All of icebrand's Comments + Replies

Thanks for the information. Edited out. The main issue I had with the original comment was that it seemed to assume everyone would agree with a specific, vastly oversimplified definition of organic death. In reality organic death is a process that happens over a long period of time and has not happened completely by the time the brain reaches LN2 temperatures in ideal circumstances. It could easily be reversible via biological means.

Perhaps a different prefix would make it more clear that it is a formerly animate object, or between stages of being animate. E.g. postanimate or transanimate.

But the cells remain dead, as does the organ they comprise.

In the case of vitrification under ideal conditions this is not true of most of the cells. There is a spectrum of cryonics cases, and many of them do have a high rate of cell death, but the goal of cryonics is to prevent cell death to the greatest degree possible.

Death is a process, not an all or nothing proposition. You don't really need to assign a category "dead" or "not dead" to understand what's going on. The brain is broken beyond simple repair and ceases to be animate.... (read more)

Cryonics involves killing a brain (or preparing a dead brain) in such a way as to maximize the chances that some future technology can extract its instantiated mind.

[edit to take away the quibble about definitions]

Cryonics keeps open the possibilities both of uploading and robust repair scenarios. Assuming that it will play out one way or the other is unnecessarily specific for a belief about the future. There may be e.g. cultural or contractual reasons to repair people instead of extracting the information to instantiate on a digital substrate.

Here is PureDoxyK's response to the Wozniak criticism. There's a funny bit...

• There are no women doing polyphasic sleep. Which makes myself, my friend who first did Uberman with me, and my hero Heidi who’s gone more than a year-and-a-half on Uberman by now the most attractive, clean guys in HISTORY! Mind you, he doesn’t just state this silliness, but uses it as EVIDENCE for the fact that polyphasic sleep can’t work (because women’s “hormones” don’t allow it somehow). Yeah, ROFLcopter.

Yes, plan A is definitely to wait as long as possible. :)

For me this is in the "not surprising, but important to notice" category. Every kind of activism is a kind of marketing. The branding of important topics like cryonics, rationality, transhumanism, etc. tends to suffer from neglect, or plays out in weird ways that will never go mainstream. This may be due to the way we tend to think about them or the kind of people attracted to them.

This is an amazing story. Congratulations on your courage and the chance you have with your mother which many others do not. Even if it is small it is a source of hope.

This is the first case I've heard of where brain only cryonics was combined with a traditional funeral. KrioRus is the only current cryonics company that does brain only right now, so it is possible that more such cases may originate there in the future.

If this does become public in Russia, we may be presented with a useful data point about how controversial brain-only cryonics is. My theory... (read more)

On the topic of scholarship, I'd like to mention that if one takes the notion of surviving cryopreservation seriously, it's probably a good idea to read up on cryobiology. Have at least a basic understanding of what's going to happen to your cells when your time comes. There is a rich and complex field behind it which very few individuals have much grasp on.

If the bug bites you to do so, you may even be able to go into the field and make some breakthroughs. Huge advances have been made in recent decades by very small numbers of cryonics-motivated scientist... (read more)

I'd be more than happy to debate any and all pragmatic concerns you can think of in another thread. Feel free to start one in Discussion. I'm not signed up yet, focusing largely on the advocacy side of things. As a younger adult it seems like advocacy has a higher potential payoff both in research getting done before my turn comes and having freedom and necessary infrastructure to get preserved under ideal circumstances. Currently it's very difficult to arrange an ideal preservation.

I'm not 100% libertarian, and try to see both sides. There is something to... (read more)

Cryonics has recently attracted a small but dedicated opposition who've adopted the framing that cryonics is a scam which consumers need protection from. (I won't link to them, but you can find them in any google search for the word "cryonics".) The basic issue seems to be that it matches their perception of a Scientology-like cult. They've been growing more active, so I wouldn't put it past them to try to push something through this year.

There was a bill specifically targeting cryonics proposed in 2004 in Arizona. Arguably the Ted Williams event... (read more)

I hadn't thought of it specifically in terms of persuasive writing. But that's essentially what I want to do; persuade cryonics advocates to take more action, and persuade fence-sitters to become advocates. Perhaps reading some formal persuasive writing literature would be instructive to getting a more natural feel. But as you say it is likely to be more a matter of practice. My normal style is more explanatory than persuasive.

In 2011, a new law will be proposed in some jurisdiction which specifically: Restricts cryonics activity. 15%. Protects cryonics patients. 3%.

For a potentially positive version of this, see my blog. I deliberately assume that the reader is an advocate of cryonics, despite an awareness that some (most?) potential readers are not already interested in advocating cryonics. My working assumption is that this will influence a substantial portion of fence-sitters to define themselves as cryonics advocates in order to resolve the cognitive dissonance -- more so than e.g. directly arguing that people should become cryonics advocates.

I wouldn't be doing this if I thought people are likely to become cryon... (read more)

Thank you for the reference, looks like a good book. I thought this part regarding motives for procrastination was interesting:

More recently, Sapadin and Maguire (1997) have also classified procrastinators into types: the "perfectionist" who dreads doing anything that is less than perfect, the "dreamer" who has great ideas but hates doing the details, the "worrier" who doesn't think things are right but fears that changes will make them worse, the "defier" who resists doing anything suggested or expected by someone

While I see your point for the most part, I wouldn't want to end my life rather than "suffer" 50 years of bliss prior to dying. The only horror there is the lack of economic productivity, human relationships, etc. in the meantime (which are also correlated with death) and the potentially high cost. I might prefer death over going deeply in debt or badly sapping social services (for reasons of pride), but if I was productive enough to save up all the necessary funding prior to the event I don't see why there is a problem with spending it on 50 fi... (read more)