This is from Wikipedia and doesn’t really explain the full context. Cryonics in the 1960s/early 1970s was an absolute failure, but within the US, they learned hard lessons since then. Alcor and Cryonics Institute are both non-profits and seem like pretty stable organizations. If you disagree about that please let me know why.
Synaptic
Karma: 394
Interest in Biostasis: Much More Than You Wanted to Know. (Results from the ACX 2021 Biostasis/Cryonics Survey)
A relevant data point is that, as of a few years ago, I believe Mike Darwin wrote that he was still signed up with Alcor. As he pointed out, despite the problems with existing organizations, cryonics is the only game in town for avoiding death.
Thank you for all of your work on doing this. I really appreciate it.
Sure there is plenty of evidence.
Here is a good starting point: http://chronopause.com/chronopause.com/index.php/2011/02/23/does-personal-identity-survive-cryopreservation/index.html
I think nanotech is “magic” in the same way that uploading is “magic”. Neither exists but there’s no good reason to think that either wouldn’t be possible imo.
What am I missing about this?
Sadly, Bederson’s evidence is mostly anecdotal and therefore not very trustworthy.
Why the outside view suggests that longevity escape velocity is a long time away and cryonics is a much more feasible option for those alive today: signal-boosting a comment by Calm-Meet9916 on Reddit
However, several of the parameters would be likely to be unaffected by increased funding:
Cryonics is continuously legal
Cryonic revival is permitted
On the contrary, I very much expect that more funding would help with these factors. The success of cryonics is limited by sociopolitical factors, and the more people who have buy-in, the more likely people are to be protected when in long-term cryopreservation.
The intention of my post was not to encourage reductions in funding into cryonics; rather, to increase awareness among LessWrongers readers about anti-aging.
This is an admirable goal. =)
I strongly support anti-aging research. I’m not clear on what your criticism is of cryonics. Perhaps I missed where you explained why you think that cryonics will not work? For example, where in the Drake equation does your probability differ from Steve Harris’s or Mike Perry’s?
Also, you point out the large number of organizations and companies involved in aging research. Surely the fact that there are way fewer in cryonics means that it is has merit from an underfunding perspective?
You might get better responses at New Cryonet or r/cryonics. The cryonics community doesn’t seem to be very active here.
It’s a tricky question and depends a lot on your circumstances.
First, there are often cheaper options available. For example, CI is cheaper than Alcor. See https://www.reddit.com/r/cryonics/comments/8ymikj/oc_how_much_does_is_cost_to_preserve_a_brain/
If you have a terminal illness and don’t have enough money for even cheaper options like CI, you can try to get in touch with the Venturists, who might be able to vouch for your situation and coordinate a fundraiser (they have done this in the past). Their website seems to be down but I think they are still active: https://web.archive.org/web/20170721065012/http://www.venturist.info/
Best of luck. I’m really sorry for your situation. It’s a shame that cryonics is ridiculed and stigmatized and as a result the costs are much higher and this kind of situation is so hard to coordinate.
Upvoted—I agree that the probability is higher if you do cryonics.
However, a lot of the framing of this discussion is that “if you choose cryonics, you are opening up Pandora’s box because of the possibility of worse-than-death outcomes.” This triggers all sort of catastrophic cognitions and causes people to have even more of an ugh field around cryonics. So I wanted to point out that worse than death outcomes are certainly still possible even if you don’t do cryonics.
Why I think worse than death outcomes are not a good reason for most people to avoid cryonics
Well, this is certainly a reasonable response. But if there is a mechanism to decrease the probability that a worse-than-death outcome would occur so that people who had expressed these concerns are more likely to want to do brain preservation and more people could be a part of the future, that seems like an easy win. I don’t think people are particularly fungible.
I think I did not explain my proposal clearly enough. What I’m claiming is if that you could see intermediate steps suggesting that a worst-type future is imminent, or merely crosses your probability threshold as “too likely”, then you could enumerate those and request to be removed from biostasis then. Before those who are resuscitating you would have a chance to do so.
I responded to this as a post here: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/lrf/can_we_decrease_the_risk_of_worsethandeath/
Can we decrease the risk of worse-than-death outcomes following brain preservation?
it is very likely that my ticket out will be Alzheimer’s or another neurodegenerative disease. In that case, cryopreservation will only make sense if I commit suicide at the very onset of the disease and am frozen right away which may not be possible. If I get Alzheimer’s I may as well donate all my money to SIAI or Africa.
Consider two possibilities:
1) Alzheimers breaks long-distance communication more than it does actual information such as memories. Cf moments of lucidity. It’s not clear how true this is, though.
2) It may in fact be possible to undergo controlled legal death at the onset of death in some number of years. See the Oregon laws, which are likely to start to be passed elsewhere. See also http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/2012/05/09/revisiting-donaldson/
I want you to live too :)
Can you describe the reasons are that make you think it is not likely enough to work? Totally understandable if you can’t articulate such reasons, but I’m just curious about what the benchmarks are that you might find useful in informing your probability estimate.
That is to say, it’s unlikely that actual reversible cryopreservation would be possible; if it were, the technique probably wouldn’t be called cryonics anymore. So, other more intermediate steps that’d you’d find informative might be good to know about.
Putting aside the specifics about Alcor for a moment, what about this would this make you want to drop out of Cryonics entirely? There are other options.
Cryonics Institute is another reasonable organization.
Oregon Cryonics has fairly cheap choices if that is your concern.
You could try to advocate for better options and/or wait for others to emerge before “giving up”.