Some reading material for those interesting in the current state of cryonics development and research, starting with an overview and moving on. Modern cryoprese

Some reading material for those interesting in the current state of cryonics development and research, starting with an overview and moving on. Modern cryopreservation aims for vitrification, not freezing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics http://alcor.org/sciencefaq.htm http://alcor.org/sciencefaq.htm http://www.brainpreservation.org/competitors/ http://www.brainpreservation.org/competitors/ The evidence assembled to date provides a reasonable expectation that the fine structure of the brain responsible for storing the data of the mind is preserved by vitrification, based on scanning electron microscopy and current best understanding of where that data is encoded. There are a few organizations that span the intersection between organ preservation and cryonics, such as 21st Century Medicine. The focus there is on reversible vitrification, such as the paper linked below in which a rabbit kidney is vitrified, restored, and implanted. http://www.21cm.com/ http://www.21cm.com/ http://www.21cm.com/pdfs/12FahyORG5-3%5b1%5d.pdf http://www.21cm.com/pdfs/12FahyORG5-3%5b1%5d.pdf There is a sizable fraction of the futurist community who approach cryonics with the pattern identity view of being satisfied with a copy of their mind running in emulation at some point in the future, the original vitrified substrate then discarded. Not very satisfying from the continuity identity perspective; a copy of you is not you. I'd be stipulating a restoration of the original tissues; probably a harder problem, but one that can be understood and foreseen. Advanced molecular nanotechnology and complete control over cellular biology would be requirements, for example, but that looks like being feasible later this century, just like the process of scanning and emulation. The madness of it all is that cryonics is very plausible and could be far more cost-effective at volume. Yet no-one cares. Just like the problems encountered in trying to persuade anyone that working on rejuvenation biotechnology for indefinite healthy life spans is a good plan, in the matter of cryonics the population world is content to slow-walk off the cliff of aging and death without doing anything about it. There is no status quo so terrible that it won't be embraced and defended. Billions are lost to oblivion in an age in which the technological capabilities exist to prevent the overwhelming majority of those deaths. And no-one cares. The future will look on us as suicidal, ignorant barbarians, and rightly so.