Finding Hope In Cryonics, Despite Glacial Progress

biobricks writes: The NY Times covers cryonics and destructive mind uploading, with some news on progress in brain preservation research. Quoting: "Dr. Fahy, a cryobiologist whose research focuses on organ banking, had provided the most encouraging signs that cryonics did preserve brain structure. In a 2009 experiment, his team showed that neurons in slices of rabbit brains immersed in the solution, chilled to cryogenic temperatures and then rewarmed, had responded to electrical stimulation. His method, he contended, preserved the connectome in those slices. But a complication prevented him from entering the prize competition: Brain tissue perfused with the cryoprotectant invariably becomes dehydrated, making it nearly impossible to see the details of the shrunken neurons and their connections under an electron microscope. ... He could fix the brain’s structure in place with chemicals first, just as Dr. Mikula was doing, buying time to perfuse the cryoprotectant more slowly to avoid dehydration. But he lacked the funds, he said, for a project that would have no practical business application for organ banking."

Comments

"no practical application for organ banking"?

[jeffb (2.718)]

But I was all set to sign up as a brain donor!

Re:"no practical application for organ banking"?

[fustakrakich]

First Name: Abby

Are they working with disney?

[Shadow of Eternity]

They've had his head on ice under epcot for ages.

Re:Freeze me

[infolation]

Freezing research... what would you expect, except "glacial progress"?

Scam

[Anonymous Coward]

All that these con artists have done is to make empty promises to desperate people.

Their only accomplishment is to create a frozen cemetery.

When the money runs out so will the liquid nitrogen and then the dead will be buried or cremated.

Re:Scam

[penguinoid]

Cryonics is both cheaper and more likely to succeed than other afterlife scams.

Re: Scam

[penguinoid]

At least with cryonics you don't have to sell your soul to a demonic entity*.

* Note: demonic entity may be posing as an angel of light

Re:Scam

[gweihir]

Actually, their main accomplishment is to have generated a long-running legal scam that seems to be generating them quite a bit of money. They are doing better than some religions and other legal scams.

Re:Scam

[gweihir]

"Succeed"? Why would future generations revive people that were so full of themselves or so afraid of death that they had themselves frozen? If anything, having yourself frozen in this way is a good indicator that reviving you is a bad idea.

Re:Scam

[Applehu Akbar]

Because in such a society, Ted Williams would be Commissioner of Baseball.

Re:Scam

[penguinoid]

"Succeed"? Why would future generations revive people that were so full of themselves or so afraid of death that they had themselves frozen? If anything, having yourself frozen in this way is a good indicator that reviving you is a bad idea.

So, you're saying that someone who had the foresight to prevent their own death* should be derided? That's like saying we should deny insulin to people who want to survive diabetes, because they're so afraid of death that they're willing to take drugs to prevent it. You are either a monster, or a fool.

The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, turning a person from the snares of death. -- Proverbs 13:14

For those who find wisdom find life and receive favor from the Lord. But those who fail to find wisdom harm themselves; all who hate wisdom love death.” -- Proverbs 8:35-36

* since if the decision must be made as to whether to revive them, it means that they were correct and preserved their lives despite fools telling them it is false medicine.

Re:Scam

[penguinoid]

Then be sure to put on your medical record, "Do not resuscitate."

Re:Scam

[Keith Henson]

I have been signed up with Alcor for 30 years. Was on the board of directors for several years and have known the major people for a long time. They now pay reasonable wages to the people who work there, but that's relatively new. In the long run, cryonics may not work, but the people who are involved are as sincere as you can find, with most of them being members as well.

Personally, I signed up after reviewing and commenting on several drafts of Eric Drexler's first work, _Engines of Creation_. It just seemed like a rational thing to do. Still does. Drexler is signed up, and so is Marvin Minsky and Ray Kurzweil plus a bunch of major players in Silicon Valley. Hal Finney was frozen a year ago. If it works, there will be some interesting company on the far end.

