Final disposition

[ChuckF]

CatF and JoeP prompted me to realize that I don’t think we’ve had a good thread/poll about body/carcass disposition preferences. I am curious.

Personally, my estate plan provides for cremation unless (a) I have found some research university that is willing to haul away my useless corpse for free or (b) there is something easier and cheaper available at the time. I do not really care (because I will be dead) but I will leave an instruction just to avoid causing any needless inconvenience or expense around what to do with me after I am dead. I would also be fine just being deposited in a sufficiently deep hole, but I sure hate to make somebody do all that digging. “Donating a body to science” is a nice idea, to think that somebody is getting some utility out of it, but it’s more logistically difficult than one would think. They need to be timely alerted to death so they can begin all the necessary procedures and usually requires dying in a hospital in or near the recipient facility. My only strong preference is that I don’t want to be embalmed. Gross.

There’s quite a bit of woo out there, which I guess is fine. The people who turn a tiny amount of carbon into an artificial diamond (Lifegem or something like that) seem scammy. The people who give you a tree to plant and imply that inorganic cremains will somehow nourish it are pretty borderline, but hey, a tree gets planted, so I guess that’s fine. Not sure where to start with the cryogenics folks. Spend money however you want I guess, but the possibility of ever being revived is vanishingly slim, and even if it worked, it seems not unlikely that one would be revived to some sort of dystopian hellscape. I think that’s why a lot of the transhumanists focus on brain uploads and the like now.

We have accumulated a reasonable collection of cremated remains of various pets and one human. We are currently looking in to Parting Stone, which solidifies cremated remains into a ceramic-like stone using a clay binder. It’s a little gimmicky but I think it’s pretty neat because it is something tactile that you can actually handle easily, unlike cremated remains. It’s also a simple way to share out cremated remains among people, or spread them in a few places, like if you want to just leave a rock on the beach instead of getting a boat to scatter ashes, etc. There is something satisfying about the solidity of it. We’ll see. A dog that died about a decade ago has been on the shelf since then, so he is going to test it out for us. He should be coming home in a few weeks. If they do a good job, they may get more business from us.

So for purposes of the poll: setting aside any question of what happens to your consciousness, what do you want to happen to your physical body when you die? To attempt to avoid making this thread evidence in an adversarial proceeding the poll is anonymous, but keep in mind the potential evidentiary quality of your reply before responding. It could help your case unless you change your mind.

And friendly reminder to make and update an estate plan!