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.
A marvelous way to just convince people to give you money.
The best way to convince people to give you money is to offer them something of exceptionally high value.
It's perverse logic to imply that a service has lower value because people are willing to pay for the service.
Tragically, the extremely small number of people who have signed up for cryonics proves it's not a "marvelous way" to "convince people to give you money."
I think the fixed version of the statement is that the persuasiveness-to-actual-value ratio is high, so even if persuasiveness is low, that just translates to the actual value being lower still.
The view of cryonics Tyson expresses here is, unfortunately, just the standard high-status-scientist conventional wisdom at the moment.
On the other hand, this is interesting:
What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment scientifically? In life as a whole?
Made a prediction some years ago that there were 10x as many galaxies in the universe than had then been catalogued. based on a careful review of observation bias in how people obtained data on the universe. The actual number turned out to be about 5x as many galaxies. I got the wrong answer but for the right reasons, and it stimulated much further work on the subject.
In other words, he considers his greatest scientific achievement to be an improved estimate for a particular quantity, based on an analysis of biases in other people's data. That's rather...LWish.
(!) But look what he says here (emphasis added):
Do you think that Humans in our lifetime will achieve the technology to be able to live forever? [...]
Yes, I think it's inevitable. But that would eventually make for a very crowded Earth. So perhaps that's what we need to jumpstart the space program.
It seems this belief of his just hasn't yet propagated to the part of his mind that answers the cryonics question.
That's quite a leap to go from "he disagrees with me on one issue" to "[he's] no wiser outside the laboratory [than an average person]."
From his reply I suspect that cryonics is something he hasn't thought about very much, whereas he has thought quite a lot about other important (arguably more important) issues. For a celebrity scientist, I am actually quite surprised how insightful and independent his thinking is on a wide range of topics.
Cryonics is very expensive, and I would guess there's only about a 1% chance of it working as currently performed. Seeing it as a potentially rare and worthwhile opportunity, or as a waste of money both seem like reasonable positions depending on a persons values and finances to me...
I see. So if you made a billion trillion independent statements of the form "cryonics won't work", on topics you were equally sure about, you'd be pretty confident you were right on all of them?
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 and connectivity are irretrievably lost as soon as the synaptic membrane gets distorted. You can't simply replace unfolded proteins, since their relative position and concentration (and modification, and current status in several different signalling pathways) determines what happens to the signals that go through that synapse; you would have to replace them manually, which is a) impossible to do without destroying surrounding membrane, and b) would take thousands of years at best, even if you assume maximally efficient robots doing it (during which period molecular drift would undo the previous work).
Etc, etc. I can't even begin t...
If you have a technical argument against cryonics, please write it up as an actual blog post, ideally under your real name so you can flash your credentials. It will be the most substantial essay arguing for such a point ever written: see my blog. I'm pretty convinced that if there was really a strong argument of the sort you're trying to make, someone would already have done this, so I take it as strong evidence that they haven't.
This was supposed to be a quick side-comment. I have now promised to eventually write a longer text on the subject, and I will do so - after the current "bundle" of texts I'm writing is finished. Be patient - it may be a year or so. I am not prepared to discuss it at the level approaching a scientific paper; not yet.
Keep in mind two things. I am in favor of life extension, and I do not want to discourage cryonic research (we never know what's possible, and research should go on).
Thanks. While a scientific paper would be wonderful, even a blog post would be a huge step forward. In so far as a technical case has been made against cryonics, it is either Martinenaite and Tavenier 2010, or it is technically erroneous, or it is in dashed-off blog comments that darkly hint and never get into the detail. The bar you have to clear to write the best ever technical criticism of cryonics is a touch higher than it was when I first blogged about it, but still pretty low.
I don't think any intelligence can read information that is no longer there. So, no, I don't think it will help.
While I agree that this is a relevant consideration for the big picture, I just wanted to note in a non-confrontational way that it has the appearance of unfairly shifting cognitive workload to the skeptic -- which could perhaps result in the nasty side effect of preventing future skeptics from weighing in. Evaporative cooling and all that. A person specializing in synapse biochemistry probably shouldn't have to (at least at first) consider all the aspects of future superintelligence in quite the same way that an AI researcher would.
