Cryonics has a more serious problem which I seldom see addressed. I've noticed a weird cognitive dissonance among cryonicists where they talk a good game about how much they believe in scientific progress, technological acceleration and so forth - yet they seem totally unconcerned about the fact that we just don't see this alleged trend happening in cryonics technology, despite its numerous inadequacies. In fact, Mike Darwin argues that the quality of cryopreservations has probably regressed since the 1980's.

In other words, attempting the cryogenic preservation of the human brain in a way which makes sense to neuroscientists, which should become the real focus of the cryonics movement, has a set of solvable, or at least describable, problems which current techniques could go a long way towards solving without having to invoke speculative future technologies or friendly AI's. Yet these problems have gone unsolved for decades, and not for the lack of financial resources. Just look at some wealthy cryonicists' plans to waste $100 million or more building that ridiculous Timeship (a.k.a. the Saulsoleum) in Comfort Texas.

What brought about this situation? I've made myself unpopular by suggesting that we can blame cryonics' association with transhumanism, and especially with the now discredited capital-N Nanotechnology cultism Eric Drexler created in the 1980's. Transhumanists and their precursors have a history of publishing nonsensical predictions about how we'll "become immortal" by arbitrary dates within the life expectancies of the transhumanists who make these forecasts. (James D. Miller does this in his Singularity Rising book. I leave articulating the logical problem with this claim as an exercise to the reader). Then one morning we read in our email that one of these transhumanists has died according to actuarial expectations, and possibly went into cryo, like FM-2030; or simply died in the ordinary way, like the Extropian Robert Bradbury.

In other words, transhumanism promotes a way of thinking which tends to make transhumanists spectators of, instead of active participants in, creating the sort of future they want to see. And cryonics has become a casualty of this screwed up world view, when it didn't have to turn out that way. Why exert yourself to improve cryonics' scientific credibility - again, in ways which neuroscientists would have to take seriously - when you believe that friendly AI's, Drexler's genie-like nanomachines and the technological singularity will solve your problems in the next 20-30 years? And as a bonus, this wonderful world in 2045 or so will also revive almost all the cryonauts, no matter how badly damaged their brains.

Well, I don't consider this a feasible "business plan" for my survival by cryotransport. And I know some other cryonicists who feel similarly. Cryonics needs some serious rebooting, and I've started to give some thought about regarding how I can get involved in the effort once I can find the people who look like they can make a go of it.