= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Psy-Kosh comments on A survey of anti-cryonics writing - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (310)
Why?
See Alcor's side of the story (also linked in the article).
Aha. I hadn't been aware of that conflict between cryonics and cryobiologist. I plan to go and read the Alcor page in full, then the letter in full, but right now one thing comes to mind: whatever document justifies the cryobiologists' decision to outright ban cryonics should lay out the most credible extant arguments against cryonics. They wouldn't take such a serious decision on a whim.
[EDIT: the below is wrong.]
As far as I can tell, there is no such document. This I consider very striking evidence on the credibility of anticryonics.
Of course the by-law is 28 years old, so even if there were such a document it would need updating.
I'm wrong: I found the document and some earlier drafts.
Very interesting. I like to synthesize and summarize, so this is my synopsis.
I read that they have one mild moral objection, that they were willing to stand behind over several drafts, and one scientific objection, that they were not willing to reiterate.
1st objection: you shouldn't sell a technological service that hasn't been scientifically demonstrated (presumably, even if the buyer is aware that they're only buying a potential technology)
It is interesting that they would like to call this fraud even though they can't quite:
(This reminds me of the argument I lost as to whether people would be justified in thinking that cryonics was a scam for some weak interpretation of 'scam' .)
2nd objection: that however people are cryo-preserved now, it is unlikely to be un-doable
I don't agree with the first objection: if informed people want to pay for the chance of reanimation, I think that's their decision.
The second objection would be strong, if it were true that cryo-preservation causes irreversible damage (information loss), but that appears currently undecided.
All the arguments I've found so far that are in favour of that position are either very vague on details, or fatally flawed on details. Most cryonics critics don't appear to understand the issue of information theoretic death clearly enough to articulate a position on it.
Thanks. The revision history is particularly interesting.
That's one of the most depressing things I've read in a while >.<
Pretty much agree.
The only thing that gives much comfort is that was written in 1991 so there's theoretically enough time for some of the obstructionist cohort to have retired or run out of steam on the subject. Perhaps the upside of a pessimistic view on scientific progress could be kicking in by now?
I tried to verify the actual current state of the Society for Cryobiology's bylaws to see if they even contain the provisions banning cryonicists or their research any longer. With 20 years for them to have realized that such censorship is at the very least in poor taste, maybe things have settled down? When I tried looking for an online version of the document with the it didn't appear to be something they have on display.
Does anyone else have stronger google-fu than I? It would be neat to track down the document so we could see for ourselves :-)
Wow, I'm actually having a very hard time finding any information on relations between the two more current than the '91 article
Nice link - I added Alcor's side of the story to the question "Is cryonics worthwhile?":
http://www.takeonit.com/question/318.aspx
Thanks to everyone's suggestions, there's now 5 sub-debates for cryonics:
Thanks for the link, and eeew.
Wow, that really stirs up the rebel in me.
I'm curious now to look more into the state of the art in cryopreservation. How close are we to successfully cryopreserving an organ?
I think most cryobiologists are going about it the wrong way, trying to get incrementally better at cryopreserving tissue. The work I'm aware of that seems most promising (I say, having almost no familiarity with the field) is Ken Storey's work with wood frogs. They can freeze and thaw naturally.
I looked into it because I hoped I might be able to move some genes from a wood frog into a mouse, freeze it, thaw it later, and win the Methuselah Mouse prize. But it turns out that the frog has an anti-dessicant response to protect tissue from lack of water, an anti-ischemia response to protect tissue from lack of oxygen, a glucose response to produce glucose as a cryoprotectant, an anti-glucose response to protect cells from the huge amounts of glucose, and a bunch of other mysterious responses. It involves hundreds of genes. It's going to take a large program to import entire gene pathways from one organism to another.
Haha. Creative thinking, but I'm not sure if that would count as life extension by the rules of the M-Prize.
It would have been stupendously trivial if all one had to do is to copy-paste some genes into a mouse egg, or do some gene-therapy, in order to become freeze-resistant. Aubrey's beard would go white in an instant.
Done, though not at LN2 temperatures:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15094092
http://www.cryostasis.com/perspectivesandadvances.pdf
Awesome. Thanks for the links.