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Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

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Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#101

Post by foxyv »

polishdude20 wrote: post #3

I thought about death the other day and how maybe it's akin to the feeling of going under before a surgery. When you go under and then wake up some hours later, often you feel like no time has passed at all. What if death is just that same feeling or lack thereof for Millenia, an infinite amount of time, but at some point from your perspective, you wake up instantly far in the future. Like a photon travelling for mil…

I prefer the Buddhist interpretation of self. There isn't really a singular you. We are all interdependent beings. A four plus dimensional tree reaching back to the start of time. The "you" that you're experiencing right now is an illusion created by your brain. When the body you are currently experiencing with dies, there are still all the other bodies producing experience.

After all, are you really the same person that began your life? Do you have the same memories? Can you even remember what being 10 years old was like? Are those memories real? Are you experiencing the same universe as when you were born?

For all you know, you have died a thousand times and just don't remember it because those memories died in some other universe or some other body.

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#102

Post by overtone1000 »

arielzj wrote: post #77
overtone1000 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and I am a US physician! Curiously, their paper was sponsored by an entity that funds cryopreservation research. The paper asserts that those surveyed were general practitioners, but the actual survey itself had quotas for various subspecialties. The survey also has an introduction section that frames cryopreservation (not used in medicine) in the context of hypothermic protocols (commonly used in medicine),…

First author here to provide context: 1. We had both general practitioners and various specialists. We set a minimum quota for each so that we'd get some sense of what all the various groups thought. We aimed for and obtained 180 specialists along with the 150 general practitioners. See figure 1 c. 1a. We absolutely did not change the protocol after the survey was designed, or selectively exclude sections of the popu…

Thanks for the excellent response and clarification! I apologize for misreading your method with regard to inclusion of subspecialties. Figure 1 is particularly enlightening. Indeed, I'm in one of the two most skeptical subspecialties, and I considered switching to the other for some time. I suppose that says something about my biases as does the fact that I lurk on HN.

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#103

Post by overtone1000 »

nyeah wrote: post #85
arielzj wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These were physicians who were being paid to complete surveys - no reason to think they were more likely to select/reject this one over any of the others available to them at the time.

. There's at least one reason. It's in the comment you responded to.

Apologies, that was my mistake. The subspecialties I thought weren't included were reported in detail in one of the figures, and they were some of the more optimistic groups. The result is surprising to me.

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#104

Post by zimpenfish »

eudamoniac wrote: post #99
IAmBroom wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not his fault that he couldn't predict his daughter deciding to go on a hike alone, which triggered his parental protective mode.

It is his fault that he made choices which resulted in him being unable to perform basic tasks in life that he would reasonably be expected to sometimes do, such as walking outside.

Is it my fault that I've resulted in being unable to perform "basic tasks" such as walking outside? Have I somehow manifested osteoarthritis by my bad choices?

I suppose it could be considered a bad choice that when my knee ligament snapped, I went to a hospital which was horrendously busy (thanks NHS!) and the doctor didn't care to do more than a cursory exam and send me away (bad choice on my part trusting an expert, I suppose!) which then lead to a (slow) avalanche of problems which eventually destroyed almost every part of my knee?

Yeah, probably all my fault, you're right.

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#106

Post by thfuran »

peacebeard wrote: post #53
throwawaylaptop wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its obviously not my 'fault'. But it's pretty close to a death I could have prevented for a while if I wasnt pretending to be busy probably. I remember when she said her dad was going to go instead and I thought "uhh, I don't think that's going to work.. I should just go" but I didn't really like her that much at that point and figured it would just be a lame wasted hike, not that the dude would die.

The part of this that really makes me think is when you thought "I don't think that's going to work" about him going on the hike. That's really tough. In the past there have been times I didn't speak up about a concern I had, then found out that a warning would have been warranted. This is something I think about a lot since becoming a father. There has never been anything in my life before where 99% safe wasn't enou…

>There has never been anything in my life before where 99% safe wasn't enough

Have there been about 75 where it was? If so, congrats on beating the odds.

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#107

Post by giardini »

throwawaylaptop wrote: post #47
nehal3m wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is full of moments like that. For example on your way to work that same morning, had you left your house 30 seconds later than you did, someone might have had to wait at an intersection longer than they otherwise would have, causing them to narrowly miss being in an accident further down the road instead of being hit. Butterfly effect and all that. You can’t predict the future.

