ciphergoth comments

Comment on Martinenaite and Tavenier on cryonics by matt

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 12:57:42 +0100

FYIL http://www.quora.com/Cryonics/How-soon-will-we-be-able-to-cryonically-suspend-and-reanimate-people-clinically-and-safely/answer/Matt-Harbowy

Comment on More on anti-cryonics writing by Paul Crowley

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:33:25 +0100

Anti-cryonics blog post: http://nowebsite.co.uk/blog/2011/08/cryonics/

Meets 0 of the 4 criteria in my open letter http://blog.ciphergoth.org/blog/2010/02/14/an-open-letter-to-scientific-critics-of-cryonics/ but nice to see all the same.

Comment on Professor David Pegg's remarks to "Last Word", BBC Radio 4, 2011-07-29 by Paul Crowley

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 06:54:27 +0100

You’re right, fixed - thanks!

Comment on Professor David Pegg's remarks to "Last Word", BBC Radio 4, 2011-07-29 by Luke Parrish

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 04:37:34 +0100

Correction: the rabbit that died on the 9th day was the non-surviving member of the group. It was one of two perfused with M22 at 80 mmHg for 25 min. The other one (which survived) was euthanized for histological follow-up on day 48.

I am curious as to whether there have been any attempts to replicate this amazing result over the past 6 years.

Comment on An open letter to scientific critics of cryonics by Paul Crowley

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:26:58 +0100

You’re right, I should have Googled it. Here it is. Thanks! Will leave it up so this discussion makes sense, but be ruthless in future.

Comment on An open letter to scientific critics of cryonics by Luke Parrish

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 17:53:21 +0100

It looks familiar to me. I think it is something I wrote in reply to a question on Yahoo Answers. Someone must be copying stuff based on keywords.

Comment on An open letter to scientific critics of cryonics by Paul Crowley

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 08:53:01 +0100

I can’t figure out if this comment is spam or real! On the one hand, it’s relevant to cryonics, but on the other hand, it doesn’t have anything to do with the content of this article, and the name and link are incredibly spammy. I’ve taken a middle route of leaving it up but removing the link to the website, so that if it is spam the spammer doesn’t benefit.

Comment on An open letter to scientific critics of cryonics by free online project management

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:20:56 +0100

The “lucid dream” option in Vanilla Sky is completely fictional. Real cryonics companies do not make big promises like in Vanilla Sky, and there is not yet any technology to reverse cryogenic damage or to influence dreams.

Comment on How cold is really cold enough? by Pre-exponential term

Tue, 10 May 2011 18:51:48 +0100

I agree that the temperature dependence of the pre-exponential term of the Arrhenius equation is very important. See my discussion of the molecular mobility issue in the section

Long-term stability of cryopreserved materials

on page 19 of my 2010 paper

Thermodynamic aspects of vitrification

http://www.21cm.com/pdfs/2010-Thermodynamics.pdf

–Brian

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

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 05:33:32 +0100

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

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 23:22:24 +0100

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

Comment on More on anti-cryonics writing by Luke Parrish

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 23:10:37 +0100

<i>This is not because I care one way or another whether it can be done but because the are people making profits (or at least their living/salaries etc) out of selling the hope.</i>

If they are frequently getting paid less than they could elsewhere, does this affect your argument?

Comment on A survey of anti-cryonics writing by Courtney

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:11:16 +0100

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

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 00:04:50 +0100

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 More on anti-cryonics writing by Sam

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:04:42 +0100

I believe the argument that it might in thousands of years work is spurious — I think the call for well designed and documented impartial science is critical. This is not because I care one way or another whether it can be done but because the are people making profits (or at least their living/salaries etc) out of selling the hope. And if they treated it as te science fiction it appears to be, that would be fine but they are presenting their arguments as if they wer based on sound science. I am getting less surprised at the lack of sound science — why would a sound scientist sound the time when you cannot prove that in x thousand heads it could not be done. It is the exact argument the cryogenic movement use — and they said man would never go the moon. It is a faith issue unfortunately.

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

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 12:50:08 +0100

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

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 12:41:58 +0100

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 An open letter to scientific critics of cryonics by Paul Crowley

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 20:40:42 +0100

Don’t worry — my field is crypto and I know what you mean, I don’t think this is patronising.

Could you write an article that explains the problem in your own language? I might not be able to understand it, but I can look for someone who can.

Thanks!

