Why do you ask for an easy experimental test? If the experiment is hard, such that you rely on third party reports, but the result is not in doubt, then the experiment serves just as well. Granting that experiments may be hard, if we are sure that they are reported honestly, here are two that are relevant to cryonics.
First is the well know point of food hygiene, that one should not refreeze frozen meat. Some food poison bacteria are not killed by freezing, and grow every time the meat is warm enough. If I were a salmonella bacterium I would sign up for cryonics, confident that I was using a proven technology.
Second is the use of hypothermia in heart surgery. The obvious deadness of the patients is very striking for some-one my age (51), brought up in a world where death was defined by the stopping of the heart. I imagine the equivalent for the Christian vision of resurrection to eternal life in heaven is that at most funerals the priest says the magic words and the corpse revives for 5 minutes to say final goodbyes and reassure the mourners that they will meet up again on judgment day. Since it is only for five minutes, not eternity, and since it is on earth, not in heaven, one may find it unconvincing, just as one may find the use of hypothermia in heart surgery unconvincing. It is not exactly the thing promised. Nevertheless, such partial demonstrations are important. There would be few Jews left if priests could work the 5 minutes thing and rabbis couldn’t.
There are various ways of stopping a corpse from rotting. The Egyptians had techniques of mummification. Burning and retention of the ashes prevents icky decay. Pasteurization, that is mild heating, to kill bacteria does something useful. Why are cryonicists wedded to cold? As we have seen, there are experimental reasons for the choice. This seems very different from the main religious practice of being Protestant, Catholic, Sunni, or Shia, and following the religion one was born to without expecting one path to have experiments that make it seem uniquely promising.
How do you tell if a certain procedure is a cargo cult or something worthwhile, if there is neither an easy experimental test that one has done oneself, nor a hard experimental test that one accepts as honest? That is an interesting question, but I don’t see cryonics as being so purely theoretical that it provides a vehicle for exploring the issue.
Why do you ask for an easy experimental test? If the experiment is hard, such that you rely on third party reports, but the result is not in doubt, then the experiment serves just as well. Granting that experiments may be hard, if we are sure that they are reported honestly, here are two that are relevant to cryonics.
First is the well know point of food hygiene, that one should not refreeze frozen meat. Some food poison bacteria are not killed by freezing, and grow every time the meat is warm enough. If I were a salmonella bacterium I would sign up for cryonics, confident that I was using a proven technology.
Second is the use of hypothermia in heart surgery. The obvious deadness of the patients is very striking for some-one my age (51), brought up in a world where death was defined by the stopping of the heart. I imagine the equivalent for the Christian vision of resurrection to eternal life in heaven is that at most funerals the priest says the magic words and the corpse revives for 5 minutes to say final goodbyes and reassure the mourners that they will meet up again on judgment day. Since it is only for five minutes, not eternity, and since it is on earth, not in heaven, one may find it unconvincing, just as one may find the use of hypothermia in heart surgery unconvincing. It is not exactly the thing promised. Nevertheless, such partial demonstrations are important. There would be few Jews left if priests could work the 5 minutes thing and rabbis couldn’t.
There are various ways of stopping a corpse from rotting. The Egyptians had techniques of mummification. Burning and retention of the ashes prevents icky decay. Pasteurization, that is mild heating, to kill bacteria does something useful. Why are cryonicists wedded to cold? As we have seen, there are experimental reasons for the choice. This seems very different from the main religious practice of being Protestant, Catholic, Sunni, or Shia, and following the religion one was born to without expecting one path to have experiments that make it seem uniquely promising.
How do you tell if a certain procedure is a cargo cult or something worthwhile, if there is neither an easy experimental test that one has done oneself, nor a hard experimental test that one accepts as honest? That is an interesting question, but I don’t see cryonics as being so purely theoretical that it provides a vehicle for exploring the issue.