I don't worry too much about the butterfly effect because it goes both ways. Sure one stoplight here makes a guy die, but another stoplight over there saves a guys life. But in this case, when it's a clear "either I put off changing my oil and washing my car, or this 250 lb senior citizen with gout tries going on a hike", it's a lot more clear.

Perhap he shouldn't have gone with her. Perhaps your gf shouldn't have let him go with her. Perhaps you face marriage into a family that has hereditary bad judgment!

Changing your oil and washing your car may be the luckiest decision you've made in your life!

I once did not marry a (beautiful) daughter of a family with an overweight heart-diseased patron. Turned out to be one of the best accidents of life for me. Saw her years later and she was almost as big as her Daddy was when he had his second heart bypass! Glad I missed that "iceberg in the night"!

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#108

Post by Vecr »

arielzj wrote: post #79
Vecr wrote: post #23

This is optimistic, I see "The cryonics people make a mistake in freezing you (how do we know they don't make lots of mistakes?)"[0] and "The current cryonics process is insufficient to preserve everything"[0] resulting of a product 10% already, seemingly matching the questionnaire as well as possible. They say "under ideal conditions" in the survey, so maybe that rules out cracking of brain tissue or ice growth, but…

...I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Asking about ideal conditions is a reasonable starting point for establishing a baseline, and high-quality preservation is definitely something that can be achieved under laboratory conditions with animal models (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001122401... )

Principles of Vitrification (Fahy PDF linked) p. 48 many practitioners think they have vitrified when they have not p. 45 volume changes of vitrifying agents, possibly in a way that avoids detection (very small scale?).

Covers the second term, "freezing" (quibble quibble) speed and delays in the procedure cover the first.

Your team seems not to be trying to maintain either normally solid/fluid tissue maintaining recoverable gradients or vitrification through an entire cycle below the triple point (with just removable or bio-compatible vitrifying mixtures) so your "goal" might be easier. Is the future AI just going to say you didn't do well enough even if you meet your "goal"?

On the other hand if there's never any point in the cycle where any volume is not either recoverable to health or vitrified, all the AI can say is that cryonics doesn't work period.

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#109

Post by DennisP »

vintermann wrote: post #80
DennisP wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to mitigate that would be to put the money in a trust which pays the preservation company a monthly dividend. If the trust stops paying, the company can sue it. If the company goes out of business despite its ongoing revenue, the trust can try to find someone else to take over the storage. We already have trusts that manage wealth for multiple generations.

And how can you trust the trust? We also have plenty of trusts which are questionably aligned with their makers last wills, among them the Nobel peace prize (Nobel didn't just want the prize to go to anyone working for any kind of advancement of peace. He had a very particular instrument for peace in mind, namely peace conferences, which I don't think any laureate has arranged for fifty years.) I think we have too ma…

That's why I said "mitigate" rather than "completely solve." Incentives are aligned better with two entities who check each other and earn ongoing fees, instead of giving a lump sum to a single entity.

And the Nobels might not be awarded exactly as originally intended, but they are still awarded every year. Nobody has swiped the funds for executive bonuses, as the commenter above suggested.

Re: Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

#110

Post by eudamoniac »

zimpenfish wrote: post #104
eudamoniac wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is his fault that he made choices which resulted in him being unable to perform basic tasks in life that he would reasonably be expected to sometimes do, such as walking outside.

Is it my fault that I've resulted in being unable to perform "basic tasks" such as walking outside? Have I somehow manifested osteoarthritis by my bad choices? I suppose it could be considered a bad choice that when my knee ligament snapped, I went to a hospital which was horrendously busy (thanks NHS!) and the doctor didn't care to do more than a cursory exam and send me away (bad choice on my part trusting an exper…

> Is it my fault that I've resulted in being unable to perform "basic tasks" such as walking outside? Have I somehow manifested osteoarthritis by my bad choices?

I don't know, maybe. But I wasn't commenting about your knee. I was commenting about the father's congestive heart failure which is usually, and sounds like in this case, caused by sloth. There are plenty of fit people even in wheelchairs.

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