Re:Scam

[RespekMyAthorati]

It's false medicine because it doesn't fucking work.
A frozen brain is a destroyed brain. You might as well take it out of the skull, run it through a Cuisinart, and pour it back in. It's exactly the same thing.

Re:Scam

[penguinoid]

Are you certain of that? Would you stake the lives of several thousand people on your uneducated guess? We have frozen and thawed insects, and they've survived; also mammalian organs, which also survived.

Certainly freezing damages the brain and it can't be merely defrosted, but that is irrelevant -- the question is not "can we do it now" but rather "will we ever be able to do it"? You have to prove not damage, but that the information contained within is lost.

Re:Scam

[gweihir]

Thanks reinforcing my point that people that want this are exceptionally stupid. Your object example is priceless.

I may also add that nobody with the technology to do so will ever want to revive some frozen religious fuckups.

Re:Scam

[gweihir]

Kurzweil the idiot and Marvin the idiot are on this? Makes sense. Stupidity tends to cluster.

Re:Scam

[penguinoid]

Does this mean you're admitting you're a monster who wants diabetics to die rather than receive insulin, or that you think saving someone's life using cold temperatures is somehow morally reprehensible for reasons you feel like keeping to yourself?

Although I can only assume you must be pretty stupid, as you seem to now be implying that people who have themselves frozen are all religious fuckups when anyone with a little sense will realize that they're more likely than average to be atheist.

Re:Scam

[Keith Henson]

I wonder what you have done that compares with what Minsky and Kurzweil have accomplished?

Bredo Morstoel

[Deadstick]

...is getting really impatient.

When a person needs funds.....

[phantomfive]

When a person needs funds, he will always find a way for hope.

Hibernation is the first step

[gurps_npc]

Hibernation works for large mammals. Yes, it's the poor cousin of full on cryonics. That's exactly my point. You don't try to go from building ladders to building a rocket to the moon. First you learn to build an airplane, and then use some of those skills when you go for the rocket.

Similarly, we should be working on hibernation, not cryonics. Once we can send a person to sleep for 40 years, while they only age 20 years, then we should be able to move to full cryonics. Until then, we are just kids firing off model rockets that go 1,000 ft straight up while we talk about hitting the moon.

Re:Hibernation is the first step

[quantaman]

Hibernation works for large mammals. Yes, it's the poor cousin of full on cryonics. That's exactly my point. You don't try to go from building ladders to building a rocket to the moon. First you learn to build an airplane, and then use some of those skills when you go for the rocket.

Similarly, we should be working on hibernation, not cryonics. Once we can send a person to sleep for 40 years, while they only age 20 years, then we should be able to move to full cryonics. Until then, we are just kids firing off model rockets that go 1,000 ft straight up while we talk about hitting the moon.

The difference is we don't need to solve cryonics, we just need to not screw things up badly enough so that a future who has solved cryonics can fix our mistakes.

I really think a lot of the skepticism about cryonics is overblown. Sure it sounds like science fiction but that's not an issue as long as it's science fiction that we eventually solve.

Yeah the stuff we freeze now will contain a lot of goo, but we can recover a damaged hard drive, why it is so implausible that in 100 or 500 years they could put our frozen brains through a scanner and recreate all the information?

As for the claim that they wouldn't revive the preserved people. How many people have dedicated their lives to studying the past, do you really think they'd leave centuries old people unrevived?

Re:Hibernation is the first step

[tsotha]

Depends. If there are only a few dozen, those people have a pretty good chance of being revived because of scientific curiosity. But let's say over the course of a century or two a billion people were frozen. Nobody's going to revive even a tiny fraction of that number. Those future people will have their own lives to live.

Re:Hibernation is the first step

[quantaman]

Depends. If there are only a few dozen, those people have a pretty good chance of being revived because of scientific curiosity. But let's say over the course of a century or two a billion people were frozen. Nobody's going to revive even a tiny fraction of that number. Those future people will have their own lives to live.

