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.
OK, so you have some assumptions that you attach some high but not extreme amount of probability to, according to which the chances of cryonics working are on the rough order of 10^-22. Fair enough. But given that the relevant question is how certain you are about the assumptions, why even bring up the 20 orders of magnitude, if it doesn't matter whether it's 20 orders of magnitude or 1000 orders of magnitude? What role could the 20 orders of magnitude number play in anyone's decision making?
Note that I'm a different person than user:CasioTheSane.
Ok, now we are squeezing a comment way too far. Let me give you a fuller view: I am a neuroscientist, and I specialize in the biochemistry/biophysics of the synapse (and interactions with ER and mitochondria there). I also work on membranes and the effect on lipid composition in the opposing leaflets for all the organelles involved.
Looking at what happens during cryonics, I do not see any physically possible way this damage could ever be repaired. Reading the structure and "downloading it" is impossible, since many aspects of synaptic strength an... (read more)