>Hmm...except that cryopreservation is still, as of this point, a complete crock of shit. Trying to find a necromancer would be more productive.
No, that's not very rational. Cryopreservation may have low chances of success, but it's like a billion billion billion times better than just dying (which has zero chance of success). Nobody is claiming that cryopreservation is very probable, but it's a lot better than nothing.
>Now, imagine you are trying to flash freeze an entire body.
I don't think your critique is very relevant, when almost all cryopreservation is only done to the brain, not the whole body.
>Ignoring all the cell death that has been happening for the last hour, how about thawing?
Thawing is not relevant to be discussed at this point, because the bodies will not be thawed using current technology. If the cryopreserved brain has enough information to be reconstructed, it will be done at some point using advanced nanotechnology. Nobody will be thawing brains using 21st century technology.
> I'm not even touching the morals and ethics of companies that are under no obligation to actually do what you paid them to do (since you are dead).
Yes, there are risks. Nobody is claiming that cryopreservation has a very high chance of success. It's a lot better than nothing, though. By the way, thse cryocompanies or organizations tend to be owned and supervised by relatives of the cryopreserved people. These managers also want to get cryopreserved themselves, and want to reconstruct their own relatives. In addition, there's great scientific value of bringing 100 year old people back alive.
By the way, scientists don't refer to the cryopreversation as freezing, they call it vitrification.
> No, that's not very rational. Cryopreservation may have low chances of success, but it's like a billion billion billion times better than just dying (which has zero chance of success). Nobody is claiming that cryopreservation is very probable, but it's a lot better than nothing.
That's basically Pascal Bet (if there's God you get infinite payoff, if there's no God you get finite negative payoff (wasted time caused by being believer), so to maximize payoff you should believe in God). The problem is - there are very many possible gods, many of them incompatibile with each other. You should consider the bet with ALL gods as possible options, not just some god versus no god.
Same with the cryogenic. You should consider the possibility that freezing you with our poor technology can make you unrecoverable, while some other technology could allow you to be saved eventually.
Also I'm sorry for Mr Banks, I love his books about Culture.
>Same with the cryogenic. You should consider the possibility that freezing you with our poor technology can make you unrecoverable, while some other technology could allow you to be saved eventually.
Yes, and that's rational. If there's another preservation technology that's better than cryopreservation, we should adopt that. There's nothing irrational about that. You just need to first invent such technology, and then provide evidence that it's better than current vitrification tech.
This has happened in the past. A few decades ago the preservation method was changed from freezing to vitrification, after vitrification was shown to be better.
>No, that's not very rational. Cryopreservation may have low chances of success, but it's like a billion billion billion times better than just dying (which has zero chance of success). Nobody is claiming that cryopreservation is very probable, but it's a lot better than nothing.
Ok, I'll give you that there is a non-zero chance. Other's have touched upon that in this thread, and I would contend that giving 200k to some family/friend is more useful than throwing it away, but it's your money. If you are happy with a negligible-but-non-zero chance, go for it.
>I don't think your critique is very relevant, when almost all cryopreservation is only done to the brain, not the whole body.
There is exactly zero evidence that a brain/mind is functional without it's body. And there is currently no computer simulation or interface capable of simulating a human body and its various sensory input, so this is a moot point.
>Thawing is not relevant to be discussed at this point, because the bodies will not be thawed using current technology. If the cryopreserved brain has enough information to be reconstructed, it will be done at some point using advanced nanotechnology. Nobody will be thawing brains using 21st century technology.
Bit of a cop-out, no? Is the flying spaghetti monster going to thaw you? At this point your theories are no better than saying a big bearded guy in the sky is going to resurrect you. Except he'll do it for free.
>By the way, scientists don't refer to the cryopreversation as freezing, they call it vitrification.
I guess I wasn't a classically trained biologist working in neuroscience labs for 6 years then, sorry. Also, it was before my cup of coffee in the morning.
Appropriate terminology or no, my points were and are still valid.
> Ok, I'll give you that there is a non-zero chance. Other's have touched upon that in this thread, and I would contend that giving 200k to some family/friend is more useful than throwing it away, but it's your money. If you are happy with a negligible-but-non-zero chance, go for it.
I basically agree that there's a minimal standard of evidence for cryonics working that is required for it to be worth more to an individual than giving the $200k to family and friends. However, it is not clear whether cryonics-as-it-exists exceeds that mark or not. I would think it does. Estimate $5M per life, and chances in the 1-10% range are reasonable for the cost.
>> Nobody will be thawing brains using 21st century technology.
> Bit of a cop-out, no?
Not really. There are things we can justifiably think are possible but too technically difficult to accomplish in the very near term. Comprehensively curing cancer for example. It's going to happen, but it will take a while. Likewise, machine-phase nanotech that can operate at very low temperatures to perform subtle manipulations on vitreous biological materials which improve its ability to support itself during rewarming.
The thing is, when you rewarm cells in the lab after freezing them, they incur damage during rewarming. For example, if the vitrification point is below the freezing point, that means ice will try to form if it has a chance to during rewarming. In situations where extracellular ice exists, it will melt during rewarming and thus cause osmotic shock to the dehydrated cell.
In the concentrated solute version of vitrification like we see in cryonics, the concern is more that the concentrated solutes will interact with proteins when they get warm enough to do so. That can denature them and trigger autolysis. So prior to rewarming, picture a machine-phase manipulation that digs in and gently pulls out chunks of toxic cryoprotectant, and replaces them with something more benign for the thawing process. It could also add drugs that haven't been invented yet, e.g. a comprehensive autolysis blocker, or improved ice blocker that lets you replace some of the vitrificant with water and still take your time rewarming.
That's not getting into nano-repair, which is complex enough that I would concede it could be implausible (though I don't exactly think it needs to be ruled out at this point).
Cryopreservation may have low chances of success, but it's like a billion billion billion times better than just dying
I don't know about that. I have this pet theory that our minds exist in a 5-dimensional non-euclidean space for which our brains serve as mere substrates, much as a CPU is merely a substrate for the running of a software program. I'm not saying you should adopt this theory (especially considering that I don't feel like explaining it and have only tenuous evidence, so it's basically a deeply-felt hunch), but nor do I accept your contention that it's freezing or nothing with no other alternative. For that matter I'm not convinced oblivion is so awful either, but that's more of a philosophical argument.
No, that's not very rational. Cryopreservation may have low chances of success, but it's like a billion billion billion times better than just dying (which has zero chance of success). Nobody is claiming that cryopreservation is very probable, but it's a lot better than nothing.
>Now, imagine you are trying to flash freeze an entire body.
I don't think your critique is very relevant, when almost all cryopreservation is only done to the brain, not the whole body.
>Ignoring all the cell death that has been happening for the last hour, how about thawing?
Thawing is not relevant to be discussed at this point, because the bodies will not be thawed using current technology. If the cryopreserved brain has enough information to be reconstructed, it will be done at some point using advanced nanotechnology. Nobody will be thawing brains using 21st century technology.
> I'm not even touching the morals and ethics of companies that are under no obligation to actually do what you paid them to do (since you are dead).
Yes, there are risks. Nobody is claiming that cryopreservation has a very high chance of success. It's a lot better than nothing, though. By the way, thse cryocompanies or organizations tend to be owned and supervised by relatives of the cryopreserved people. These managers also want to get cryopreserved themselves, and want to reconstruct their own relatives. In addition, there's great scientific value of bringing 100 year old people back alive.
By the way, scientists don't refer to the cryopreversation as freezing, they call it vitrification.