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ciphergoth comments on Demands for Particular Proof: Appendices - Less Wrong
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A thought on cryonics: How many people suffer information-theoretic death because of Alzheimer's Disease, strokes, or other such causes long before they stop breathing? (My two living grandparents both seem to be among them.)
We don't know whether Alzheimer's is information-theoretically reversible or not, AFAIK.
EDIT: I'm wrong, for some reason I thought we knew less than we do.
How about multi-infarct dementia?
Ouch, OK, that does look information-theoretically hard.
Doesn't look very information-theoretically hard to me. Partial preservation of function probably implies near-total preservation of information.
Yeah, and it's what my mom says that my grandmother has. :(
It's hardly consolation, but from what I understand of your family it's hardly as if she would be cryopreserved upon legal death anyway, so it hardly matters either way.
I take it Pratchett isn't signed up? Why the very rich don't sign up mystifies me so.
Now that you mention it, if not for the Alzheimer's, I'd pay to cryopreserve him. The great scientists and mathematicians of the past wouldn't be of much use in the present, but how much would people today pay to resurrect Shakespeare or Mozart?
The money is hardly the object: it's persuading him that it's worthwhile that's the difficulty.
From what he's been saying recently about assisted suicide, he may not be planning on living long enough for the worst of the damage to take place. This makes him a particularly good candidate for cryopreservation, except that celebrity + assisted suicide + cryonics = absolutely massive shitstorm.
Judging by the number of people I've met who fall into this category, Terry Pratchett has at least 10,000 close personal friends; I'd probably be better off persuading one of them to do it.
However, I will bend Charlie Stross's ear on this subject if I get the opportunity.
EDIT: to be clear, the possible damage is that if my email doesn't succeed, it raises the bar the second such email has to reach to be persuasive.
What of relevance do we know? Links? (Or is this in response to CronoDAS's link? The article says multi-infarct dementia isn't Alzheimer's.)
I don't know any more than is at the end of that link; someone who knew the subject could doubtless say much more. There's a remark about cryonics and Alzheimer's in this Ralph Merkle article: