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

False analogy; there is a change in medium going from the oiled up dermis to air.

Take a glass of water with a large number of tagged proteins. That is the model of e.g. presynaptic vesicles filled with neurotransmitters, swimming in the cytoplasmic matrix (which is mostly water). A significant amount of them is not attached to anything. I didn't say the folding structure would be scrambled, I said that the concentration gradients would be influenced, and that the orientation of non-attached proteins would change.

Shake the glass of water. What happens?

Shake the cytoplasmic matrix. What happens? What does such a rearrangement probably entail? That's right, some change in concentration gradients, and a host of non-attached proteins tumbling around in a merry free-for-all.

Your whole argument is just invalid.

We can arrange to bet on our beliefs about this, say a 4 figure sum going to a charity of the other's choice, with mutually agreed upon authorities in the field being the arbiters? If so send me a PM, and we can make the result public once we're done.

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 f... (read more)

-1EHeller13y

To be clear, you want to bet that shaking your head side-to-side vigorously causes the same qualitative type of changes to protein concentrations along cell membranes as introducing a large concentration of toxic cryoprotectants? I want to emphasize along cell membranes, as I believe those are the concentrations kalla was referring to, its where the information will be lost, and is why I referred to osmotic pressure and chemical interactions being very dominant, and such forces are not present in your glass of water analogy (other than shaking the glass will NOT cause the proteins to precipitate out), so I want to make sure we are talking about the same thing.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cryonics

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Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cryonics

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