Perhaps, though people doing it now will be a very scarce and valuable resource just because no one is doing it now.

And even if two do freeze a billion people the past is still a limited resource and there are centuries worth of future humans who all want some.

There's also the potential of uploading minds, in which case 2 billion might be a drop in the bucket.

What are the odds that someone frozen today gets revived in a relatively intact mental state? 10%? 5%? 0.01%? At what point is it a worthwhile bet?

Re:Hibernation is the first step

[AchilleTalon]

Ever heard about exponential complexity?

Re:Hibernation is the first step

[gurps_npc]

This claim is magical thinking, not scientific.

Have you heard of the Cargo Cult? There are these pacific island that, during World War II, had pilots come and leave supplies. The islanders received minor gifts from the combatants and felt like they were wealthy. Then World War II ended and the soldiers left.

So the islanders built wooden control towers and wooden headsets, then paraded around like the soldiers did.

They expected their rituals to bring the planes full of supplies again. Surprise, Surprise, it didn't work!

Why? Because the islanders did NOT KNOW HOW PLANES WORK You can't build a real runway without knowing how to build a plane.

Similarly, you can't successfully put people into safe cryonics unless you also know how to get them out of it.

I have no doubt that in a thousand years we will have cryonics. And I absolutely sure that it will ONLY work with people that are properly prepared with technology that we do not have yet.

Re:Hibernation is the first step

[quantaman]

This claim is magical thinking, not scientific.

Have you heard of the Cargo Cult? There are these pacific island that, during World War II, had pilots come and leave supplies. The islanders received minor gifts from the combatants and felt like they were wealthy. Then World War II ended and the soldiers left.

So the islanders built wooden control towers and wooden headsets, then paraded around like the soldiers did.

They expected their rituals to bring the planes full of supplies again. Surprise, Surprise, it didn't work!

The cargo cult failed not because the runway wasn't function, it failed because they were missing a critical element, a reason for the planes to come.

With cryonics future people do have a motive to resurrect frozen ancestors.

I have no doubt that in a thousand years we will have cryonics. And I absolutely sure that it will ONLY work with people that are properly prepared with technology that we do not have yet.

Perhaps, but imagine 100 years ago someone noticed the passenger pigeons were dying out and said "hey! lets toss a few in a freezer, maybe they'll be able to bring them back to life in the future!" And as a result there were some university freezers filled with frozen passenger pigeons.

We can't clone them yet, but we'll probably be able to clone them in the future, and the people that made it possible never would have never even heard of DNA.

Re:Hibernation is the first step

[RespekMyAthorati]

Cloning people who are dead is easy. That does not bring back their minds, their memories or anything else that makes them "them".

Re:Hibernation is the first step

[quantaman]

Cloning people who are dead is easy. That does not bring back their minds, their memories or anything else that makes them "them".

The claim wasn't that cloning is the same as cryonics. It was that you don't need to solve cloning or cryonics to leave something that is useful for the people who eventually figure out cloning or cryonics.

Same for DNA testing, how many people went free because of evidence saved by people who weren't even thinking about DNA, or who understood the evidence contained DNA even though no one knew how to test that DNA.

waste of money

[iggymanz]

we already know memory is not just stored in neural connection patterns. this is just another religion promising an afterlife it can't deliver

Re: waste of money

[Anonymous Coward]

From my very limited understanding, there's the connections, the electric state and the chemical state.

Re: waste of money

[Zeroko]

People have woken up after having their EEG flatline, so either the electrical state is not strictly necessary, or else those people died & were replaced by someone indistinguishable from them. (But if the latter, why not say unconsciousness of any sort causes that?)

Re: waste of money

[iggymanz]

There is far more electrical activity than what an EEG detects; the firing of an individual neuron is FAR below what an EEG can detect

Sign me up!

