
Cryonics Myths - apsec112
http://www.alcor.org/cryomyths.html
======
reasonattlm
Reversible vitrification of organs is a field starting to show some promise.
It will revolutionize the transplant industry, and will bring more attention
to cryonics.

[https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/216900...](https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/21690025-after-decades-piecemeal-progress-science-cryogenically-
storing-human)

There is also some interesting work spurred by the Brain Preservation Prize:

[http://www.brainpreservation.org/small-mammal-
announcement/](http://www.brainpreservation.org/small-mammal-announcement/)

[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cryobiol.2015.09.003](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cryobiol.2015.09.003)

"We describe here a new cryobiological and neurobiological technique,
aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation (ASC), which demonstrates the relevance
and utility of advanced cryopreservation science for the neurobiological
research community. ASC is a new brain-banking technique designed to
facilitate neuroanatomic research such as connectomics research, and has the
unique ability to combine stable long term ice-free sample storage with
excellent anatomical resolution."

------
placebo
As the procedure has not been proved to be reversible, it suggests to me that
finding a future cure for the original ailment is the easiest assumption to
make in this field. I'm more interested to get better answers to the myth that
" _Cryonics is not a belief that the dead can be revived_ " than those
presented in the article. I'd be hard pressed to say that there are things I
think are impossible, but there are a great many things I think are very
improbable. In the movie A.I., there's a part where advanced aliens
temporarily restore the life of the hero's "mother" using a lock of her hair
and some pseudoscientific stuff about information they managed to retrieve
from the space-time continuum. All this without even having access to her
brain! Impossible? I don't know - perhaps having the theoretical ability to
retrieve a specific configuration which maybe exists at some dimension,
somehow holographically stored in the fabric of universe combined with an
unimaginably advanced intelligence and technological ability might make it
doable. Do I believe there's a non zero probability if it being possible? Yes.
Do I believe it will ever happen? No. Although cryonics is far less
presumptuous than reviving back a personality from a lock of hair and
information extracted from the "spacetime continuum", the complete lack of
evidence for any sort of reversibility of the process makes me extremely
skeptical in the wisdom in paying for such a procedure, regardless of how well
intentioned it might be.

~~~
reasonattlm
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/rej.2014.1636](http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/rej.2014.1636)

"Can memory be retained after cryopreservation? Our research has attempted to
answer this long-standing question by using the nematode worm Caenorhabditis
elegans, a well-known model organism for biological research that has
generated revolutionary findings but has not been tested for memory retention
after cryopreservation. Our study's goal was to test C. elegans' memory recall
after vitrification and reviving. Using a method of sensory imprinting in the
young C. elegans, we establish that learning acquired through olfactory cues
shapes the animal's behavior and the learning is retained at the adult stage
after vitrification. Our research method included olfactory imprinting with
the chemical benzaldehyde (C6H5CHO) for phase-sense olfactory imprinting at
the L1 stage, the fast-cooling SafeSpeed method for vitrification at the L2
stage, reviving, and a chemotaxis assay for testing memory retention of
learning at the adult stage. Our results in testing memory retention after
cryopreservation show that the mechanisms that regulate the odorant imprinting
(a form of long-term memory) in C. elegans have not been modified by the
process of vitrification or by slow freezing."

~~~
placebo
Thank you, that's news to me. While I still remain skeptical due to the orders
of magnitude of complexity in the gap between C. elegans and humans, it
definitely calls for a reassessment of the probability I have previously
attached to it.

This is why I like HN...

~~~
Wh1zz
Even if the probability is astronomical, isn't a non-zero probability better
than null? Sure there is a cost, but is it that high that you couldn't justify
taking the chance, and instead just blowing it on a couple other fancy things
or whatever?

~~~
icegreentea2
A lot of people don't like playing along with Pascal's wager type arguments.

------
justinalanbass
Being an avid cryonicist, I have attempted to express these myths to a wide
variety of people. The very few and open-minded folks that will move past
utter dismissal usually have a deep and visceral illogical fear of death - or
a deep and visceral religious belief in the afterlife. These "Cryonics Myths
Debunked" tend to only further convince those who are likely to choose
Cryonics anyways.

There must be a better way to convince the masses, but so far no billionaire
or government has stepped forward with a serious effort here, and I doubt such
a thing will occur in our lifetimes.

My point is, other avid cryonicists should study serious and effective
approaches, and abandon the "rational" one. But hey, making it up high on the
hacker-news top-10 is a good start.

~~~
philwelch
Funny, I find that the cryonics advocates are the ones with the deep and
visceral illogical fear of death. That’s why one signs up for cryonics, right?
Being at peace with one’s mortality removes the selfish “rational” incentive
for cryonics.

Individual people are replaceable, and don’t belong outside of their own time.
If you want to advocate cryonics for the masses, think about what you would do
if you had to live in a world with the reanimated masses of the 18th century.
Because that’s the kind of mess you propose to inflict on our future
descendants.

~~~
OscarCunningham
One might as well say that being at peace with one's hunger removes the
selfish "rational" incentive for food.

~~~
philwelch
Yup, hoping to have one's frozen corpse reanimated in a few centuries is
completely the same thing as eating food. You got me there.

------
nwatson
Cryonics Myth #1: "Trustees 200 years in future at a time when your disease
[X] is completely curable will care to bring you back."

There's no corporate or legal or NGO structure in the business that will last
long enough that anyone will care, and even if they do the cooling system
failover will not work in the particularly hot summer of 2074.

