In general, I agree, but I’m not sure about the “within our lifetimes” part. I understand that cryobiology has made progress, but I am not convinced that it’s moving fast enough. There’s a huge difference between preserving tissue slices or even small organs for a relatively short amount of time, and preserving entire organisms (or at least their brains) for centuries. We can’t even preserve plant seeds for that long, AFAIK.
The fact that you keep mentioning timescales suggests that you haven’t internalized the fact that we are talking about a temperature at which most chemical reactions are effectively stopped. The major concern is damage on the way down, and whether it is reversible or not.
I am ashamed to admit that I don’t know what SENS is.
Agreed, I never meant to imply that this is always the case. But for each Phineas Gage, there are many more patients who suffer brain damage and never wake up. In addition, I would argue that what we really care about is the preservation of the person’s personality (which just happens to be powered by the brain). Yes, this is not an all-or-nothing proposition, and there are degrees of success. Still, if the person who is revived has a totally different personality from the person who went into the cryotank (as I believe was the case with Phineas Gage), I’d count that as a failure.
I already responded to the argument about personality changes due to missing chunks of brain matter. To the extent that you have the same personality as your identical twin, this should be fixable. The relevant concern is memories formed during your lifetime. Furthermore, if the brain’s missing chunks can be cloned back into existence, the functionality problem vanishes and takes with it any related mortality. With the scanned upload scenario this is even less of a concern.
“Future technology” may sound hand-wavy, but it is a compact way of describing a very large set of potential technologies, all of which could independently or in conjunction lead to reanimation of a sufficiently well preserved person.
Sorry, I don’t mean to sound too adversarial, but I’ll have to press you on this point, as this still sounds hand-wavy to me—more so than before, in fact. I am not doubting “future ingenuity”, but you can’t justify cryonics by invoking some sort of an unimaginably ingenious future technology about which we currently know nothing. Violating Occam’s Razor makes your argument weaker, not stronger.
The trouble with your claim to parsimony is that you’re basically doubting the existence of any and all relevant repair strategies that we don’t yet know about. Sure it’s possible that we live in a universe where there aren’t any repair strategies we can’t yet imagine, but again that seems more burdensome to me, not less.
Agreed, but there’s a huge difference between existing bacteria, and even viruses (which I fully agree are amazing), versus the kind of precise molecular machinery that would be needed to reconstruct a brain. It would have to be small enough to fit into the intercellular matrix, for one thing. I don’t want to get too far off-topic, but basically I’m not convinced that MBT is any better than MNT in terms of feasibility.
The brain is capable of functioning and growing in the first place. Why wouldn’t it be something capable of being repaired?
I’ve already addressed the concern about the intracellular matrix to some extent: slice it small enough, and you can operate on the surface with much bulkier machines. I imagine this would work best if you keep it super-cold (indicating MNT), but there is the possibility that we develop high-temperature vitrification methods analogous to fixation in amber. Alternately, find reversible ways to disrupt the cells and move them apart to make room.
Ok, I’m going to press you again. If you are convinced that cryonics is the way to go, and this is the best possible prospect for gaining eternal (or, at least, sufficiently long) life, then wouldn’t it be logical to put every available dollar toward your own cryopreservation ?
Not if cryopreservation’s chances can be improved more by putting money towards other things.
Hopefully it’s equally obvious that I disagree with you that your proposition is “obvious” :-) In addition, it all depends on what you mean by “later”. How much later are we talking ? A hundred years later ? A thousand ? A million ? The further into the future you look, the more nebulous it becomes; and thus your expected utility gets lower and lower as the probability decreases. Which was kind of my original point—it’s the low expected utility of cryonics that gives me pause, not its absolute payoff.
Huh? I was thinking more like 10 to 50 years. We’re talking ordinary business/marketing/infrastructure network effects, plus relatively near term (as I must insist) incremental scientific advances.
The fact that you keep mentioning timescales suggests that you haven’t internalized the fact that we are talking about a temperature at which most chemical reactions are effectively stopped.
“Effectively stopped” is not the same as “stopped”; and of course there are other effects that add up over time, such as mechanical damage an even cosmic rays. But I think my biggest mistake was in vastly overestimating the time scale that you’re talking about. I assumed that you were thinking in terms of centuries, but you say:
I was thinking more like 10 to 50 years. We’re talking ordinary business/marketing/infrastructure network effects, plus relatively near term (as I must insist) incremental scientific advances.
Does this mean that, should you be cryopreserved today, you expect yourself to be successfully revived after 10 to 50 years ? IMO, that’s a very strong claim. I want to address it, as well as the rest of your points, but first I want to make sure we’re on the same page.
Here you go.
Er, thanks, but that still doesn’t help me figure out which of the possible expansions of the acronym you’re referencing.