[subk]

I could use a good Dixie Flatline construct

Destructive scanning

[Iamthecheese]

I'm STILL waiting for a rational explanation for how destructive scanning isn't death. Another person being created at the same time isn't it. Ship of Theseus isn't it. The brain isn't just software, its hardware is inherently part of the program.Destroy the hardware, destroy the program. Even if you made a backup that program is gone. I can buy another computer just like mine and install the same software, but it would be silly to say the other computer IS this one, whether or not I destroy this one. People who think destructive scanning is the same as life extension and people who think cryonics is a scam are both emotionally invested in accepting death or denying its existence.

Re:Destructive scanning

[oakgrove]

I'm STILL waiting for a rational explanation for how destructive scanning isn't death.

Here's a thought experiment. Imagine a single one of your neurons were replaced by an artificial construct that replicated the interface of that neuron in every way. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference despite the fact that 1/100,000,000,000 of your brain was now "uploaded". Now do another, then another and so on. In due course, you are 10 percent, 25 percent, 80 percent until eventually your mind is completely hosted, uploaded, on the artificial substrate.

Re:Destructive scanning

[CanEHdian]

Indeed, but it has to do with the "me" that I perceive as being "me".

How about this argument: the captain Kirk that steps on the transporter pad isn't the same one as the one that materializes on the planet a short while later. It's a perfect, 1:1 copy, of the original captain Kirk. That captain Kirk will think it's the original, as his last memory is commanding the transporter chief to energize. But that was a different version, which has been destroyed by the destructive scanning the transporter does. Provided the process results in a perfect copy, the copy (nor anyone else) has no way to tell it isn't the original, so it believes to be the original. (Since this wouldn't go down well with the fans, there's some mumbo jumbo going on making the copy somehow the original, but if you think about it, there's only one conclusion.)

Re:Destructive scanning

[Zeroko]

You cannot experience not existing. So if there is a unique continuation of your mental state, it seems you would experience it. Suppose you are taken into a hospital room with no windows, anesthetized, destructively scanned, reconstructed, & then woken up later. How is that different (from your perspective, not the medical team's) from just being anesthetized & then waking up later? How do you expect your experience to differ in the 2 cases?

As for uploading: Why should it matter if the form is different, so long as the logical & causal relations of the parts are the same? But if the form really does matter, we just run a simulation of the underlying biology, or even chemistry or physics, rather than just a functional-level brain simulation. Even if quantum effects matter, then use a quantum computer. (Not saying this is practical—just as a thought experiment.)

Re:Destructive scanning

[St.Creed]

You're right. And this would have given them instant eternal life, if they only had worked a bit on the consequences. Notwithstanding the use of the pattern buffer in one of the later movies, what is to stop folks from having a "good" copy in the pattern buffer and then "teleporting" once they get old or injured? Heck, if you die you just "teleport" back again and you just miss a bit of memory.

I guess the consequences of *that* little bit of work would have been a bit too much for the audience because it leads to a lot of awkward questions like "dude, where's my soul?"

Re:Destructive scanning

[Kyogreex]

Heck, if you die you just "teleport" back again and you just miss a bit of memory.

But then, speaking not so much in Star Trek terms but in real terms, the original is still dead. You don't just "lose memory," the you that was is gone, soul or not. The consciousness is not continuous.

Re:Destructive scanning

[Kyogreex]

Suppose you are taken into a hospital room with no windows, anesthetized, destructively scanned, reconstructed, & then woken up later. How is that different (from your perspective, not the medical team's) from just being anesthetized & then waking up later? How do you expect your experience to differ in the 2 cases

In the latter case, I will experience waking up. In the first case, I will not experience waking up, because the consciousness will not have been truly continuous. My perspective will have ceased, and an identical copy of that consciousness will be created that will wake up. Even if the result was essentially exactly the same to the outside observer, it would not be to me.

You cannot experience not existing.

That one cannot experience not existing does not mean that one cannot not exist.

Re:Destructive scanning

[tehcyder]

I'm STILL waiting for a rational explanation for how destructive scanning isn't death.

