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lsparrish comments on Open Thread, June 16-30, 2012 - Less Wrong
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Wow. Now there's a data point for you. This guy's an expert in cryobiology and he still gets it completely wrong. Look at this:
Rapid temperature reduction? No! Cryonics patients are cooled VERY SLOWLY. Vitrification is accomplished by high concentrations of cryoprotectants, NOT rapid cooling. (Vitrification caused by rapid cooling does exist -- this isn't it!)
I'm just glad he didn't go the old "frozen strawberries" road taken by previous expert cryobiologists.
Later in the article we have this gem:
This guy apparently thinks we are planning to OVERTURN THE LAWS OF PHYSICS. No wonder he dismisses us as a religion!
When it comes to smart people getting something horribly wrong that is outside their field, it appears much more likely to me that biology scientists are the ones who don't understand enough information science to usefully understand this concept.
The trouble is that if matters like nanotech, artificial intelligence, and encryption-breaking algorithms are still "magic" to you, well then of course you're going to get the feeling that cryonics is a religion.
But this is no more an accurate model of reality than that of the creationist engineer who strongly feels that evolutionary biologists are waving a magic wand over the hard problem of how species with complex features could have ever possibly come into existence without careful intelligent design. And it's caused by the same underlying problem: High inferential distance.
I notice that I am confused. Kenneth Storey's credentials are formidable, but the article seems to get the basics of cryonics completely wrong. I suspect that the author, Kevin Miller, may be at fault here, failing to accurately represent Storey's case. The quotes are sparse, and the science more so. I propose looking elsewhere to confirm/clarify Storey's skepticism.
A Cryonic Shame from 2009 states that Storey dismisses cryonics on the basis of the temperature being too low and oxygen deprivation killing the cells due to the length of time required for cooling cryonics patients. This suggests that does know (as of 2009, at least) that cryonicists aren't flash-vitrifying patients. But it doesn't demonstrate any knowledge of cryoprotectants being used -- he suggests that we would use sugar like the wood frogs do.
This is an odd step backwards from his 2004 article where he demonstrated that he knew cryonics is about vitrification, but suggested an incorrect way to do it. He also strangely does not mention that the ischemic cascade is a long and drawn out process which slows down (as do other chemical reactions) the colder you get.
Not only does he get the biology wrong again (as near as I can tell) but to add insult to injury, this article has no mention of the fact that cryonicists intend to use nanotech, bioengineering, and/or uploading to work around the damage. It starts with the conclusion and fills in the blanks with old news. (The cells being "dead" from lack of oxygen is ludicrous if you go by structural criteria. The onset of ischemic cascade is a different matter.)
The comment directly above this one (lsparrish, "A Cryonic Shane") appeared downvoted at the time of me posting this comment, though no one offered criticism or an explanation of why.
The above is a heavily edited version of the comment. (The edit was in response to the downvote.) The original version had an apparent logical contradiction towards the beginning and also probably came off a bit more condescending than I intended.