The following is intended as 1) request for specific criticisms regarding the value of time investment on this project, and 2) pending favorable answer to this, a request for further involvement from qualified individuals. It is not intended as a random piece of interesting pop-sci, despite the subject matter, but as a volunteer opportunity.

Server Sky is a an engineering proposal to place thousands (eventually millions) of micron-thin satellites into medium orbit around the earth in the near term. It is being put forth by Keith Lofstrom, the inventor of the Launch Loop.

Abstract from the 2009 paper:

It is easier to move bits than atoms or energy.  Server­-sats are ultralight disks of silicon that convert sunlight into computation and communications.  Powered by a large solar cell, propelled and steered by light pressure, networked and located by microwaves, and cooled by black­-body radiation. Arrays of thousands of server­-sats form highly redundant computation and database servers, as well as phased array antennas to reach thousands of transceivers on the ground.

First generation server­-sats are 20 centimeters across ( about 8 inches ), 0.1 millimeters (100 microns) thick, and weigh 7 grams. They can be mass produced with off­-the­-shelf semiconductor technologies. Gallium arsenide radio chips provide intra­-array, inter­-array, and ground communication, as well as precise location information. Server­-sats are launched stacked by the thousands in solid cylinders, shrouded and vibration-­isolated inside a traditional satellite bus.

Links:

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Some mildly negative evidence to start with: I have already had a satellite scientist tell me that this seems unlikely to work. Avoiding space debris and Kessler Syndrome, radio communications difficulties (especially uplink), and the need for precise synchronization are the obstacles he stressed as significant. He did not seem to have studied the proposal closely, but this at least tells us to be careful where to set our priors.

On the other hand, it appears Keith has given these problems a lot of thought already, and solutions can probably be worked out. The thinsats would have optical thrusters (small solar sails) and would thus be able to move themselves and each other around; defective ones could be collected for disposal without mounting an expensive retrieval mission, and the thrusters would also help avoid things in the first place. Furthermore the zone chosen (the m288 orbit) is relatively unused, so collisions with other satellites are unlikely. Also the satellites have powerful radar capabilities, which should lead to more easily detecting and eliminating space junk.

For the communications problem, the idea is to use three dimensional phased arrays of thinsats -- basically a bunch of satellites in a large block working in unison to generate a specific signal, behaving as if they were a much larger antenna. This is tricky and requires precision timing and exact distance information. The array's physical configuration will need to be randomized (or perhaps arranged according to an optimized pattern) in order to prevent grating lobes, a problem with interference patterns that is common with phased arrays. They would link with GPS and each other by radio on multiple bands to achieve "micron-precision thinsat location and orientation within the array".

According to the wiki, the most likely technical show-stopper (which makes sense given the fact that m288 is outside of the inner Van Allen belt) is radiation damage. Proposed fixes include periodic annealing (heating the circuit with a heating element) to repair the damage, and the use of radiation-resistant materials for circuitry.

Has anyone else here researched this idea, or have relevant knowledge? It seems like a great potential source of computing power for AI research, mind uploads, and so forth, but also for all those mundane, highly lucrative near term demands like web hosting and distributed business infrastructures.

From an altruistic standpoint, this kind of system could reduce poverty and increase equitable distribution of computing resources. It could also make solving hard scientific problems like aging and cryopreservation easier, and pave the road to solar power satellites. As it scales, it should also create demand (as well as available funding and processing power) for Launch Loop construction, or some other similarly low-cost form of space travel.

Value of information as to whether it can work or not therefore appears to be extremely high, something I think is crucial for a rationalist project. If it can work, the value of taking productive action (leadership, getting it funded, working out the problems, etc.) should be correspondingly high as well.

Update: Keith Lofstrom has responded on the wiki to the questions raised by the satellite scientist.

Note: Not all aspects of the project have complete descriptions yet, but there are answers to a lot of questions in the wiki.