Just to unpack a little on James_Miller's idea: One example of how this could potentially come into play is that externally gathered data (for example -- chat logs, videos, even the recorded reactions of other humans) could be extrapolated to generate a personality sim, and connectome data could be used to verify it.
Mining data from a lot of different sources, the superintelligence could perhaps get much closer to the original than the mostly-blank, yet connectome matching and genetically identical clone we would otherwise have. Having that matching connectome as a starting point could conceivably be an important part of making sure that the personality matches for the right reasons, i.e. comes out with similar structural-functional mappings.
Again, I'm not sure how much of this maps to the domain specific knowledge that kalla724 has, but I'd be fascinated to hear more.
kalia724's comment is an apparently-strong argument that I'd never heard, and you know I've actively looked for arguments for and against. I do think you're putting a bit much hope in absence of evidence of criticism as being non-negligible evidence of absence of possible criticism - the space of concepts working scientists don't bother thinking about is ridiculously huge, and cryonics hits quite a few green-ink heuristics (unfairly, IMO, but it does) which gets it filed with the mental spam in short order. edit: and see my Facebook post for a mutual friend of ours noting he has qualms about even writing something serious about cryonics as he risks a significant professional status hit by doing so - cryonics is that low-status.
kalia724 evidently doesn't have time to write this up properly in the foreseeable future, so I think we'd need to ask around to see if there is, at the least, a nameable neuroscientist who thinks kalia's assertions against cryonics have something to them. (I've just hit my socialmediasphere with the question. You, and everyone else interested, probably should too.)
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...)
No doubt you can identify particular local info that is causally effective in changing local states, and that is lost or destroyed in cryonics. The key question is the redundancy of this info with other info elsewhere. If there is lots of redundancy, then we only need one place where it is held to be preserved. Your comments here have not spoken to this key issue.
Fascinating. I've been waiting for a while for a well-educated neuroscientist to come here, as I think there are a lot of interesting questions that hinge on issues in neuroscience that are at least hard for me to answer (my only exposure to it is a semester-long class in undergrad). In particular, I'd be interested to know what level of resolution you think would be necessary to simulate a brain to actually get reasonable whole-brain emulations (for instance, is neuronal population level enough? Or do we need to look at individual neurons? Or even further, to look at local ion channel density on the membrane?)
Local ion channel density (i.e. active zones), plus the modification status of all those ion channels, plus the signalling status of all the presynaptic and postsynaptic modifiers (including NO and endocannabinoids).
You see, knowing the strength of all synapses for a particular neuron won't tell you how that neuron will react to inputs. You also need temporal resolution: when a signal hits the synapse #3489, what will be the exact state of that synapse? The state determines how and when the signal will be passed on. And when the potential from that input goes down the dendritic tree and passes by the synapse #9871, which is receiving an input at that precise moment - well, how is it going to affect synapse #9871, and what is the state of synaps #9871 at that precise moment?
Depending on the answer to this question, stimulation of #3498 followed very soon after with stimulation of #9871 might produce an action potential - or it might not. And this is still oversimplifying things, but I hope you get the general idea.
All of it! Coma is not a state where temporal resolution is lost!
You can silence or deactivate neurons in thousands of ways, by altering one or more signaling pathways within the cells, or by blocking a certain channel. The signaling slows down, but it doesn't stop. Stop it, and you kill the cell within a few minutes; and even if you restart things, signaling no longer works the way it did before.
In order, and briefly:
In essence, this tunes down excitatory signals, while tuning up the inhibitory signals. It doesn't actually stop either, and it certainly doesn't interfere with the signalling processes within the cell.
Second is freezing. Some human neurons could survive freezing, if properly cultured. Many C. elegans neurons do not survive very deep freezing. It depends on the type of neuron and its pr...
Thanks. This comment and your other comments have made me substantially reduce my confidence in some form of cryonics working.
We are deep into guessing territory here, but I would think that coarser option (magnesium, phosphorylation states, other modifications, and presence and binding status of other cofactors, especially GTPases) would be sufficient. Certainly for a simulated upload.