~~~
apsec112
While there is a real risk that cryonics organizations will fail, there's no
reason to think it's a foregone conclusion. Tons of organizations have been
around for over two hundred years. The oldest non-profits in continuous
existence are well over a thousand years old. There's no legal barrier to a
non-profit corporation or trust continuing to exist indefinitely, as many
indeed have. (Heck, the Nobel Prizes are an after-death trust that has only
gotten larger and more famous in the 122 years since Nobel's death.)

See also Alcor's reply to "Who will revive patients?":
[http://alcor.org/FAQs/faq01.html#whowillrevive](http://alcor.org/FAQs/faq01.html#whowillrevive)

There is no active cooling system; cryonics patients are passively cooled with
liquid nitrogen. The only regular maintenance needed is adding more liquid
nitrogen, and the storage dewars can last for many months before replenishment
is needed.

~~~
empath75
There is no shortage of people in the world and no reason to add additional
people who are old or diseased, and have no particular skills that are
necessary in the future.

It’s much cheaper (not to mention more fun) to make more babies.

~~~
everybodyknows
There's always a shortage of people who contribute to society with generosity
and wisdom. But not many such heads end up in liquid nitrogen tanks, methinks.

------
mpetrovich
For those of you who don't know much about cryonics (myself included), Wait
But Why [1] has has fantastic primer.

[1]
[https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html)

------
smoll
I started casually researching cryonics after reading the WaitButWhy article
on it
[https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html)
and I'm recently leaning towards more towards a "why not?" mindset but I'm not
yet fully convinced.

The purely logical, rational side of me wants to say "why should I make an
assumption that 21st century norms about the inevitability of death will hold
true or are even valid at all?" so I should just do the least presumptuous
thing and get frozen.

But on the other hand, what does the quality of life look like for a 21st
century human reanimated in 2300 or 2500 or whatever? If history (or Black
Mirror) tells us anything, at best, I'll live out my immortal life as some
sick museum exhibit/circus curiosity, with no possibility of the kind embrace
of death unless some rebellious young person happens to take pity on me.

But that's also assuming humans keep on being Sapiens and don't transcend
their present biology/mindset.

But then, of course, how lonely is it to live in a world where I'm one of the
last humans tethered to my un-enhanced, primitive biology?

And so on...

------
blake8086
I did a podcast with a friend covering a lot of these points here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ffQEoSJW4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ffQEoSJW4w)

I think a big myth people need dispelled is that cryonics is really expensive.
It's not a very expensive gamble to take, and it's pretty easy to see that
it's worthwhile for many people.

------
krisives
They mention they don't preserve "heads" in specific but rather brains, and go
into detail about how they can't separate a brain from a skull so they
preserve the entire head. Wouldn't separating the head from the body cause
similar problems of destroying information in the brain? Do they keep the
entire body?

~~~
abecedarius
Whole-body preservation has been a more expensive option (and I assume still
is, but I haven't been keeping up to date).

Not that I've tried, but I guess detaching a head at the base has less
potential to damage than would opening and removing the whole skull.

~~~
krisives
I know nothing of this field, is there any idea of how long "information"
stays in the brain or any metric like that once blood/oxygen flow to the brain
has been inhibited?

~~~
abecedarius
I found a recent review of cases of people resuscitated from combined
hypothermia and cardiac arrest:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030095721...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300957214005243)

E.g. people found drowned in icy water with no pulse. "Six of nine survivors
(66.7%) had minor neurological sequelae with Glasgow outcome scale (GOS) 5
(low disability)" (the rest worse). It's not clear to me from the table what
the longest time with no breathing or pulse was among those six best-off
survivors. But here's a popular account of another case:
[http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/child-
survived...](http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/child-survived-
almost-2-hours-cpr-after-falling-icy-stream-how/)

Those were the top two google hits that came up. It's not my field, but it
doesn't seem plausible to me that much of our identity is encoded in
evanescent patterns of electrical activity or such. (As opposed to your short
term working memory.) If you can nail down the molecules, the information is
bound to be there in their arrangement.

------
ericb
Brain vitrification, from their FAQ:

This procedure is not yet reversible because of other damage (not caused by
ice) including biochemical effects of the vitrification solution — but it
eliminates ice damage and the preservation of fine structure is excellent.

------
discreditable
"Ask a Mortician" just did a video on Cyronics!
[https://youtu.be/FOZSU0SLNME](https://youtu.be/FOZSU0SLNME)

------
utopkara
If Steve Jobs hasn't done it, then who am I to waste money on this.

~~~
Wh1zz
I don't know, who are you? Perhaps you may be someone that enjoys walks,
beautiful views, or maybe the perfume of a loved one? Maybe you're the type of
person that would want to never stop experiencing these things. Or maybe
you're the type of person that only does things approved and recommended by
[rich person from pop culture]. Yeah, why even take any chances if they're not
thoroughly sold to you by some CEO. It's just your existence we're talking
about after all. Who are you to exist if [rich person from pop culture]
stopped a while ago anyway?

~~~
philwelch
Do you have stock in Alcor?