Here's a thought experiment. Imagine a single one of your neurons were replaced by an artificial construct that replicated the interface of that neuron in every way. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference despite the fact that 1/100,000,000,000 of your brain was now "uploaded". Now do another, then another and so on. In due course, you are 10 percent, 25 percent, 80 percent until eventually your mind is completely hosted, uploaded, on the artificial substrate.

You are assuming that you can precisely copy the state of individual neurons. Also, you are ignoring the active electrical connections between them.

population explosion

[Anonymous Coward]

with respect to reviving the dead, population is exploding, and someone is going to waste their time reviving a brain. noone is so special that they cannot be replaced.

with respect to persons' leisure/recreation goals, anything is possible.

Re:Being frozen is for 5 year old girls

[Anonymous Coward]

Moo?

Sour grapes?

[nospam007]

Dr. Fahi, albeit this sounds cool, it also smells a bit like sour grapes to me.

I guess you would also have invented really cold fusion with the necessary funds.

Re:Reminds of that Rosey Grier and Lost Weekend Gu

[pslytely psycho]

Ah. yes.
This one: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1581431552/tt0069372?ref_=tt_pv_md_1

Re:Bwaaaa ha ha haaa ha ha

[Applehu Akbar]

"I can live to troll another thousand years!"

We'll be able to revive Space Nutter Troll in a thousand years, when humanity fills the solar system. Then he can inveigh against the interstellar program.

Re:Secular "salvation" and promise of "hereafter"

[oakgrove]

Yeah, there's nothing that pisses me off so much as people with the balls to attempt really hard things that have never been done before and especially without the promise of an immediate payoff. Why can't they just be humble and iterate their myspace clone whilst pivoting to web2.0 mediocrity?

Death and continuity

[jeffb (2.718)]

The brain isn't just software, its hardware is inherently part of the program.Destroy the hardware, destroy the program. Even if you made a backup that program is gone. I can buy another computer just like mine and install the same software, but it would be silly to say the other computer IS this one, whether or not I destroy this one.

First, this is no argument against piecemeal incremental substitution (see the previous replies to your post). Piecemeal substitution is already happening, all the time, as your body undergoes its normal metabolic processes. In fact, to the extent that consciousness emerges from patterns of activity rather than physical structure -- that "you" comprise the oscillations racing around your brain, rather than just the wiring diagrams of your nervous system -- one could argue that "you" already are being replaced/regenerated several times each second.

More to the point, though, if I buy another computer just like mine and install the same software, I don't care whether the new computer "is" the old one. It does the same things, responds in the same ways, has the same state (memories). If it could "think", it would "think" it was still the same individual, albeit with its old infirmities healed, er, hardware flaws repaired. My old registered copy of Photoshop still remembers my preferences and behaves the same way, even though it now runs in emulation on an alien architecture; the only difference is that it's much faster, and it didn't stop running when its original hardware platform went extinct.

I don't see this as a return to a narrow and stubborn behaviorist approach. Behaviorism focused on externally observable stimulus and response, and denied the significance of any internal or non-observable state. If you want to define "internal state" as whatever is left after you've mapped every neural connection, modeled every neuron's behavior, faithfully recorded and emulated every activation pattern -- well, okay, but "consciousness of the gaps" doesn't impress me. Maybe that makes me a neo-behaviorist, but I think it just means that I'm not a Cartesian dualist. If there's an immaterial soul with its metaphysical hands on the controls of my corporeal self, well, the possible hiding places for that cockpit seem to be getting mighty small and thinly spread.

I've made my peace with personal mortality, but if I were offered a convincing chance to have my state vector preserved and potentially restored, I'd give it some serious consideration. One life should be enough, but I'm enjoying this one enough to see the value in continuing it or following it up.

Re:Being frozen is for 5 year old girls

[Zeroko]

What is wrong with being an Ice Princess?

Ow

[WallyL]

The implications of this concept are giving me brain freeze!