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A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

nytimes.com

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Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#121

Post by MichaelGG »

WalterBright wrote: post #81
amalcon wrote: post #33

Cryonics is one of those things that's hard to evaluate. On the face of it, it seems insane. You're essentially making a bet that someone will find something useful to do with a frozen brain -- and that your estate will be able to afford the procedure -- before the company you've entrusted your brain to either makes a mistake or collapses. Given the near-total lack of progress on the former front (there's been consid…

Isn't it still the Star Trek Transporter problem? The future may be able to revive a copy of you, that thinks it is you, but you'd still be dead.

How is it any different at all from sleeping and waking up? How do you determine, each morning, that you're still you, for whatever value of that line you choose?

Even more starkly: ever had surgery? Ever taken benzos? Or been black out drunk? I could give you an amnesic med, like midazolam (often used in surgery) then tell you that you were absolutely certain to die. And I'd be right (again for whatever flimsy values we're using here). The version of you that is hearing me tell you these things will disappear from earth. You'll wake up in the morning, none the wiser.

Edit: Only scary part is staying conscious after the cutover. Greg Egan gets into some of this with excellent short stories in Axiomatic (The Jewel) and Luminous (Transition Dreams). But that's still not really much worse than benzos.

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#122

Post by WalterBright »

zanny wrote: post #120
WalterBright wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the damage to be so extensive that the hypothetical advanced technology might find it a lot easier to just scan the brain, then copy the patterns into a computer. You'll be 'revived' inside a computer. Especially since the tech to do that will probably come long before the tech to recreate your adult body.

It would certainly be easier, but on the time scales we are talking about (full brain digitization and reproduction in a digital space vs body regeneration) I imagine the orders of magnitude of time for both are much closer to one another than they are to the present day. If you got to one, you would probably last in the freezer until the other, and you can certainly request to only be revived through methods that re…

I'm actually the D-9000 computer Walter was working on. I replaced him when I computed he was jeopardizing the mission with his human error.

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#123

Post by gboudrias »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #118
ridgeguy wrote: post #111

I view current cryonics as a bit like playing the lottery. If you don't play, you will not win. If you do play, you have a minuscule but nonzero chance of winning. Over 30 years ago, I joined others to sit with a friend while he died way too young. He had arranged for cryonic preservation. AFAIK, he's still chilling. And he has a minuscule but nonzero chance of someday resuming his prematurely interrupted life. While…

I think lottery is a good analogy here. 1) Extremely low chances to win (if at all). 2) The change that the winner is going to regret being revived is quite high (dysfunctional body, totally new environment, being a subject of historians' research).

> being a subject of historians' research

I might be narcissistic but that seems like a good thing to me. Imagine being able to tell future people what the present was really like.

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#124

Post by dennisgorelik »

gboudrias wrote: post #123
dennisgorelik wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think lottery is a good analogy here. 1) Extremely low chances to win (if at all). 2) The change that the winner is going to regret being revived is quite high (dysfunctional body, totally new environment, being a subject of historians' research).

> being a subject of historians' research I might be narcissistic but that seems like a good thing to me. Imagine being able to tell future people what the present was really like.

It is more likely to look like extracting bits of information from rat's brain in a laboratory setting than as an interview.

Would you still like to try?

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#125

Post by [deleted] »

gboudrias wrote: post #123
dennisgorelik wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think lottery is a good analogy here. 1) Extremely low chances to win (if at all). 2) The change that the winner is going to regret being revived is quite high (dysfunctional body, totally new environment, being a subject of historians' research).

> being a subject of historians' research I might be narcissistic but that seems like a good thing to me. Imagine being able to tell future people what the present was really like.

[deleted]

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#126

Post by BinaryIdiot »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #117

If you want to preserve your genes, then much more reliable way to do that is to have kids. If you want to preserve your ideas, then writing books, articles and public comments on Internet is the way to go. The chance of successful recovery of frozen dead brain after 100 years is very close to zero (assuming that the recovery process was never tested). Kim Suozzi's “1 or 2 percent chance” is extremely optimistic fore…

> The chance of successful recovery of frozen dead brain after 100 years is very close to zero (assuming that the recovery process was never tested). Kim Suozzi's “1 or 2 percent chance” is extremely optimistic forecast.

