Thoughts on cryonic preservation & revival

[lproven]

This is a rather long reply to a post from ciphergoth. The question being, is it plausible that, in future, we will be able to resurrect people from their head, cryonically frozen post-mortemI am keenly interested in the prospect of whole-brain emulation, which strikes me as potentially plausible, with reasonable probability. For one thing, I think that this

Comments

[ciphergoth]

First, many thanks for sharing your thoughts as a stand-alone blog post. This is exactly what my blog post about this was intended to encourage. And it meets three of my criteria at the end of the article!

So I'm hoping you'll take the fourth step, of explicitly discussing the arguments set out by cryonics advocates on the subjects you discuss - you're clearly much better placed to evaluate them than I am. For example, you say:However, the prospects of doing it from a dead brain seem to me to be far closer to 0, in a Zeno's-Paradox sort of way. Once one is outside that critical 4min window of an oxygen-deprived brain, I suspect that the remaining amount of useful information drops precipitately, with every passing minute, and after 2-3x that 4min window, I suspect there isn't enough left to be worthwhile.
I'm guessing you're thinking of ischemic damage? This issue is discussed in detail in Scientific Justification of Cryonics Practice which is the document to rebut if you're interested in this subject. Fahy's cited study on

[ergotia]

I understand why you supposedly cannot disprove a negative. It looks to me like P is simply looking for evidence both for and agsainst, and what he seems to be gett8ng agai8nst is mostly "You loony, how dare you raise this and call yourself a scientist"

[reddragdiva]

Then I suggest you read further and with less aggression. It's not clear how your comments on this post either advance understanding or would motivate anyone else to contribute further in any way.

[ergotia]

Right back at you, you pompous twit! The way you have been carrying on online over this makes this comment richly comic.

[liam_on_linux]

At risk of sounding like a parody myself, can you both try to calm down, please?

I think there is an element of factionalism creeping into this. ISTM that David is actually being quite moderate, not notably offensive, and at the worst, sarcastic but restrainedly so, especially as I've seen what he can & does do when really provoked.

So please, less of the invective & ad homs, OK?

[ciphergoth]

I've asked for the best arguments against, which is rather different.

[reddragdiva]

And really, thette already answered that in her opinion it was so full of fail as to be ludicrous, you then asked again that she do your homework for you. At that point, snark is probably likely.

[ergotia]

Goodness. Whence cometh the venom? I was rather surprised that there was no link in that post, and as I think P has very obviously been "doing his homework" on this I think this is just mean, actually. I thought there was some kind of noble ideal of free exchange of views and assistance with research in the scientific community, but again, alas, I am not a scientist.

[reddragdiva]

You are seeing venom where there isn't any. This appears to be affecting your comments on this post.

[ciphergoth]

When you say "do your homework for you", can you be more specific on what I should be doing that I'm not doing? I'm making every effort I can think of to get hold of the best arguments against that I can - if there's some effort I should be making that I'm not making, could you spell it out for me please?

[ergotia]

Maybe you could link to some/all of the rebuttals you found?

[ciphergoth]

I'm grateful for the time you've taken so far and you've no obligation to take any more part in a discussion like this than you feel like, but if you have found rebuttals of cryonics that I haven't found, on PubMed or anywhere else, I would really be grateful if you could link me to them. Thanks!

[zotz]

The reason I personally am reluctant to get involved in detailed rebuttals is that the proposals and speculations are so vague as to be pretty much unfalsifiable. The phrase "nailing jelly to the wall" comes to mind. Every solid objection to a speculation seems to be met with another speculation that may (but does not necessarily, or sometimes even probably) escape the problem. The antifreeze that's been used to avoid microfractures, for example, is said in itself to be toxic. Figures are derived on the basis of no evidence at all, concerning the behaviour of systems we've built nothing like and therefore have no empirical understanding of.

If cryonicists want to build castles in the sky, that's fine, but I'm under no obligation to help them out with the planning application.

[reddragdiva]

"If cryonicists want to build castles in the sky, that's fine, but I'm under no obligation to help them out with the planning application."

This.

[reddragdiva]

Mind if I nick most of that text for the RationalWiki article?

[zotz]

Fine. On looking at it again, I'd probably say "not obliged to help" rather than "under no obligation to help them". Whatever you want, though, really.