Here is a summary list of questions raised and answers so far:

• How does this account for Moore's Law? (kilobug)
  In his reply to the comments on Brin's post, Keith Lofstrom mentions using obsolete sats as ballast for much thinner sats that would be added to the arrays as the manufacturing process improves. Obsolete sats would not stay in use for long.
• What about ping time limits? (kilobug)
  Ping times are going to be limited (70ms or so), and worse than you can theoretically get with a fat pipe (42ms), but it is still much better than you get with GEO (250+ ms). This is bad for high frequency trading, but fine for (parallelizable) number crunching and most other practical purposes.
• What kind of power consumption? Doesn't it cost more to launch than you save? (Vanvier)
  It takes roughly  2 months for a 3 gram thinsat to pay for the launch energy if it gets 4 watts, assuming 32% fuel manufacturing efficiency. Blackbody cooling is another benefit.
• Bits being flipped by cosmic radiation is a problem on earth, how can it be solved in space? (Vanvier)
  Flash memory is acknowledged to be the most radiation sensitive component of the satellite. The solution would involve extensive error correction software and caching on multiple satellites.
• Periodic annealing tends to short circuits. Wouldn't this result in very short lifetimes? (Vanvier)
  Circuits will be manufactured as two dimensional planes, which don't short as easily. Another significant engineering challenge: Thermal properties in the glass will need to be matched with the silicon and wires (for example, slotted wiring with silicon dioxide between the gaps) to prevent circuit damage. Per Vanvier, it may be less expensive to replace silicon with other materials for this purpose.
• What are the specific of putting servers in space? (ZankerH)
  Efficient power/cooling, increased communications, overall scalability, relative lack of environmental impact.

Yet to be answered:

• Is the amount of speculative tech too high? E.g. if future kinds of RAM are needed, costs may be higher. (Vanvier)
• Is it easier to replace silicon with something else than find ways to make the rest of the sat match thermal expansion of silicon? (Vanvier)
• Can we get more data on economics/business plan? (Vanvier)
• Solar sails have been known to stick together. Is this a problem for thinsats, which are shipped stuck together? (Vanvier)
• Do most interesting processes bottleneck on communication efficiency? (skelterpot)
• What decreases in cost might we see with increased manufacturing yield? (skelterpot)

Insightful comments:

• Launch energy vs energy collection (answer above is more specific, but this was a commendable quick-check).  (tgb)
• ECC RAM is standard technology used in server computers. (JoachimShipper)
• Fixing bit errors outside the memory (e.g. in CPU) is harder, something like Tandem Computers could be used, with added expense. (JoachimShipper)
• Some processor-heavy computing tasks, like calculating scrypt hashes, are not very parallelizable. (skelterpot)
• Other approaches like redundant hardware and error-checking within the CPU are possible, but they drive up the die area used. (skelterpot)

I can't remember how I found this, just that I was amazed at how rational and near-mode it is on a topic where most of the information one usually encounters is hopelessly far.

LessWrong wiki link on the same topic: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Status

The Improv Wiki

Status

Status is pecking order. The person who is lower in status defers to the person who is higher in status.

Status is party established by social position--e.g. boss and employee--but mainly by the way you interact. If you interact in a way that says you are not to be trifled with, the other person must adjust to you, then you are establishing high status. If you interact in a way that says you are willing to go along, you don't want responsibility, that's low status. A boss can play low status or high status. An employee can play low status or high status.

Status is established in every line and gesture, and changes continuously. Status is something that one character plays to another at a particular moment. If you convey that the other person must not cross you on what you're saying now, then you are playing high status to that person in that line. Your very next line might come out low status, as you suggest willingness to defer about something else.

If you analyze your most successful scenes, it's likely they involved several status changes between the players. Therefore, one path to great scenes is to intentionally change status. You can raise or lower your own status, or the status of the other player. The more subtly you can do this, the better the scene.

