MIT Technology Review - Michael Hendricks opinion on Cryonics

Ruzeil

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/541311/the-false-science-of-cryonics/

Michael Hendricks is a neuroscientist and assistant professor of biology at McGill University.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/541311/the-false-science-of-cryonics/

Michael Hendricks is a neuroscientist and assistant professor of biology at McGill University.

Just an enthusiastic amateur who's done a lot of reading. If you're interested in hearing a more informed version of the pro-cryonics argument (and seeing some of the data) I recommend the following links:

On ischemic damage and the no-reflow phenomenon: http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/ischemia.html

Alcor's research on how much data is preserved by their methods: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/braincryopreservation1.html http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/newtechnology.html http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/CryopreservationAndFracturing.html

Yudkowsky's counter-argument to the philosophical issue of copies vs. "really you": http://lesswrong.com/lw/r9/quantum_mechanics_and_personal_identity/

Yudkowsky's counter-argument to the philosophical issue of copies vs. "really you": http://lesswrong.com/lw/r9/quantum_mechanics_and_personal_identity/

Yudkowsky's counter-argument is a counter-argument to a straw man, since I don't think anybody ever argued in modern times that personal identity is linked to a specific set of individual atoms. Everybody knows that atoms in the brain are constantly replaced.

7anon8511y

You might be interested in Aaronson's proposed theory for why it might be physically impossible to copy a human brain. He outlined it in "The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine": http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159 In that essay he discusses a falsifiable theory of the brain that, if true, would mean brain states are un-copyable. So Yudkowsky's counter-argument may be a little too strong: it is indeed consistent with modern physics for brain simulation to be impossible.