Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cryonics

bekkerd

Question:

What are your thoughts on cryogenic preservation and the idea of medically treating aging?

His response:

A marvelous way to just convince people to give you money. Offer to freeze them for later. I'd have more confidence if we had previously managed to pull this off with other mammals. Until then I see it as a waste of money. I'd rather enjoy the money, and then be buried, offering my body back to the flora and fauna of which I have dined my whole life.

Link

Question:

What are your thoughts on cryogenic preservation and the idea of medically treating aging?

His response:

A marvelous way to just convince people to give you money. Offer to freeze them for later. I'd have more confidence if we had previously managed to pull this off with other mammals. Until then I see it as a waste of money. I'd rather enjoy the money, and then be buried, offering my body back to the flora and fauna of which I have dined my whole life.

Link

cryonics hits quite a few green-ink heuristics (unfairly, IMO, but it does) which gets it filed with the mental spam in short order.

Even the stupidest pseudosciences or movements have received excellent debunking; for example, I would put the Urantia cult way down the list below cryonics, and yet, we still have Martin Gardner's 500 page examination/debunking, Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery.

(I would point out, incidentally, that 'nobody will criticize low-status things' is a fully comprehensive proof of the non-existence of the entire skeptics movement, which is pretty much all about criticizing low-status things, and you probably would prefer not to use such a claim as your explanation of the lack of good cryonics criticism...)

A quite obvious possibility is that would-be debunkers who want try to go deeper than Penn and Teller style mockery soon realize that they would have to engage much more seriously with cryonics than with Urantia to try to debunk it - sound like they were taking it seriously - implying a far greater loss of status than soaring casually above Urantia, effortlessly trashing it without a hint of sympathy.

"Everyone who's tried to 'debunk' this seems to have ended up writing casual mockery, and oddly enough no would-be skeptics ever seem to engage the argum... (read more)

0David_Gerard14y

I have no status in science, so your last phrase is just silly. Scientists who are noted sceptics may want to criticise cryonics, and, of course, several have. But the effect I describe is something I saw someone who'd been specifically asked to comment as a scientist invoking, per the link which you should be able to read (rather than relying entirely on theoretical counterarguments, as you have); and I am, of course, noting it as one factor, not as the complete explanation you seem to have read it as.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cryonics

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Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cryonics

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