High-status behaviors

When walking, assuming that other people will get out of your path.

Making eye contact while speaking.

Not checking the other person's eyes for a reaction to what you said.

Having no visible reaction to what the other person said. (Imagine saying something to a typical Clint Eastwood character. You say something expecting a reaction, and you get--nothing.)

Speaking in complete sentences.

Interrupting before you know what you are going to say.

Spreading out your body to full comfort. Taking up a lot of space with your body.

Looking at the other person with your eyes somewhat down (head tilted back a bit to make this work), creating the feeling that you are a parent talking to a child.

Talking matter-of-factly about things that the other person finds displeasing or offensive.

Letting your body be vulnerable, exposing your neck and torso to the other person.

Moving comfortably and gracefully.

Keeping your hands away from your face.

Speaking authoritatively, with certainty.

Making decisions for a group; taking responsibility.

Giving or withholding permission.

Evaluating other people's work.

Speaking cryptically, not adjusting your speech to be easily understood by the other person (except that mumbling does not count). E.g. saying, "Chomper not right" with no explanation of what you mean or what you want the other person to do.

Being surrounded by an entourage, especially of people who are physically smaller than you.

A "high-status specialist" conveys in every word and gesture, "Don't come near me, I bite."

Low-status behaviors

When walking, moving out of other people's path.

Looking away from the other person's eyes.

Briefly checking the other person's eyes to see if they reacted positively to what you said.

Speaking in halting, incomplete sentences. Trailing off, editing your sentences as you got.

Sitting or standing uncomfortably in order to adjust to the other person and give them space. Pulling inward to give the other person more room. If you're tall, you might need to scrunch down a bit to indicate that you're not going to use your height against the other person.

Looking up toward the other person (head tilted forward a bit to make this work), creating the feeling that you are a child talking to a parent.

Dancing around your words (beating around the bush) when talking about something that will displease the other person.

Shouting as an attempt to intimidate the other person. This is low status because it suggests that you expect resistance.

Crouching your body as if to ward off a blow; protecting your face, neck, and torso.

Moving awkwardly or jerkily, with unnecessary movements.

Touching your face or head.

Avoiding making decisions for the group; avoiding responsibility.

Needing permission before you can act.

Adjusting the way you say something to help the other person understand; meeting the other person on their (cognitive) ground; explaining yourself. E.g. "Could you please adjust the chomper? That's the gadget on the kitchen counter immediately to the left of the toaster. If you just give it a slight rap on the top, that should adjust it."

A "low-status specialist" conveys in every word and gesture, "Please don't bite me, I'm not worth the trouble."

Raising another person's status

To raise another person's status is to establish them as high in the pecking order in your group (possibly just the two of you).

•	Ask their permission to do something.

•	Ask their opinion about something.

•	Ask them for advice or help.

•	Express gratitude for something they did.

•	Apologize to them for something you did.

•	Agree that they are right and you were wrong.

•	Defer to their judgement without requiring proof.

•	Address them with a fancy title or honorific (even "Mr." or "Sir" works very well).

•	Downplay your own achievement or attribute in comparison to theirs. "Your wedding cake is so much whiter than mine."

•	Do something incompetent in front of them and then apologize for it or act sheepish about it.

•	Mention a failure or shortcoming of your own. "I was supposed to go to an audition today, but I was late. They said I was wrong for the part anyway."

•	Compliment them in a way that suggests appreciation, not judgement. "Wow, what a beautiful cat you have!"

•	Obey them unquestioningly.

•	Back down in a conflict.

•	Move out of their way, bow to them, lower yourself before them.

•	Tip your hat to them.

•	Lose to them at something competitive, like a game (or any comparison).

•	Wait for them.

•	Serve them; do manual labor for them.

Tip: Whenever you bring an audience member on stage, always raise their status, never lower it.

Lowering another person's status

To lower another person's status is to attack or discredit their right to be high in the pecking order. Another word for "lowering someone's status" is "humiliating them."