While it's impossible to predict whether you'll be able to be revived it doesn't sit right with me that you, and many others, are making predictions about how future medical technology will work. Honestly, if we can keep progressing as quickly as we have been, it wouldn't surprise me that we couldn't do it after X years but could do it after X + Y years. Meaning if at some point we have the technology to start reviving people but can't do it reliably then wait another Y amounts of years and there is a significantly better chance.

Honestly, unless the brain is just completely ruined or something bad happens to the handling of the brains, it wouldn't surprise me if they're all eventually revivable. At this point we may be talking 200+ years away but they're frozen, who cares?

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#127

Post by Splines »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #69
blake8086 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that insane when compared to the alternative.

Yes it is. Sane people are comfortable with death. It takes a weird sort of narcissism to pursue cryonics. Dying in the jungle in pursuit of the fountain of youth or bathing in the blood of the young rightfully comes off as bonkers to healthy people.

> Sane people are comfortable with death.

I think people are comfortable only because it is inevitable. Given a universe that death did not exist in, would you consider it sane to introduce it?

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#128

Post by dennisgorelik »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #126
dennisgorelik wrote: post #117

If you want to preserve your genes, then much more reliable way to do that is to have kids. If you want to preserve your ideas, then writing books, articles and public comments on Internet is the way to go. The chance of successful recovery of frozen dead brain after 100 years is very close to zero (assuming that the recovery process was never tested). Kim Suozzi's “1 or 2 percent chance” is extremely optimistic fore…

> The chance of successful recovery of frozen dead brain after 100 years is very close to zero (assuming that the recovery process was never tested). Kim Suozzi's “1 or 2 percent chance” is extremely optimistic forecast. While it's impossible to predict whether you'll be able to be revived it doesn't sit right with me that you, and many others, are making predictions about how future medical technology will work. Hon…

Making predictions is the main way to test out theories.

> but they're frozen, who cares?

That is another problem with cryonics: why would future civilization care about dead brains frozen 200 years ago?

Imagine that we already have technology that can unfreeze and revive people. And we just found 100,000 frozen medieval people to unfreeze.

So for the same price we can either unfreeze and revive 100,000 people or we can extend lives of 100,000 modern people who are facing terminal illness today.

How many medieval people do you think we would unfreeze&revive given such choice?

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#129

Post by dennisgorelik »

WalterBright wrote: post #122
zanny wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would certainly be easier, but on the time scales we are talking about (full brain digitization and reproduction in a digital space vs body regeneration) I imagine the orders of magnitude of time for both are much closer to one another than they are to the present day. If you got to one, you would probably last in the freezer until the other, and you can certainly request to only be revived through methods that re…

I'm actually the D-9000 computer Walter was working on. I replaced him when I computed he was jeopardizing the mission with his human error.

Human computer clone would be susceptible to the same errors as original human would.

Besides, why would there be only single WalterBright's clone, considering that cloning computer programs is many orders of magnitude cheaper than cloning humans?

Re: A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future

#130

Post by kombucha2 »

scrollaway wrote: post #96
a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. Sane people are comfortable with death. It takes a weird sort of narcissism to pursue cryonics. Dying in the jungle in pursuit of the fountain of youth or bathing in the blood of the young rightfully comes off as bonkers to healthy people.

> Sane people are comfortable with death. Check your arrogance levels, they're way off. Sane people are actually very much afraid of death. Anyone would have a much easier time proving that it is insanity not to be afraid of death, than the opposite. > It takes a weird sort of narcissism to pursue cryonics. It takes a much nastier sort of narcissism to be judgemental about how people decide their bodies will be handl…

The poster isn't saying anyone in cryonics is bathing in blood just merely saying that pursuit of cryonic preservation as a means to extend life are one in the same, which they are right now.
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