No, I don't work with Ed. I don't use optogenetics in my work, although I plan to in not too distant future.
In general, uploading a C. elegans, i.e. creating an abstract artificial worm? Entirely doable. Will probably be done in not-too-distant future.
Uploading a particular C. elegans, so that the simulation reflects learning and experiences of that particular animal? Orders of magnitude more difficult. Might be possible, if we have really good technology and are looking at the living animal.
Uploading a frozen C. elegans, using current technology? Again, you might be able to create an abstract worm, with all the instinctive behaviors, and maybe a few particularly strong learned ones. But any fine detail is irretrievably lost. You lose the specific "personality" of the specific worm you are trying to upload.
I don't believe so. Distortion of the membranes and replacement of solvent irretrievably destroys information that I believe to be essential to the structure of the mind. I don't think that would ever be readable into anything but a pale copy of the original person, no matter what kind of technological advance occurs (information simply isn't there to be read, regardless of how advanced the reader may be).
Shake your head. Vigorously. (Do it.)
I tried that. Now I'm a whole different combination proteins and chemicals. And this new me doesn't understand how the point you are trying to illustrate relates to the grandparent any better than the old me.
Is it just tangential expression of your own position on broadly the same subject in loose agreement with Eliezer or is there an additional point you are trying to make?
There, I've just caused you to scramble a vast array of concentration gradients, proteins tumbling around in a merry free-for-all.
You probably haven't actually, anymore then when you shake your hands vigorously back and forth the germs fly off. The force applied for so small a time is unlikely to have much of an effect on the cells which are dominated by chemical interactions,osmotic pressures,etc. Things don't scale the way you'd like them to. Your whole argument is just invalid.
Edit to incorporate a point made below: which is good as if you scrambled the proteins in your brain, you'd die.
Postmortem for the bet:
EHeller was correct in so far as physical accelerations as occurring in every-day life do not have an effect on proteins and other small cell components which exceeds thermal noise.
I did win the bet since EHeller committed to a statement saying there would be no effect (on at least the order of magnitude of thermal noise) on any component of the cell, and as calculated by a referee, it turns out that larger cell organelles such as mitochondria are affected to such a degree (assuming 0.5g over 10s, 0.5g occurs e.g. when taking a car from 0 to 60mph in 6 seconds, so the 0.5g over 10s would occur for example when taking a car from 0 to 100mph over 10 seconds). Referee statement see here.
The wager goes to Miri, as chosen by Kawoomba, with thanks for all the fish.
I thank EHeller for his professional conduct and his charitable interpretations of my claims, resulting in the, well, result. Had he held me to my initial statements as made, he would have won.
I should have made my point in an entirely different way from the start: Namely, consider you took a psychoactive drug, such as an SSRI. Naturally, all sorts of channel configurations, concentration gradients and ...
I'll eventually organize my thoughts in something worthy of a post. Until then, this has already gone into way more detail than I intended. Thus, briefly:
The damage that is occurring - distortion of membranes, denaturation of proteins (very likely), disruption of signalling pathways. Just changing the exact localization of Ca microdomains within a synapse can wreak havoc, replacing the liquid completely? Not going to work.
I don't necessarily think that low temps have anything to do with denaturation. Replacing the solvent, however, would do it almost unavoidably (adding the cryoprotectant might not, but removing it during rehydration will). With membrane-bound proteins you also have the issue of asymmetry. Proteins will seem fine in a symmetric membrane, but more and more data shows that many don't really work properly; there is a reason why cells keep phosphatydilserine and PIPs predominantly on the inner leaflet.
Yes, if you can avoid replacing the solvent. But how do you avoid that, and still avoid creation of ice crystals? Actually, now that I think of it, there is a possible solution: expressing icefish proteins within neuronal cells. Of course, who knows shat they would do to neuronal physiology, and you can't really express them after death...
I'm not sure that less toxic cryoprotectants are really feasible. But yes, that would be a good step forward.
I actually think it's better to keep them together. Trying theoretical approaches as quickly as possible and having an appliable goal ahead at all times are both good for the speed of progress. There is a reason science moves so much faster during times of conflict, for example.
I agree with you on both points. And also about the error bars - I don't think I can "prove" cryonics to be pointless.