•	Criticize something they did.

•	Contradict them. Tell them they are wrong. Prove it with facts and logic.

•	Correct them.

•	Insult them.

•	Give them unsolicited advice.

•	Approve or disapprove of something they did or some attribute of theirs. "Your cat has both nose and ear points. That is acceptable." Anything that sets you up as the judge lowers their status, even "Nice work on the Milligan account, Joe."

•	Shout at them.

•	Tell them what to do.

•	Ignore what they said and talk about something else, especially when they've said something that requires an answer. E.g. "Have you seen my socks?" "The train leaves in five minutes."

•	One-up them. E.g. have a worse problem than the one they described, have a greater past achievement than theirs, have met a more famous celebrity, earn more money, do better than them at something they're good at, etc.

•	Win: beat them at something competitive, like a game (or any comparison).

•	Announce something good about yourself or something you did. "I went to an audition today, and I got the part!"

•	Disregard their opinion. E.g. "You'd better not smoke while pumping gas, it's a fire hazard." Flick, light, puff, puff, pump, pump.

•	Talk sarcastically to them.

•	Make them wait for you.

•	When they've fallen behind you, don't wait for them to catch up, just push on and get further out of sync.

•	Disobey them.

•	Violate their space.

•	Beat them up. Beating them up verbally, not physically as in martial arts or how you learned UFC fighting in an gym, in front of other people, especially their wife, girlfriend, and/or children, is particularly status-lowering.

•	In a conflict, make them back down.

•	Taunt them. Tease them.

The basic status-lowering act

Laugh at them. (Not with them.)

The basic status-raising act

Be laughed at by them.

Second to that is laughing with them at someone else.

(Notice that those are primarily what comedians do.)

---

Note that behaviors that raise another person's status are not necessarily low-status behaviors, and behaviors that lower another person's status are not necessarily high-status behaviors. People at any status level raise and lower each other all the time. They can do so in ways that convey high or low status.

For example, shouting at someone lowers their status but is itself a low-status behavior.

---

Objects and environments also have high or low status, although this is seldom explored. So explore it. Make something cheap and inconsequential high status. (This fingernail clipping came from Graceland!) Or bring down the status of a high status item. (Casually toss a 2 carat diamond ring on your jewelry pile.)

Source: http://greenlightwiki.com/improv/Status
Retrieved 20 March 2012

Recently I've been considering declaring Crocker's Rules. The wiki page and source document don't suggest any particular time limit or training period, and also don't provide any empirical results of testing it, positive or negative. It sounds good in theory, but how does it affect people in the real world?

• If you operate under the Rules for an extended period, does your social status diminish due to behaving like a pushover when insulted?
• Does it usually become unbearable after a particular period of time? Or is there a temporary discomfort that you get over quickly?
• Is there a list of signatories who have declared Crocker's Rules on an indefinite or time-limited basis?
• Where can I find examples of dialogue that has benefited (or suffered) from this?

It seems like an "obviously cool" idea but the risk to one's reputation is worth taking into consideration. If it is clear that the risk is low, and if the value to be gained is clearly very high, we should probably be doing more to encourage it as an explicit norm.

On the other hand, if it is just one of those ideas that sounds better in theory than it is in practice (because the theory does not correctly model reality), or is just yet another signaling game with a net negative value, that is worth knowing as well.

I haven't seen anyone argue against Crocker's Rules or claim it ruined their life, so my estimation is that the risk is low (although there is a small sample size to start with). Also, I have seen at least one statement from lukeprog implying that it has been instrumental in triggering updates during live conversations he has observed, indicating that the value is high (though its causal role is not firmly established in that example).

Does anyone have further data points to add?