Note that by some estimates one has on the order of millions of years at liquid nitrogen temperatures being chemically equivalent to seconds at liquid nitrogen temperatures. There are problems with this sort of simplistic estimate. But even if one makes very worst case scenarios one gets something like a hundred years being equivalent to 10 minutes at room temperature
Incidentally, I agree that . Ishparrish is making a pretty optimistic estimate for when cryonic patients will be revived. We don’t seem to be anywhere near having the technology in 10 years, although 50 years does seem more plausible.
Incidentally, I agree that . Ishparrish is making a pretty optimistic estimate for when cryonic patients will be revived. We don’t seem to be anywhere near having the technology in 10 years, although 50 years does seem more plausible.
I wasn’t referring to reanimation time. I was saying that cryonics will make more economic sense in 10 years if people buy it today, no more and no less. I’m not sure where Bugmaster got the idea I was talking about reanimations in that timeframe, I’d have to agree that’s rather ridiculous.
I’d say 50 years is plausible for reanimation of patients that are near-perfectly vitrified (i.e. they might be near-perfectly vitrifying patients by then, which means they can bring them back right away if they choose—though terminal patients would still have to wait for a cure), but that is certainly not my envisioned timeframe for patients that need extensive repairs such as today’s patients.
If the singularity occurs in the meantime all bets are off of course, but I currently regard that as fairly low probability; not enough to factor into my cryonics calculations, though sufficient to make me worry about the existential risks (where the burden of proof is a lot lower).
Yes we can.
The fact that you keep mentioning timescales suggests that you haven’t internalized the fact that we are talking about a temperature at which most chemical reactions are effectively stopped. The major concern is damage on the way down, and whether it is reversible or not.
Here you go.
I already responded to the argument about personality changes due to missing chunks of brain matter. To the extent that you have the same personality as your identical twin, this should be fixable. The relevant concern is memories formed during your lifetime. Furthermore, if the brain’s missing chunks can be cloned back into existence, the functionality problem vanishes and takes with it any related mortality. With the scanned upload scenario this is even less of a concern.
The trouble with your claim to parsimony is that you’re basically doubting the existence of any and all relevant repair strategies that we don’t yet know about. Sure it’s possible that we live in a universe where there aren’t any repair strategies we can’t yet imagine, but again that seems more burdensome to me, not less.
The brain is capable of functioning and growing in the first place. Why wouldn’t it be something capable of being repaired?
I’ve already addressed the concern about the intracellular matrix to some extent: slice it small enough, and you can operate on the surface with much bulkier machines. I imagine this would work best if you keep it super-cold (indicating MNT), but there is the possibility that we develop high-temperature vitrification methods analogous to fixation in amber. Alternately, find reversible ways to disrupt the cells and move them apart to make room.
Not if cryopreservation’s chances can be improved more by putting money towards other things.
Huh? I was thinking more like 10 to 50 years. We’re talking ordinary business/marketing/infrastructure network effects, plus relatively near term (as I must insist) incremental scientific advances.
“Effectively stopped” is not the same as “stopped”; and of course there are other effects that add up over time, such as mechanical damage an even cosmic rays. But I think my biggest mistake was in vastly overestimating the time scale that you’re talking about. I assumed that you were thinking in terms of centuries, but you say:
Does this mean that, should you be cryopreserved today, you expect yourself to be successfully revived after 10 to 50 years ? IMO, that’s a very strong claim. I want to address it, as well as the rest of your points, but first I want to make sure we’re on the same page.
Er, thanks, but that still doesn’t help me figure out which of the possible expansions of the acronym you’re referencing.
SENS stands for Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence. Being acronym-challenged myself, I certainly understand the occasional agonies involved in working an unfamiliar one out.
Note that by some estimates one has on the order of millions of years at liquid nitrogen temperatures being chemically equivalent to seconds at liquid nitrogen temperatures. There are problems with this sort of simplistic estimate. But even if one makes very worst case scenarios one gets something like a hundred years being equivalent to 10 minutes at room temperature
Incidentally, I agree that . Ishparrish is making a pretty optimistic estimate for when cryonic patients will be revived. We don’t seem to be anywhere near having the technology in 10 years, although 50 years does seem more plausible.
I wasn’t referring to reanimation time. I was saying that cryonics will make more economic sense in 10 years if people buy it today, no more and no less. I’m not sure where Bugmaster got the idea I was talking about reanimations in that timeframe, I’d have to agree that’s rather ridiculous.
I’d say 50 years is plausible for reanimation of patients that are near-perfectly vitrified (i.e. they might be near-perfectly vitrifying patients by then, which means they can bring them back right away if they choose—though terminal patients would still have to wait for a cure), but that is certainly not my envisioned timeframe for patients that need extensive repairs such as today’s patients.
If the singularity occurs in the meantime all bets are off of course, but I currently regard that as fairly low probability; not enough to factor into my cryonics calculations, though sufficient to make me worry about the existential risks (where the burden of proof is a lot lower).