But one has to make decisions based on something. I would rather build a school in Africa than have my body frozen (even though, to reiterate, I'm all for living longer, and I do not believe that death has inherent value).
Biggest obstacles are membrane distortions, solvent replacement and signalling event interruptions. Mind is not so much written into the structure of the brain as into the structure+dynamic activity. In a sense, in order to reconstruct the mind within a frozen brain, you would have to already know what that mind looks like when it's active. Then you need molecular tools which appear impossible from the fundamental principles of physics (uncertainty principle, molecular noise, molecular drift...).
My view of cryonics is that it is akin to mercuric antibiotics of the late 19th century. Didn't really work, but they were the only game in town. So perhaps with further research, new generation of mercuric substances will be developed which will solve all the problems, right? In reality, a much better solution was discovered. I believe this is...
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.
That's a lovely bit of rhetoric to appeal to the Greens. (I say rhetoric because if you are cremated, there's nothing to offer back, and if you are buried, you are usually embalmed and now 'the flora and fauna' will be poisoned if they try to take your offer anytime soon.) I wish I could manage that trick.
(Nitpick: Cryogenics is the study of producing near absolute zero temperatures. You mean "cryonics".)
"I'd have more confidence if we had previously managed to pull this off with other mammals."
Some mammals are pretty good at doing it themselves... http://users.iab.uaf.edu/~brian_barnes/publications/1989barnes.pdf
You could say that billions of dollars spent on cancer research is a huge waste of money because curing cancer has not been proven to work in small mammals. There is no proof that cancer can be cured. I am not being entirely sarcastic about this, but I would give a higher probability for success to most of the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence to achieve rejuvenation. Knowledge of the forms of damage that result in aging is the first step toward repairing that damage. With cryonics the problem is similar: there is damage to be repaired, and i...
If what you say were true - we "never cured cancer in small mammals" - then yes, the conclusion that cancer research is bullshit would have some merit.
But since we did cure a variety of cancers in small mammals, and since we are constantly (if slowly) improving both length of survival and cure rates in humans, the comparison does not stand.
(Also: the integration unit of human mind is not the synapse; it is an active zone, a molecular raft within a synapse. My personal view, as a molecular biophysicist turned neuroscientist, is that freezing damage is not fixable from basic principles (molecular drift over a few years is sufficient to prevent it completely). In my mind, the probability that some magical "damage repair" technique will be developed is within the same order of magnitude with probability that Rapture will occur. Cryonics is important primarily in the sense that it provides impetus for further research; but a radically different method of preservation is required before possibility of revivification reaches any reasonable level.)
I might as well post this here because I don't think it's worth a new thread. Let's assume for the purposes of this argument that you have a suitably high confidence in cryonic revival at some future time. How much do you weigh the number of deaths as a direct consequence of electricity consumed keeping you frozen, against your irreplaceablity in the future society? I'm assuming that there is a non-trivial amount of electricity involved, and substituting the monetary costs of electricity per Folding@Home user per year, with the amount paid per person per y...
Anyone who knows what these two picturse are and where they come from? Nemesis is doing some I think not very accurate critique of LessWrong on the Swedish Skeptics internet forum. It is in Swedish, and sorry, I have not time to translate into English. But though I do not know, I suspect that Nemesis have not produced them by himself but found them somewhere. If anyone knows I would be glad to know. (If someone should know already and recogises them, I do not ask anyone to spend significant time on it.)
No doubt you can identify particular local info that is causally effective in changing local states, and that is lost or destroyed in cryonics. The key question is the redundancy of this info with other info elsewhere. If there is lots of redundancy, then we only need one place where it is held to be preserved. Your comments here have not spoken to this key issue.
The brain has redundancy at the level of neurons: it is quite resilient against diffuse neuron loss, and in case of localized damage, unless the affected area is large or includes key regions such as the brainstem, impairment is often limited to one or a few functions, and in some cases it even reorganizes to transfer the lost functions to other areas, partially recovering them.
However, there is no expectation that the brain has redundancy against the loss of an information storage medium that is used in all neurons.
If you destroy half of your collection o... (read more)