From a GQ interview:

A while ago, a piece of gossip appeared in a British newspaper, alleging that Cowell had declared—while dining with the British prime minister at the time, Gordon Brown—that upon his death he plans to be frozen. Cowell tells me he doesn't recall this discussion ("I had dinner with him a couple of times, but I can't remember talking about that—that's probably why I wasn't invited back a third time") but agrees that, although he has yet to make the arrangements, this is indeed his plan.

"It's an insurance policy," he reasons. "If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. If it does work, I'll be happy. If it's possible, and I think it will be, why not have a second crack? Does that sound crazy? I think it's a good idea."

This is an interesting book with a lot of good information on organizing volunteers to accomplish productive ends.

Producing Open Source Software

About a month ago, I started a prize for Cryonics promotional videos published to Youtube during the month of May. There was a fair bit of interest, but nobody actually submitted anything. So the 14.75 bitcoins are thus far unclaimed.

I want to use this money (worth ~$125) to start another contest, but I thought that this time it would be a good idea to solicit some feedback on how best to do so.

• What is the best medium to use?
  • It may be that few less wrongers are comfortable with videos
  • Other media might be just as effective or more so
  • Youtube may not be the best site
• What is the best way of judging?
  • Likes on youtube or some other site
  • Karma votes here on LW
  • A panel of judges
• What is the best timeframe?
  • Long, 6-month projects (more money needed?)
  • Quick projects 15-30 minutes (less money? specific amounts?)
  • Repeating prizes (monthly, weekly, annually, etc.)
• Is regular cash a better prize than bitcoin?
  • May vary from person to person
  • People already know what cash is worth
  • Bitcoin might have novelty value or geek appeal
  • Bitcoin is ridiculously easy to transfer without the hassle of fees
• Is cryonics really the best topic?
  • Maybe we would get more creative output from other topics
  • Other prize funds could be started for other topics

So anyways, I'd love to hear some opinions. I think making the contest more fun will probably get more results, so basically what I want to know is, what would be the most fun?

Causes of death such as malaria and hunger are certainly worth allocating resources towards preventing, for today's results-oriented philanthropist. It's almost ridiculous to realize we can put $1000 towards mosquito netting and save a human life. However, these kinds of things will eventually run out of low-hanging fruit, especially as countries become more developed. By advancing the adoption of certain key near-term technologies just a little sooner, we can make rather significant gains even in developed countries where the causes of death are more complex and occur later in life.

According to Brad Templeton's executive summary of the case for robotic cars:

Every year we delay deploying robocars (and related technology) in the USA, human driving will kill another 35,000, and 1.2 million worldwide.

Anything in the range of a million people per year definitely qualifies as a holocaust! And yet this is actually a fairly small percentage of the world death rate (about 57 million per year) overall. (Most deaths are caused by heart disease or infectious diseases.) Nonetheless, self-driving cars strike me as an attractive initial goal for the following reasons:

• More reliable EMS. Self-driving cars could coordinate with self-driving ambulances, leading to sooner arrival times and lower death rates.
• Higher world GDP. Robin Hanson estimates 5-20% long term gains due to road use efficiency alone. Additional economic benefits would include reduced dependence on oil, and fewer deaths (from auto accidents) among the working (pre-retirement-age) population.
• Near-term / the world is ready. Self-driving cars seem science-fictional, but they don't trip deep philosophical flags the way cryonics or curing aging does. And there are youtube videos of cars driving themselves safely all over the country, so people can't argue that they are vaporware.

The robotic exo-suit is another near-term source for dramatically increased GDP -- a person wearing one can perform manual labor tasks with greater endurance and reduced danger of physical injury, without undergoing painful physical conditioning. It can delay forced retirement age, as a feeble body will no longer be an obstacle to a number of tasks. Furthermore, powered suits may prove the key to truly comfortable hermetically sealed environments -- something that can be very handy when old age hits and your immune system declines. It can also be useful for keeping infectious diseases in.

The artificial heart is something else that can reduce instances of death significantly. We are kept alive by two pounds of throbbing muscle just waiting to explode on us. Removing that risk from the picture would have a huge impact on the death rate in the developed world.

