3 ms·

If the concept only works when we're relying on full-brain scans and future nano-bots with the capability to reconstruct brain tissue, the freeze/thaw would be

by roc 14y ago

If the concept only works when we're relying on full-brain scans and future nano-bots with the capability to reconstruct brain tissue, the freeze/thaw would be completely superfluous. Why not cut out the middle-man? Just do a full brain scan and store the digital data until the nano-bots arrive? Then just recreate brains within stock bodies or some virtual/machine environment? Clinging to the freezing and thawing, when you're forced to concede they won't actually work and then having to invent far superior technologies, but only applying them as a band-aid over the broken technology, looks an awful lot more like someone with a belief grasping for intellectual cover, rather than someone with an intellectual understanding positing solutions.

khafra 14y ago
> Just do a full brain scan and store the digital data until the nano-bots arrive? Because we don't currently have the technology to either scan or store a 3-d scan of your brain in the same resolution you can get by physically perfusing it with antifreeze and dropping it into a bucket of liquid nitrogen.
- roc 14y ago
  But by the time you've physically perfused the brain and frozen it, substantial cell death would have begun. So if we have to freeze until the scanning/storage tech arrives, we'll have a compromised source, at best.
  - khafra 14y ago
    Yes. Whether or not the most substantial damage occurs with apoptosis when oxygen is re-introduced, there will uncontroversially be a lot of damage even in the best case cryonic vitrification. Also uncontroversially, there will be substantially less damage than would occur with cremation or burial. Even the lesser amount of damage may be too much. Cryonics is a bet that it is not.
    - roc 14y ago
      But is there a scientific basis to prefer this bet to, say, death-bed religious conversion?
      - FeepingCreature 14y ago
        As a bet, its possibility of payoff is consistent with the rest of what we know about the world, as opposed to religion, which is inconsistent. Furthermore, there are cases where things similar to this were done successfully, so extrapolation of technology might lead one to believe that we may be sufficiently good at reconstruction in the future. In comparison, no prayer has ever even slightly worked.
        roc 14y ago
        > "its possibility of payoff is consistent with the rest of what we know about the world" What we know about the rest of the world is that this does not work, it will cause extensive damage even if it could work, so it would not necessarily re-generate the same person even if it did work [1] and that humans are notoriously awful at projecting technological advances 50 years out, to say nothing of our track record of projections even further. Extrapolation of current technology, from any particular point in our history, points us in wildly incorrect directions. See: the history of people proclaiming us on the verge of vanquishing death. "too cheap to meter" energy. Nuclear cars. Flying cars. Lab-grown meat. Off-world colonies in the far-off year 2000. Choose an AI prediction. Choose a cloning prediction. The notion that some technology has worked in the past, so a particular technology has some chance of working, is as flawed as "it appeared that my last prayer was answered, so my next one has a chance". Both require selective reporting from the available data to even entertain. [1] There are no shortage of case studies of people who've sustained comparatively minor brain trauma and been reduced to mere shadows of themselves, if not manifested new and almost entirely different personalities.

by roc 14y ago

khafra 14y ago

> Just do a full brain scan and store the digital data until the nano-bots arrive? Because we don't currently have the technology to either scan or store a 3-d scan of your brain in the same resolution you can get by physically perfusing it with antifreeze and dropping it into a bucket of liquid nitrogen.

roc 14y ago
But by the time you've physically perfused the brain and frozen it, substantial cell death would have begun. So if we have to freeze until the scanning/storage tech arrives, we'll have a compromised source, at best.
- khafra 14y ago
  Yes. Whether or not the most substantial damage occurs with apoptosis when oxygen is re-introduced, there will uncontroversially be a lot of damage even in the best case cryonic vitrification. Also uncontroversially, there will be substantially less damage than would occur with cremation or burial. Even the lesser amount of damage may be too much. Cryonics is a bet that it is not.
  - roc 14y ago
    But is there a scientific basis to prefer this bet to, say, death-bed religious conversion?
    - FeepingCreature 14y ago
      As a bet, its possibility of payoff is consistent with the rest of what we know about the world, as opposed to religion, which is inconsistent. Furthermore, there are cases where things similar to this were done successfully, so extrapolation of technology might lead one to believe that we may be sufficiently good at reconstruction in the future. In comparison, no prayer has ever even slightly worked.
      - roc 14y ago
        > "its possibility of payoff is consistent with the rest of what we know about the world" What we know about the rest of the world is that this does not work, it will cause extensive damage even if it could work, so it would not necessarily re-generate the same person even if it did work [1] and that humans are notoriously awful at projecting technological advances 50 years out, to say nothing of our track record of projections even further. Extrapolation of current technology, from any particular point in our history, points us in wildly incorrect directions. See: the history of people proclaiming us on the verge of vanquishing death. "too cheap to meter" energy. Nuclear cars. Flying cars. Lab-grown meat. Off-world colonies in the far-off year 2000. Choose an AI prediction. Choose a cloning prediction. The notion that some technology has worked in the past, so a particular technology has some chance of working, is as flawed as "it appeared that my last prayer was answered, so my next one has a chance". Both require selective reporting from the available data to even entertain. [1] There are no shortage of case studies of people who've sustained comparatively minor brain trauma and been reduced to mere shadows of themselves, if not manifested new and almost entirely different personalities.