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ZankerH comments on Open thread, Nov. 17 - Nov. 23, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: MrMind 17 November 2014 08:25AM

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Comment author: ZankerH 19 November 2014 05:48:39PM *  1 point [-]

Vitrification also amounts to antifreeze poisoning. Quite a big deal if you're counting on full-body revival (which, granted, I don't consider feasible in the first place - cryonics is, in the best case, an information backup as far as I'm concerned).

Comment author: maxikov 19 November 2014 09:58:47PM 0 points [-]

That's the whole point: if we can if we can prevent water from expanding by freezing and keeping the sample under high pressure, thus making crystal formation harmless (probably), we can use less cryoprotectant. I don't know if it's possible to get rid of it completely, so I mentioned wood frogs, that already have all the mechanisms necessary to survive slightly below the freezing temperature. It's just their cryoprotectant isn't good enough to go any colder, but it's not so poisonous either. Also, they're small, so it's easier to find high pressure units to fit them in - they're perfect model organisms for cryonics research.

As of now, cryonics is at best an information backup indeed, but I see no reason why we should be content with that. Yes, we will probably eventually invent advance nanomachinery, as well as whole brain simulation and scanning, but that's too many unknowns in the equation. We could do much better than that.