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> As it stands today, cryonics is an act of faith, not science. Current cryonics is perhaps too crude to work, or you can cast doubt on the long-term sustainab

by nova 13y ago

> As it stands today, cryonics is an act of faith, not science. Current cryonics is perhaps too crude to work, or you can cast doubt on the long-term sustainability of the organizations, or whatever, but that doesn't make it an act of "faith", at least not any religious sense. It's an act of decision making under some very big uncertainties, but it's not unscientific. If you accept the physicalist tenet that the brain is a machine, that the mind is the result of information processing, that there is no unmaterial "ghost" an so on then trying to preserve the "state variables" of that meat computer with vitrification is perfectly reasonable, specially compared with the only current alternative, total annihilation.

DanBC 13y ago
> but it's not unscientific. It's totally unscientific! It's pure pseudo-science. > If you accept the physicalist tenet that the brain is a machine ...okay... > that the mind is the result of information processing, that there is no unmaterial "ghost" an so on then trying to preserve the "state variables" of that meat computer with vitrification is perfectly reasonable, specially compared with the only current alternative, total annihilation. Well, no. We don't know what the mind is, nor how it works. We've only recently discovered that your unconscious self does stuff before your conscious self decides to do it. (http://exploringthemind.com/the-mind/brain-scans-can-reveal-your-decisions-7-seconds-before-you-decide http://exploringthemind.com/the-mind/brain-scans-can-reveal-...) {With interesting video clip}. Freezing your brain is as scientific as stitching corpse-body-parts together to create a living human.
- nova 13y ago
  > We don't know what the mind is We're pretty sure the mind is what the brain does. > nor how it works. We don't need to, for this purpose. This is a low-level dump of all the information stored, to enable (much) later analysis. As I said, current cryonics is perhaps too crude. But the idea itself is not unsound. IF current procedures are not detailed enough to preserve the details then perhaps throwing a few millions into research to find better cryoprotectants or procedures could solve the problem. > We've only recently discovered that your unconscious self does stuff before your conscious self decides to do it I don't see the relevance. Your unconscious self is still made of neurons and other material stuff, not magic.
  - jaggederest 13y ago
    The problem isn't technology. The problem is motivations. There's no situation in which people in the future will be better off having thawed your obsolete corpsicle out. Until you solve the 'why bother' problem, it's completely pointless.
    - jaibot 13y ago
      If you think that cryonics is more likely to let you enjoy another day of life than being buried or cremated, there is a point. Doesn't it seem weird to go from "This part of the problem seems unsolved to me" to "this idea is completely pointless"? Just because you didn't immediately see a solution? To answer the specific objection: People are curious, and people aren't jerks. Cryonics is still extremely novel, and if revival is possible the subjects of this decade will be incredibly rare individuals any self-respecting anthropologist would fund in an instant - to name one of a dozen possible solutions.
    - MichaelGG 13y ago
      Dunno, for instance, this family might leave notes for him for the future, and a descendant might pull him out if technologically possible and not a massive financial thing. Other historians might pull people out for curiosity or something.
- equalarrow 13y ago
  "Freezing your brain is as scientific as stitching corpse-body-parts together to create a living human." Mmmm, not sure this is a good analogy. While cryonics isn't proven science yet, we have frozen dogs, pigs, and other animals and revived them after a few days. Granted, this isn't a human, but if I am ever in a situation where the end is there in front of me with a little bit of time to contemplate it, I'd rather take the frozen brain/body route.
  - ggreer 13y ago
    While cryonics isn't proven science yet, we have frozen dogs, pigs, and other animals and revived them after a few days. I'm sorry, you are mistaken. The largest reversibly-cryopreserved chunk of mammal so far has been a rabbit kidney. The kidney was cryopreserved, re-warmed, and transplanted back into the rabbit. The untreated kidney was removed. The rabbit recovered and survived until the researchers euthanized it for autopsy 6 weeks later. Autopsy showed some areas where the cryoprotectant hadn't reached, so the kidney wasn't perfectly healthy. The whole paper is at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/
- VMG 13y ago
  Well, you don't need to have the source code for Windows to make a core memory dump and resume it at a later point.

by nova 13y ago

DanBC 13y ago

> but it's not unscientific. It's totally unscientific! It's pure pseudo-science. > If you accept the physicalist tenet that the brain is a machine ...okay... > that the mind is the result of information processing, that there is no unmaterial "ghost" an so on then trying to preserve the "state variables" of that meat computer with vitrification is perfectly reasonable, specially compared with the only current alternative, total annihilation. Well, no. We don't know what the mind is, nor how it works. We've only recently discovered that your unconscious self does stuff before your conscious self decides to do it. (http://exploringthemind.com/the-mind/brain-scans-can-reveal-your-decisions-7-seconds-before-you-decide http://exploringthemind.com/the-mind/brain-scans-can-reveal-...) {With interesting video clip}. Freezing your brain is as scientific as stitching corpse-body-parts together to create a living human.

nova 13y ago
> We don't know what the mind is We're pretty sure the mind is what the brain does. > nor how it works. We don't need to, for this purpose. This is a low-level dump of all the information stored, to enable (much) later analysis. As I said, current cryonics is perhaps too crude. But the idea itself is not unsound. IF current procedures are not detailed enough to preserve the details then perhaps throwing a few millions into research to find better cryoprotectants or procedures could solve the problem. > We've only recently discovered that your unconscious self does stuff before your conscious self decides to do it I don't see the relevance. Your unconscious self is still made of neurons and other material stuff, not magic.
- jaggederest 13y ago
  The problem isn't technology. The problem is motivations. There's no situation in which people in the future will be better off having thawed your obsolete corpsicle out. Until you solve the 'why bother' problem, it's completely pointless.
  - jaibot 13y ago
    If you think that cryonics is more likely to let you enjoy another day of life than being buried or cremated, there is a point. Doesn't it seem weird to go from "This part of the problem seems unsolved to me" to "this idea is completely pointless"? Just because you didn't immediately see a solution? To answer the specific objection: People are curious, and people aren't jerks. Cryonics is still extremely novel, and if revival is possible the subjects of this decade will be incredibly rare individuals any self-respecting anthropologist would fund in an instant - to name one of a dozen possible solutions.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    Dunno, for instance, this family might leave notes for him for the future, and a descendant might pull him out if technologically possible and not a massive financial thing. Other historians might pull people out for curiosity or something.
equalarrow 13y ago
"Freezing your brain is as scientific as stitching corpse-body-parts together to create a living human." Mmmm, not sure this is a good analogy. While cryonics isn't proven science yet, we have frozen dogs, pigs, and other animals and revived them after a few days. Granted, this isn't a human, but if I am ever in a situation where the end is there in front of me with a little bit of time to contemplate it, I'd rather take the frozen brain/body route.
- ggreer 13y ago
  While cryonics isn't proven science yet, we have frozen dogs, pigs, and other animals and revived them after a few days. I'm sorry, you are mistaken. The largest reversibly-cryopreserved chunk of mammal so far has been a rabbit kidney. The kidney was cryopreserved, re-warmed, and transplanted back into the rabbit. The untreated kidney was removed. The rabbit recovered and survived until the researchers euthanized it for autopsy 6 weeks later. Autopsy showed some areas where the cryoprotectant hadn't reached, so the kidney wasn't perfectly healthy. The whole paper is at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/
VMG 13y ago
Well, you don't need to have the source code for Windows to make a core memory dump and resume it at a later point.