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Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

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Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#211

Post by TeMPOraL »

ewoodrich wrote: post #200
MichaelGG wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not incomparable in a mathematical sense, but the probability of any known religion being correct is not remotely on the same scale of reviving a suspended human mind. Along the lines: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ml/but_theres_still_a_chance_right/

I just want to clarify here, I'm not religious at all. I'm just trying to say that the state of mind and emotional investment is similar. I'm a bit surprised by some of the response, to be honest.

I'll grant you that. "The state of mind and emotional investment" is indeed similar, and it is a rationality risk, because people may (and do) transplant religious memes to reasoning about this. Same with the Singularity, or even if you dive a bit into game theory and economics you might realize that the possible solutions to coordination problems start to look eerily similar to what Jehovah's Witnesses teach about how God wants humanity to work (honestly, I've been loosing some sleep over this myself). It's a danger, but it doesn't make cryonics religion.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#212

Post by MichaelGG »

jacquesm wrote: post #168
apsec112 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it a "scam" implies that, not only is cryonics hopeless, but that the cryonicists agree it is hopeless and are just lying to people for money. Do you have any evidence of that at all?

I can't prove there never was an elephant in this room either or that God does not exist. So I can't prove with 100% certainty that cryonics is a scam. But I'll take what evidence I have and I'm more than happy to stand by my words.

GP asked for evidence, not for proof. Your refutation is a generic argument you could use on anything. I can only assume you understand this, (judging from your generally high-quality comments on this site). So I'm curious as to your reasoning for such a poor response. Is it just that you disagree there's useful evidence for cryonics and don't want to write more in-depth comments?

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#213

Post by TeMPOraL »

jacquesm wrote: post #191
TeMPOraL wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's go line by line. - that death does not alter the structure irrepairably As far as we can tell, if we freeze it quick enough, it won't. No magic required. (death doesn't mean something magical is happening to matter, it only means molecular machines stop working the way they should) - that the structure and information contained therein will not degrade over time Possible. Manageable with technology. Testable. N…

'manageable with technology we do not have' -> magic.

Not if by "do not have" we mean "we know it exists and can work, but we haven't figured out how to control it yet". It's a bit similar to saying "we have this computer that we know can do this, but we haven't cracked the root password yet".

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#214

Post by pron »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #209
pron wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reviving a suspended human mind That's not what's being debated. We're debating reviving with a yet unknown technique a human mind frozen with a particular one. > the probability of any known religion being correct is not remotely on the same scale... I'm an atheist, but that's totally unknown and presently unknowable. And don't provide as an example a very particular religion that rejects evolution (I don't know a…

> That's not what's being debated. We're debating reviving with a yet unknown technique a human mind frozen with a particular one. I know I'm repeating myself in every comment I make in this thread, but to reiterate. We know one possible technique that will work. We know that it exists, it is possible and that it can do the job in principle. We just don't know how to use it, because we didn't build that particular pi…

> We know one possible technique that will work.

Please show us how we "know" (given that we know with certainty so few things in biology).

> then there's always the nanotech.

... and God's angels. You're forgetting them. The "nanotech" you're referring to is, at this point, no more (in fact, it is precisely) science-fiction. Even as recently as 40 years ago, people were certain we'd all have flying cars by now. We can conjecture but not know that we'll be able to achieve some future technologies, even if we see some prototype of them. The fact life exists does not mean we'll be able to engineer it, and certainly not "control" it. There are some things that are simply intractable. We can't even forecast the weather for more than several days, so from the fact life exists you deduce that we'll be able to replicate it with "nanotech"? Maybe we will, and maybe we won't. It might be cool if we do -- and it might be horrifying and lead to our destruction -- but you're constantly confusing science with science fiction. And remember: all science fiction -- as well as most religions in the time they're founded -- are premised on what we currently know.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#215

Post by morpheous »

Sad, and in a way beautiful (I hope that's not an inappropriate word to use), at the same time. This man lived his life to the full, and faced the end of his life (as he has known it), with the courage of an adventurer.

I must admit i had never heard of the man himself, although I do know of bitcoin. But I am humbled by how he is smiling in all of his pictures, despite his physical body slowly giving up on him; his wife constantly by his side, through thick and thin.

I get the impression that Hal would have been a genuinely nice man to know. His life and the way he has faced his challenges head on is (should be) an inspiration to all.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#216

Post by pron »

Widdershin wrote: post #184
ewoodrich wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think cryonics is a pipe dream right now. But I completely respect and empathize with the wishes of Hal Finney to put hope into a future life, possibly without the burden of ALS that he was forced to deal with for a significant portion of his life. If he had the means to do it, and it gave him something while he was still alive, than I would say it was worth it to him.

