There's a great Penn & Teller "Bullshit" segment about Cryonics (mildly NSFW; it's Penn & Teller): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHEWKkLzALQ#t=20m2s https://w

There's a great Penn & Teller "Bullshit" segment about Cryonics (mildly NSFW; it's Penn & Teller): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHEWKkLzALQ#t=20m2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHEWKkLzALQ#t=20m2s Is it possible? Certainly - the Wood Frog evolved to freeze itself every winter[1] and successfully unthaw itself. It floods its blood with sugars so it doesn't form ice crystals, solving the problem of tissue destruction, then unthaws in the Spring from the outside in and restarts its biological systems. How does modern cryonics solve this problem? Antifreeze. The fluid that poisons you if it enters your system[2]. For you to be revived, then, we'd have to figure out: * how to unthaw your body in a way that won't destroy essential parts of it * how to cure you of Ethylene glycol poisoning * how to cure you of the thing you died from * how to bring you back to life Perhaps a clever solution will be thought up that will just do a quick scan of your connectome[3] and upload it to a simulation. But why would anyone go through the trouble? Presumably this would be many years in the future. Would anyone even care enough in an overpopulated future-Earth to start bringing back their ancestors? When's the last time you called your grandparents? The bottom line is that if you're truly desperate for an "afterlife" (or, perhaps more accurately, extra-life), cryonics is probably your best bet presently. That bet, however, is rationally just an incredible waste of money that would more effectively prolong your effect on the world if instead it was used to support the people and ideals you believed in when you were alive. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjr3A_kfspM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjr3A_kfspM 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene_glycol_poisoning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene_glycol_poisoning 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0