CI’s threadbare state after all these decades seems especially surprising considering that Robert Ettinger founded it, and apparently he couldn’t do any better with it despite his status as one of the the originators of the cryonics movement
Nonetheless, Ettinger’s cryosuspension made the national news last summer. By contrast, the suspension of Fred Chamberlain by Alcor a few weeks back went unnoticed in the larger world, despite Alcor’s somewhat higher name recognition, because Fred never became the public face of cryonics.
Yet, as others have pointed out, CI operates as a “cemetery,” and the bureaucratic mind doesn’t allow for the removal of bodies in cemeteries to subject them to experimental medical procedures. A suspension with CI therefore resembles the selling point of the Roach Motel: You can check into the dewar, but you can never check out.
Yet, as others have pointed out, CI operates as a “cemetery,” and the bureaucratic mind doesn’t allow for the removal of bodies in cemeteries to subject them to experimental medical procedures
I don’t think that really matters: if revivification works, there will be a way around that. The important thing is getting bodies intact to that point. Subjecting them to procedures might be an interesting restriction on CI, except as far as I know, once one is cooled, there are no procedures besides topping up the tanks and every blue moon being switched from tank to tank.
I take Darwin as pointing out that CI has legal vulnerabilities to outside coercion and pressure that Alcor has apparently avoided; I haven’t read his links so I don’t know what, but lawsuits and activist public officials and overly broad public health laws come to mind.
Yet, as others have pointed out, CI operates as a “cemetery,” and the bureaucratic mind doesn’t allow for the removal of bodies in cemeteries to subject them to experimental medical procedures
I don’t think that really matters: if revivification works, there will be a way around that.
That doesn’t necessarily have to happen. Peter Thiel in his recent debate with George Gilder argues that most forms of engineering since 1970 have become effectively illegal. Some universities might still offer degrees in nuclear engineering, for example, but that field has horrible job prospects, so it might as well have become illegal. It wouldn’t take much to add cryonics to the list of prohibited technologies.
I can believe that changes in the law and the
legal-political climate have hampered innovation in at least
some of those fields, but by “outlawed” Thiel seems to mean
“a bad career choice”, judging from what he says at
42:17.
I think it’s because the government has outlawed technology. We’re not
allowed to develop new drugs with the FDA charging $1.3 billion per new
drug. You’re not allowed to fly supersonic jets, because they’re too noisy.
You’re not allowed to build nuclear power plants, say nothing of fusion, or
thorium, or any of these other new technologies that might really work. So,
I think we’ve basically outlawed everything having to do with the world of
stuff, and the only thing you’re allowed to do is in the world of bits. And
that’s why we’ve had a lot of progress in computers and finance. Those were
the two areas where there was enormous innovation in the last 40 years. It
looks like finance is in the process of getting outlawed, so the only thing
left at this point will be computers [...]
[nuclear engineering] has horrible job prospects, so it might as well have become illegal.
That’s not a very accurate way to think about legal problems. For comparison, PhDs in English Literature have horrible job prospects, but that’s not evidence that English Lit is becoming illegal.
If your field of engineering, despite its productive potentials, faces political moves to shut it down and throw you out of work, that has about the same effect as making it illegal.
Facing threats of possibly somewhat lower salaries and job prospects is quantitatively far less severe than being banned. Cutting the expected value of training for a profession by 10% is very different from cutting prospects by 50% or 90%.
Robert Ettinger had a superior cryosuspension because he didn’t rely on long distance remote standby from SA or elsewhere. He planned and had his ducks in a row so to speak. Many Alcor and SA contracted patients have rotted for many hours waiting for the very expensive far away teams. Some of these things were due to to matters out of anyone on the remote standby team’s control but distance cannot be removed as a factor. Robert had set up his own local standby with family, friends etc and the results speak for them selves.