Another huge risk-reducer would be wider adoption of robotic surgery. This enables surgical interventions to take place under far more controlled circumstances, without hand-tremors and human error to complicate matters. As surgery becomes more safe and noninvasive, it can be used for preventative maintenance, rather than being conserved for when something is going wrong.

Cryonics and robust rejuvenation treatments still are very significant from a life-extension perspective. But proof that they will work is not necessarily going to be available until it is too late to convince people (in this generation) to start allocating significant resources to them. A better strategy might be to invest first in these less radical technologies (while still maintaining a healthy activist base for life extension memes) and use the economic gains to jump on the growing life extension market as it starts to open up.

Another thing to bear in mind is that cheap, accessible robotics can lead to cheaper, more accessible cryonics and life-extension drugs. These things tend to synergize. A factory where the workers are equipped with exo-suits can produce chemicals, drugs, and mechanical parts more quickly and cheaply. The more easily a new piece of robotic equipment can be prototyped and tested, the more likely it will see use sooner, resulting in the earlier introduction of safety and economic gains for humans.

There was recently a proposal that we should create YouTube commercials for cryonics. This is an area where the cryonics community is sorely lacking fresh content, and which in my opinion has higher leverage per unit effort relative to other kinds of content, for making the kinds of cultural changes that need to be made for cryonics to gain acceptance.

One important strategy to beat procrastination, is to turn ideas into concrete action quickly rather than talking about them for too long. Another is to raise the amount of positive feedback a person expects to receive. Prizes have been used successfully in the past for the promotion of creative efforts with considerable success, and I have long thought that this would work for cryonics promotions as well. It's time for a simple empirical test.

To get things started, I am offering the nominal sum of 10 bitcoins¹ as a prize to whoever creates the the most "liked" promotional or educational video for cryonics on YouTube for the month of May, 2011. If anyone wishes to contribute to the prize and thus increase its size, send bitcoins here: <removed>

All funds sent to the above address will be transferred to the address of the person whose YouTube video promoting cryonics receives the most "likes" on YouTube during the month of May. Donors who let me know that they have donated will be given credit for donating below.

• Start date: May 1, 2011 at 12:00 AM GMT. Entry video cannot have been released on YouTube sooner than this.
• End date: June 1, 2011 at 12:00 AM GMT. This is when the votes (likes) will be tallied and the prize awarded.
• Video must promote cryonics and/or answer common questions about cryonics.
• Multiple submissions per person are allowed and encouraged, as are collaborations².
• Xtranormal videos, slide shows, stick figure cartoons, voice-overs, and anything else that can go in a YouTube video are acceptable.
• Winner must have or obtain a bitcoin address³, and must let us know what it is along with a link to their video (which must be posted to YouTube) in the comments section of this post.
• In the event that there are multiple videos with substantially similar numbers of likes (to within 1% of the top number) at midnight of June first, they will all be treated as co-winners and receive equal shares of the prize.

Anyone who wants to donate to non-winning entries that they liked is welcome to do so as well (the bitcoin address of each entry will be visible below).

Let the games begin!

1. These are a digital commodity that I thought would make a more fun and interesting prize than dollars, and seem to have a positive reputation on LW so far. It is also easy for me to keep track of. Market value was about $4 per bitcoin as of April 31.
2. One bitcoin address per video please. Teams are responsible for divvying up the prize money among members.
3. The simple way is to create an account on MyBitcoin. You can also install the Bitcoin client.

Current prize fund (to be updated): 14.75 BTC (103.29 USD @ 7.003)

Donors known so far:

• drethelin
• Pavitra

Alex Knapp, who self-describes as a transhumanism skeptic, is blogging on the topic for Forbes. His most recent article is about Cryonics.

