerome Branch Corbell has incurable cancer and is cryogenically frozen in the year 1970 in the faint hope of a future cure. His body is revived in 2190 by an oppressive, totalitarian global government called "The State". His personality and memories are extracted (destroying his body in the process) and transferred into the body of a mindwiped criminal. After he is awakened, he is continually evaluated by Peerssa, a "checker", who has to decide whether he is worth keeping. With the threat of mindwiping looming over his head, Corbell works hard to pass the various tests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_World_Out_of_Time

I think people who sign up for cryonics have too much money and not enough imagination, but that's just me.

I anticipate a refinement of the legal and logistical processes in the future. At that point I'll revisit my participation, if I am still alive.

I think utilizing the potential to freeze our biology and render the aging process inert is something that is a huge part of our future healthcare process. This potential is wasted on the type of cryonics explored here.

That said, of course I would take my chances with the parachute.