ciphergoth comments on A survey of anti-cryonics writing

Comment on A survey of anti-cryonics writing by Sam Horrocks

2010-12-11T05:33:32+01:00

Well again as they are dead with their heads cut off — no it does not make their chances any better — may as well just freeze a dna sample and have “faith” .
Do you have more chance of being resurrected because you are not decomposed?- of course you believe you have more chance throughout eternity if there is some of your dna left IF you accept the premise of resurrection through science Using words like “Substantially better” implies there is measurable difference in chances of resurrection … It assumes acceptance of the premise of resurrection through science. This is not about believing science can cure disease — be stupid not to believe we might cure various diseases … but about believing science will one day resurrect dead people!!! That is a question of faith not a “more likely than … ” scenario analysis.

Comment on A survey of anti-cryonics writing by Luke Parrish

2010-12-10T23:22:24+01:00

If there were patients whose chances were substantially better than the above, would it affect your argument?

Comment on A survey of anti-cryonics writing by Courtney

2010-11-18T05:11:16+01:00

Hi Paul,

I’m the author of the “Cryonics–A futile desire for everlasting life” essay, and I would like to explain to your readers that I wrote this four years ago as a high school assignment, then posted it to a blog which I promptly abandoned. Please don’t take it too seriously. :) I also have no idea why I didn’t post the references…

Thank you for the further information on the cryonics debate.

-Courtney

Comment on A survey of anti-cryonics writing by Sam

2010-11-14T00:04:50+01:00

http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/casereport8911.html

Really? Read the above …. To me it sounds as likely as heaven … To assume that just because we can do tremendous things scientifically (e.g. using their own example.. Send a man to the moon) does not mean that we will just through scientific evolution be able to bring people back from the dead … It is as legitimate as arguing that heaven exists … Or that by probabilities there must be intelligent life on planets. … It is as valid as intelligent design thiery .. I.e. Not … To argue that because a piece of you exists frozen you have more chance of survival as YOU not a clone in the future is stretching it … I think this is a religion and no more than that with the god being the future scientific community -and IT community!! … Which is fine but they SHOULD sell it as that not use Quasi-science now

Comment on A survey of anti-cryonics writing by Paul Crowley

2010-11-12T12:50:08+01:00

Sam — no-one claims to be confident that it will work, there are way too many unknowns. The question is, does it give you a significantly better shot at survival than cremation or burial? It now seems to me pretty clear that it does.

Comment on A survey of anti-cryonics writing by Sam

2010-11-12T12:41:58+01:00

I am also looking for exactly the same sort of articles — i am researching for fiction but as an academic, i NEED to know the other side of the argument — Whilst I am a confident sceptic, I would like to know that my naively formed opinions could be backed up with sound science. I am not convinced at all of the professionalism nor the sincerity of many of the players ( having read many of the actual cases studies of individuals becoming “patients” published on a few of the “storage” centre’s websites) but this is not “evidence” against the arguments they profer. The difficulty is that they are very careful in ensuring that they do not claim it will work, or it does etc. They merely claim that some time in the future we will have the technology …. And they can’t be certain that people frozen now will be revivable — it is just one big experiment!!!

Comment on A survey of anti-cryonics writing by Paul Crowley

2010-09-25T20:28:16+01:00

Yes, there are kooks in cryonics — though I can’t comment on that particular case, I can’t find anything about it and there are lots of reasons why one might choose not to cryopreserve a relative, such as their not consenting. However, what I was trying to find out was whether the idea is inherently kooky, and the answer seems to be no.

Comment on A survey of anti-cryonics writing by George

2010-09-25T20:07:49+01:00

I think cryonics has a more than its share of opportunist and kooks. People whose only interest in cryonics is to publicize their names. Take for example Jonathan Hinek. He as the owner of cryonics chat board called Cold Filter is very active as a strong cryonics supporter. Yet, he refused and failed recently to cryopreserve his own mother. Apparently, his desire to keep his mother’s estate was stronger than any cryonics ever could be.

Comment on A survey of anti-cryonics writing by Paul Crowley

2010-02-11T15:05:30+01:00

Yeah, don’t know what’s up with the preview button, could be a styles thing.

WRT global warming, the mistake people make is trying to go direct to the first-order evidence, which is much too complicated and too easy to misrepresent to hope to directly interpret unless you make it your life’s work, and even then only in a particular area. The correct thing to do is to collect second-order evidence, such as that every major scientific academy has backed the IPCC.

This blog entry is my effort to collect second-order evidence on the subject of cryonics.

Comment on A survey of anti-cryonics writing by Martin McCallion

2010-02-11T14:33:50+01:00

I don’t have anything useful to add, I just wanted to say that I feel exactly as you do about cryonics and living forever. And I thought that this statement:

I know that I don’t know enough to judge.

shows extreme wisdom. If only people wishing to comment on global warming would apply the same test.

Hmm, and your Preview button appears not to work (Firefox 3.5.7 on Windows XP).

Comment on A survey of anti-cryonics writing by Doug

2010-02-08T12:33:52+01:00

The sand-powered tank is an interesting parallel.

I don’t think you can rule it out as entirely impossible, given sufficiently advanced technology. Sure, silica is about as inert as materials get, but lots of real-world sand has impurities that you could certainly do stuff with (e.g. salt, limestone, organic matter). And even if you have entirely inert pure silica sand, I can instantly think of several possibilities for getting energy: if you have a temperature differential between something else and the sand, you can run a heat engine; if the sand is piled up into dunes, you can harvest its potential energy as you flatten it down; and if the grains are not arranged in a state of minimum entropy, reverse Maxwell-demon nanobots could so arrange them and charge themselves up. Even better, you could combine the latter two to make a tank that not only powered itself across the desert but left an easily-passable level road behind!

So I really don’t think you can rule out the possibility of cryonics entirely. The question is about the likelihood, and whether other possibilities for expending resource are better bets.