You're probably right, but I just thought about it from the point of view of someone dying from a (currently) incurable illness. On one hand, you can die, and that will probably be it for you. On the other hand, you can become cryogenically preserved. In that case, there are two outcomes I can see. One, you're never revived (which is functionally equivalent to death). The other, you awake (in what feels like an insta…

another possibility is you wake up, disembodied, in a jar and live an eternal life of torment.

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#217

Post by TeMPOraL »

Seeing people going all "cryonics is another religion" saddens me in a way. It's a tragedy that we've learned to accept mortality to the point that as a species we're not only unwilling to try and fix it, we're calling those few who try nutcases.

Even if current cryonics won't work, how about focusing on trying to find another, better way to fix death, instead of throwing the towel and sneering?

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#218

Post by jacquesm »

MichaelGG wrote: post #212
jacquesm wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't prove there never was an elephant in this room either or that God does not exist. So I can't prove with 100% certainty that cryonics is a scam. But I'll take what evidence I have and I'm more than happy to stand by my words.

GP asked for evidence, not for proof. Your refutation is a generic argument you could use on anything. I can only assume you understand this, (judging from your generally high-quality comments on this site). So I'm curious as to your reasoning for such a poor response. Is it just that you disagree there's useful evidence for cryonics and don't want to write more in-depth comments?

How much more in-depth can it get, I think I've written enough in this thread already and it seems to me as though the belief in the might of science outstrips the ability to reason. Science gave us guns and computers, therefore it will give us resurrection.

And then to ask for evidence is adding to the pile, the only admissible evidence here would be proof that it is indeed possible. And I don't see any such evidence, only very small bits and pieces which could possibly one day be expanded to a whole given unfathomable advances in technology.

The branches of science required to pull this off do not even exist yet.

Remember that old saw about advanced enough technology being indistinguishable from magic? That's the territory we're in here.

Technology is nuts-and-bolts stuff based on understanding, not modern variations on Pascal's wager.

Useful evidence for cryonics -> anything that can be used to market cryonics. Evidence against cryonics: nobody has ever returned from the dead. I realize that facing death is one of the hardest issues to come to terms with for the living but I'm a little but surprised how gullible the techies are when it comes to selling them a bill of goods like this.

I guess at some level everybody wants to live forever and companies like this handily tap in to that (as did every religion with a commercial aspect since millenia).

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#219

Post by scythe »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #181
pron wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your logic is unsound. There is a huge difference between seeing that something is possible in principle and "a solid case", one that merits spending vast sums of money on. That difference is known in religious studies as "a leap of faith". If you need that leap of faith spelled out, then these are the steps that must be true in order for cryonic preservation to be real and desirable (i.e. "worth it"): the scientific…

Sure, those are all valid concerns, but all of them are within the realm of possibility. We don't know if we'll achieve the technology, but we know we can in principle . We don't know if future people will care about reviving us, or that we'd even want to live in that future, but it is possible. Note that there's no religion here anywhere, everything is casual and derived through logic from the current state of reali…

>fully scientific, supernatural-free bet

Those descriptors are not synonyms. There are many, many ways to be unscientific without any pretension of the supernatural. I think the word you wanted was to say "fully materialistic, supernatural-free bet".

The definition of science given by Francis Bacon and carried through to the modern era is that that a hypothesis is not accepted as valid until it has been tested experimentally, and a hypothesis must be tested after it has been formed (to avoid the sharpshooter fallacy). Modern versions allow you to use math, but that's as far as it goes. In this case, cryonics is obviously not scientific, because its effectiveness has not been demonstrated with the scientific method -- and that is what science is!

Re: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now

#220

Post by Pwnguinz »

eudox wrote: post #47
cjbprime wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would argue that cryopreservation is the belief in the increasing rate of scientific progress (which can measured and proven) The problem is that you aren't just depending on future improvements in revival technology, you're depending on the current state of today's preservation technology (at the point you die). And today's preservation technology doesn't have a lot of evidence suggesting that it can work to suc…

Since you specifically mentioned kidneys: >In the summer of 2005, where he was a keynote speaker at the annual Society for Cryobiology meeting, Fahy announced that Twenty-First Century Medicine had successfully cryopreserved a rabbit kidney at -130°C by vitrification and transplanted it into a rabbit after rewarming, with subsequent long-term life support by the vitrified-rewarmed kidney as the sole kidney. This rese…

The abstract makes no mention of -130°C, but digging into the actual paper (can be read here: www.21cm.com/pdfs/cryopreservation_advances.pdf), it does mention: "Fig. 13. Confinement of ice formation to the pelvis of a rabbit kidney that was perfused with M22 at 22°C for 25min, bisected, and allowed to passively cool in air in a CryoStar freezer at about 130°C... The vast majority of the kidney appears to have vitrified and is indistinguishable from the appearance of the kidney prior to cooling." (Emphasis mine)
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