Also the only reason CI ever had to operate under the cemetary statutes is because of negative PR and generated by Alcor with the Ted Williams case. Michigan bureaucrats responded to the negative PR with the current state of affairs. The cloak of cemetery regulation does protect CI to a limited degree in the future from further Alcor PR nightmares because it can be regulated in a way that the Michigan bureacrats can understand. So in the end it worked to CI’s benefit. I would hardly blame CI for making lemonaid out of Alcor generated lemons!
CI’s threadbare state after all these decades seems especially surprising considering that Robert Ettinger founded it, and apparently he couldn’t do any better with it despite his status as one of the the originators of the cryonics movement
Nonetheless, Ettinger’s cryosuspension made the national news last summer. By contrast, the suspension of Fred Chamberlain by Alcor a few weeks back went unnoticed in the larger world, despite Alcor’s somewhat higher name recognition, because Fred never became the public face of cryonics.
Yet, as others have pointed out, CI operates as a “cemetery,” and the bureaucratic mind doesn’t allow for the removal of bodies in cemeteries to subject them to experimental medical procedures. A suspension with CI therefore resembles the selling point of the Roach Motel: You can check into the dewar, but you can never check out.
I don’t think that really matters: if revivification works, there will be a way around that. The important thing is getting bodies intact to that point. Subjecting them to procedures might be an interesting restriction on CI, except as far as I know, once one is cooled, there are no procedures besides topping up the tanks and every blue moon being switched from tank to tank.
I take Darwin as pointing out that CI has legal vulnerabilities to outside coercion and pressure that Alcor has apparently avoided; I haven’t read his links so I don’t know what, but lawsuits and activist public officials and overly broad public health laws come to mind.
That doesn’t necessarily have to happen. Peter Thiel in his recent debate with George Gilder argues that most forms of engineering since 1970 have become effectively illegal. Some universities might still offer degrees in nuclear engineering, for example, but that field has horrible job prospects, so it might as well have become illegal. It wouldn’t take much to add cryonics to the list of prohibited technologies.
I found the Thiel-Gilder debate.
Thiel’s list of fields where “innovation in stuff was ‘outlawed’”:
petroleum engineering
nuclear engineering
electrical engineering
chemical engineering
mechanical engineering
bio-engineering
I can believe that changes in the law and the legal-political climate have hampered innovation in at least some of those fields, but by “outlawed” Thiel seems to mean “a bad career choice”, judging from what he says at 42:17.
Edit: Thiel does not just mean “a bad career choice”; he gives some examples of what he does mean at about 9:50 of this July 16 2012 debate with Eric Schmidt:
That’s not a very accurate way to think about legal problems. For comparison, PhDs in English Literature have horrible job prospects, but that’s not evidence that English Lit is becoming illegal.
If your field of engineering, despite its productive potentials, faces political moves to shut it down and throw you out of work, that has about the same effect as making it illegal.
Facing threats of possibly somewhat lower salaries and job prospects is quantitatively far less severe than being banned. Cutting the expected value of training for a profession by 10% is very different from cutting prospects by 50% or 90%.
If cryonics is outright prohibited, then the first part of the conditional is very unlikely to obtain...
Robert Ettinger had a superior cryosuspension because he didn’t rely on long distance remote standby from SA or elsewhere. He planned and had his ducks in a row so to speak. Many Alcor and SA contracted patients have rotted for many hours waiting for the very expensive far away teams. Some of these things were due to to matters out of anyone on the remote standby team’s control but distance cannot be removed as a factor. Robert had set up his own local standby with family, friends etc and the results speak for them selves.
Also the only reason CI ever had to operate under the cemetary statutes is because of negative PR and generated by Alcor with the Ted Williams case. Michigan bureaucrats responded to the negative PR with the current state of affairs. The cloak of cemetery regulation does protect CI to a limited degree in the future from further Alcor PR nightmares because it can be regulated in a way that the Michigan bureacrats can understand. So in the end it worked to CI’s benefit. I would hardly blame CI for making lemonaid out of Alcor generated lemons!