Father of Cryonics Dies at 92, Frozen in Cryonics Institute
dailytech.com
dailytech.com
http://evidencebasedcryonics.org/scientists-open-letter-on-c...
A layman's introduction to cryonics:
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2001/11/cryonics.php
Lots of deeper technical details can be found at Alcor (which maintains a better web presence than the Cryonics Institute):
http://www.alcor.org/sciencefaq.htm
The basic process is pretty similar between all modern cryonics organizations. Important to note is that freezing is out, vitrification is in. That makes a large difference to cellular structural integrity. See:
[0]lesswrong.com/lw/1r0/a_survey_of_anticryonics_writing/
"I know more people who are planning to sign up for cryonics Real Soon Now than people who have actually signed up. I expect that more people have died while cryocrastinating than have actually been cryopreserved. If you've already decided this is a good idea, but you "haven't gotten around to it", sign up for cryonics NOW. I mean RIGHT NOW." - http://lesswrong.com/lw/wq/you_only_live_twice/
"You could not feel sadness if you've never tasted joy; that's the curse of humans - born in passion you destroy"
While I find the concept of cryonics fascinating, and feel the science should be researched more, I also feel death is important. Not only is it a natural part of life, but it's also the catalyst that enables enjoyment. I'd be extremely apathetic towards everything if I knew I'd live forever. And then, there comes the sociological problems associated with resurrecting the dead.
Edit: Some people seem to have misunderstood: My comments about living forever is in direct reference to what's stated in the article, not what's realistic.
Check out "Transhumanism as Simplified Humanism": http://singinst.org/blog/2007/06/16/transhumanism-as-simplif...
I don't know how old you are, but your current life expectancy is likely much greater than the number of years you've already lived. So the difference between of life without cryonics and life with it is "I will probably live a long time" and "I will probably live a very long time."
There is still death in a world with cryonics. Traumatic accidents will still put people beyond recovery, the same with some diseases. Many people will be frozen but never reanimated.
In the first world in 2011, death occurs but is rare. Cryonics will increase the rarity but that's all.
As for my comments about "living forever", I'm directly referencing what they stated in the article, rather than what's plausible. I'm fully aware of the differences. I'm just trying to illustrate that, at least psychologically, the worth of life is depreciated.
The malnourished value food more and those who have an imminent terminal condition feel every moment more intensely, but that doesn't mean it is better to be so. None of sound mind should be forced to take life-saving treatment, but in my view it is a good to have the option.
As a side note, people cite overpopulation as one of the problems of people not dying. I don't think this will ever be a problem. We will naturally adjust. If you are going to live for hundreds or even thousands of years would you really have kids when you are only 25-30 years old? I imagine people will wait until they've reached 30 or 50% of their life span simply because there is just no rush.
The biggest problem here is that we would need a change in human sex characteristics. We would have to change the way a female matures so that she would be able to (healthfully) breed at that age, otherwise should she desire children, she would have to have them at a (relative to long lifespan) very young age.
One other proposition would be the secure storage of her eggs.
[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_potency#Totipotency
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_treatments#Infertilit...
"If you don't ask, then the answer is always no."
Hopefully we'll see you again some day, Ettinger.
I think that eventually we'll probably figure this stuff out, but that now is far too early to start freezing people.
Why, do you think there's something to lose?
Our best shot at preserving the pattern of information that makes your identity as a person, or just rotting/reduced to ashes.
http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/3...
Very technical, but gives a good idea of what is required.
Or to put in another way, what is more likely: That the future can bring back a dead old and then frozen brain, or that they can reconstruct an individual just by brute force computer simulation, no need for anyone to be frozen?
If the later is as likely as the first, what exactly is the point of freezing?
Perhaps you might be better of trying to create interesting things which will make the distant future more likely to want to simulate you in high precision?
Or perhaps Aubrey DeGray would be much better off applying his impressive brains to getting an MD and going into basic research, instead of being a cheerleader for his ideas with only a Gerontology PhD.
I suggest you read his book (amazon: Ending Aging) and then make up your mind about his ideas, rather than after having only heard the soundbites.
If you are passionate about the subject, step out of the Aubrey lake and dive into the huge ocean that is next to it. It's not nearly as optimistic, but is much more relevant.
So lets stick to fundamentals. His basic argument: ... the fundamental knowledge needed to develop effective anti-aging medicine mostly already exists, and that the science is ahead of the funding.
In other words, big pharma with all its money and all those huge profits coming form treating age related diseases, is just not interested in spending more to develop more such drugs? I mean the cure for agings is just sitting there, and all they have to do is put a few people to work on it, but nope, not interested.
All those scientists can't see the forest for the trees, but Aubrey does see it!
Does this give you any kind of a pause? I mean, sure he might be the visionary of our age, but how likely is that?
Imagine this was about algorithms. And someone claimed the basic theory to solve NP-hard problems in polynomial time already exits, someone just needs to implement the algorithms. Would that person be taken seriously?
Does it not bother you at all that so many in the tech community are a buzz with his theories, but the life sciences community not so much? What's keeping Craig Venter from curing aging in a couple of weeks? Pro-aging and pro-death bias?
