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EHeller comments on Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cryonics - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: bekkerd 09 May 2012 03:17PM

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Comment author: EHeller 21 March 2013 11:56:15PM *  0 points [-]

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.

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.

Comment author: Kawoomba 22 March 2013 06:45:25AM *  1 point [-]

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?

...

No, I am not saying that shaking your head will rupture many of your phospholipid bilayers and in effect kill you.

Glad we could clear that up.

(What I am saying is "after the damage (e.g. cell membranes) has been repaired, certain information was not recoverable" not being a death knell for cryonics, since we accept a considerable margin of error concerning e.g. specific neurotransmitter vesicle locations in daily life without considering ourselves a different person just because we've effected a host of changes in distributions and arrangements. An example other than shaking your head, which also strongly affects cross-membrane distributions: SSRIs)

Comment author: EHeller 22 March 2013 07:05:02AM 0 points [-]

I agree that bioactive drugs will have effects on distributions, as thats what they exist for, they also cause (sometimes mild, sometimes extreme) personality changes. What I'm interested in is how wrong can we get things and still have a "working" brain.