From Mike Darwin's new blog:

DCD has lead to a fracture within the medical community [7,8] wherein some centers, such as the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, have taken patients who want ventilator support withdrawn, placed femoral cannulae under local (spinal) anesthesia, turned off the ventilator after effectively anesthetizing the patient, waited until the patient’s heart stops, and then restarted circulation with CPB. They also, of course, give paralytic neuromuscular blocking drugs (as is routine in all visceral organ retrieval) to prevent the thoracoabdominal incision, and the terminal drop in blood pressure (when the organs are removed), from causing muscle vesiculations (twitching) or actual limb movement as a result of stimulation of the nocioceptive pathways in the spinal cord (pain is a local phenomenon first and a central nervous system one secondly with the process proceeding up the spinal cord to the brain). [9,10]

To be blunt, this procedure resulted in all hell breaking out. [11,12,13] Bioethicists, such James Bernat and Leslie Whetstine, accused the surgeons and neurologists involved in this undertaking of every ethical evil, including homicide.[14,15] A compromise position is to restore circulation in the body using a special balloon-tipped aortic catheter that prevents ‘all ‘ flow to the brain. This results in a ‘resolution’ to the ‘paradox’ of removing organs from a patient with a ‘viable, or potentially viable brain.’ Of course, from our perspective as cryonicists, this whole exercise is nothing more or less than a procedural contortion designed to avoid confronting the reality that death is not a binary condition, and that if you are going to allow people to withdraw from medical care they no longer want, and that they (rightfully) consider an assault, then the corollary to that is that they also get to decide when they are dead. [16] That means that they have the perfect right to ask for, and receive a treatment (i.e., in the presence of informed consent) whereby they are anesthetized, cooled, subjected to blood washout, and their organs removed – at which point they are indeed DEAD, in the sense that their non-functional condition is now irreversible, or not going to be reversed, because they do not want it to be. When, exactly, they become irrecoverable from an information-theoretic standpoint is irrelevant, because they don’t want to be recovered, and no technology currently exists that will allow them to be recovered.

We, as cryonicists, could argue that if such patients were cryopreserved, they might possibly be recovered in the future. But if they do not want cryopreservation, then they are dead when they say they are dead, and when they meet the current medico-legal definition of cardiorespiratory death (i.e., no heartbeat or breathing and no prospect of their resuming). The medical response to this fairly straightforward situation has been, as expected, convoluted and irrational, and profoundly dangerous to cryonics. The recent paper “Clarifying the paradigm for the ethics of donation and transplantation: Was ‘dead’ really so clear before organ donation?” [17] is an excellent window into current medical policy, not just on the issue of DCD, but on the application of any kind of circulatory support to patients who have been pronounced dead on the basis of clinical (cardiac) criteria.  This article is one of the most cited in current DCD debates, and the closing sentence in its abstract says it all (emphasis mine):

“Criticism of controlled DCD on the basis of violating the dead donor rule, where autoresuscitation has not been described beyond 2 minutes, in which life support is withdrawn and CPR is not provided, is not valid. However, any post mortem intervention that reestablishes brain blood flow should be prohibited. “In comparison to traditional practice, organ donation has forced the clarification of the diagnostic criteria for death and improved the rigour of the determinations.”[17]

...

The UK has already adopted standards for determining and pronouncing death that expressly prohibit the application of CPR, or any modalities that restore flow to the brain or conserve brain viability. I have made inquiries, and been informed that failure to follow these Guidelines would be a serious breach of professional conduct, resulting in any licensed person being struck off; and that such action would very likely constitute a criminal act in the UK, as well (prosecution to be at the discretion of law enforcement and the prosecutor). [21]

The whole point of cryonics -- not to put too fine a point on it -- is to conserve brain viability, in the sense of keeping as much of the brain in as close to a viable state as possible.

ETA: Mike has confirmed that the UK law applies to non organ donors. He also has stated that new changes have been made to the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (a sort of template by which state laws are drafted) which are likely to be similar in nature, in the US.