That is another one of Aubrey's claims, that a lot of his opponents are just hypnotized by our pro-aging and pro-death Stockholm syndrome culture.
Let me ask you this, can you provide me with specific evidence that Aubrey's main theories are NOT pure charlatanry?
Because the generic "We can like totally to do this, if we just try guys!" is not even wrong.
More likely to happen if they have a frozen brain to scan?
The purpose of cryonics is to save the lives of living people, not inter the bodies of dead people. Death is a neurological process that begins after the heart stops. A stopped heart only causes death if nothing is done when the heart stops. Cryonics proposes to do something. In the words of a mainstream critical care expert writing for the American College of Surgeons, "In this era of critical care, death is more a process than an event.... A prognosis of death...cannot serve as a diagnosis."
I don't feel that I understand this fully. Is there a point in this "process" from which we've already brought people back, or is this all just conjecture?
An interesting point was brought up in the comments too, which is if we had a bunch of frozen folks from the 1600's and we could unfreeze them and bring them back to life, would that be the right choice?
That is the moral 'nub' which I find fascinating about this stuff (and yes it has been chewed fruitfully by writers before).
So imagine you could bring someone back from the 60's. What would they do today? The most brilliant computer designer would probably de-thaw believing that the IBM 360 with its channel architecture was the coolest thing. Show them the multi-issue pipeline of a modern microprocessor with register coloring, branch prediction, and early instruction retirement and their brain would explode.
When you are young the wonder of a new thing gives you the energy to read about how it works, when you're older (or just in a hurry) having to spend time reading the manual or 'fiddling with' a tool to understand it enough to use it is bothersome. Can you imagine waking up and everything you know is expected to be known by teens ? All your hard earned wisdom is worthless?
Since we're speculating there are things we can't really know but we can wonder about.
So what will be the economic status of these people once thawed? It could be 'good' in a post singularity world where anything can be made for 'free', or it could be 'bad' where thawed people are treated like the property of the person who paid to thaw them.
I would hate to find myself waking up, fuzzily, and have an insistent voice saying, "you've been reanimated by xyzcorp, click 'yes' to agree to their terms for paying off your debt to them, or 'no thankyou' to be re-frozen."
1. You die in a year or two from terminal illness or an accident.
2. You purchased a life insurance policy when you were healthy, so cryonics is very cheap.
3. Unforeseen advances in AI/nanotech/medicine allow you to be revived in just 15-20 years.
4. You are back from the dead and find subsistence (let alone wealth) in the near future superior to your old life.
So; assuming technology sufficient for reanimation allows for rejuvenation I expect that people would very slowly adjust to their new surroundings (unless the differences between societies are larger than between Hmong hill tribesmen who had never seen a tv and 1960's America) and be generally happy with their new surroundings. Given that rejuvenation implies the possibility of eternal youth and health I assert that people could eventually totally integrate with their new society, though not all would. Still, if you're back at peak mental and physical fitness and you have more than 10 years to adapt to the culture and acquire education/human capital/skills why couldn't it work?
Kill someone just because they are a bit behind the times? Triage is fine, but we're talking about a chance to save someone healthy and alive when there are plenty of resources.
"So what will be the economic status of these people once thawed?"
Barring drastic economic changes, compound interest from the trust fund should put them in good shape.
The majority of funding goes into the patient care trust, which is used for upkeep of the patients and (hopefully) eventual revival.
http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html
At least with Alcor, your scenario is impossible and I'd be very surprised if CI didn't have an analog.
Father of Cryonics "Dies" at 92
Some folks will tell you that death is merely a transition to an alternate form of living. Some folks will tell you that if your cells are cryogenically frozen can get defrosted later. Both ideas are taken on faith, they may both be true, they may neither be true.
If someone reading this is pursuing a writing career in fiction I would be love to read a story about a bunch of souls, who have died, have had their mortal remains frozen, and now as dead people been able to see that there is an afterlife, but they can't go there because their mortal remains might be reanimated and they would go back, how they deal with it and what they do. Do they figure out a way to 'break' the cryonics system, allowing them to decay and move on? Do they go insane stuck between heaven and earth? Do they wander the planet vicariously living through other people's experiences. Maybe a TV series in there somewhere.
I live in an apartment building, but I haven't seen behind my neighbor's door. It could actually be a portal to Mars. It could lead to a few rooms consistent with the geometry of the rest of the building.
Not every pair of unknowns are equiprobable.
True enough, but the unknowns 'is there an afterlife' and 'can I be reanimated from frozen tissue' are sufficiently unknowable at this time to appear equiprobable to this reader.
They aren't equally true or untrue. There's more evidence cryonics will work than that afterlife-capable souls are real. The question is whether it's enough to be worth spending money on.
I like your idea about supernatural cryonics fiction though. I've considered writing stories like that myself. It doesn't have to be unpleasant for the souls; perhaps they are sitting in a camp outside the gates of heaven or hell, communicating with each other and sharing ideas. They could perhaps later carry messages back to the mortal world, granting empirical proof of the afterlife as soon as they are reanimated.