Comment on An open letter to scientific critics of cryonics by ge

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 20:11:27 +0100

“Scientific critics of cryonics” I briefly read through this thread after stumbling upon this looking for something totally different. I found it interesting because it doesn’t seem, to me, that anyone responding to this is actually an expert in anything related to what Paul was asking. I thought he was asking for expert opinions on why cryogenics is not plausible. I am an expert in an affiliated area and have worked with cryogenics just to perform my work. @ Paul, this is in no way to sound harsh or condescending, but it is implausible and the way to find these studies is to actually be an expert and have access to places such as medline instead of wikipedia. I can’t even begin to go into why cryogenics (in the magnitude you are describing) won’t work because it would be out of your realm of knowledge from what I read that you posted. That said, I could be wrong because I don’t know you. I understand your frustration on wanting to know why, but it is so completely complicated and with not having the appropriate background, I myself can’t even begin to explain to you why. That is not to belittle you in any way as I am sure you are an expert in an area I am not. The take away point is that there is a TON of evidence/studies on the subject matter, but it’s just not readily available for the lay person that doesn’t study it. Some believe it shouldn’t be available for that very reason. Point in case: @ Luke- do you really know what a stem cell is? I honestly cringe when the topic comes up in mainstream society because it’s pretty much like cancer. I didn’t understand what cancer REALLY was until after med school and then training beyond that specifically dealt with cancer. That’s how complicated it is. As far as stem cell research goes, WE HAVE ACCESS TO STEM CELLS WITHOUT USING EMBRYOS- THEY DO EXIST AND SOME OUTSTANDING RESEARCH HAS BEEN PERFORMED USING THEM!!! Case in point here is Dolly the sheep. She was cloned. What alot of people don’t know is there are several forms of clones. She was the first of a certain type and was begat from her own somatic cell mammary tissue- not an embryo. The whole thing was a fluke bc they forgot to feed the cells and the result was they went into another stage of replication (dormant) that NO ONE was looking at as an alternative for cloning. Stem cells are not the end all for everything. Their use for diseases and the such is understandable. When you get into cloning people and preserving your body to be revived later, that’s just plain narcissism and quite frankly against nature itself. If everyone lived forever, they’d die of cancer. It’s how the body works. There is a certain error in cell replication and you can’t change that. This has nothing to do with nano repair and fracturing from freezing. Your body can only take so much and you die for a reason. So basically, in a nutshell, get access to medline or some authentic peer reviewed medical/research journals and you will find your answers, but good luck understanding it. It takes years of training and TONS of experience to do what these guys do in their work. For anyone that wants to pop off about this answer, examine yourself before you do so because it would be out of sheer insecurity if done.

Comment on More on anti-cryonics writing by bgwowk

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 01:57:39 +0100

CP,

I recently came across your remarks about our kidney cryopreservation experiments at 21st Century Medicine, and would like to correct a few misconceptions.

Re:

As for specific studies of vitrification: The rabbit kidney papers from 21st Century Medicine, which are sometimes cited as the best experimental evidence in support of vitrification at the organ level, are (scientifically speaking) a total nightmare: anecdotal, poorly controlled, reliant on tiny sample sizes, and focusing way too much attention on rare positive results.

This is a misleading characterization. Dr. Fahy has been working on kidney vitrification for more than 25 years, going back to the American Red Cross. The work at 21CM is a continuation of the progress that has been made over many hundreds of experiments, and five generations of vitrification solutions. This progress is documented in good papers from both institutions, the most comprehensive recent one being, “Cryopreservation of organs by vitrification: perspectives and recent advances”

http://www.21cm.com/pdfs/cryopreservation_advances.pdf

This paper explains in detail some of the problems that were overcome at 21CM allowing kidneys to be reproducibly recovered with long-term survival after transplantation as the sole kidney after cooling to temperatures of -22 degC or -45 degC. Each of many treatment groups had sufficient N numbers to show error bars documenting significant differences in outcome for the various treatments. The treatment that allowed survival after cooling to -45 degC had N=8, with tight error bars on the post-transplant serum creatinine time course.

Your assertion of poor experimental control is perplexing. In the above paper we show clear and reproducible differences in post-transplant morbidity and mortality as a function of different kidney treatments, including non-survival of the recipient animal when the kidney was not preserved well enough to support life. Also, the scientific context of these experiments is the extreme difficulty of obtaining survival of any kidney following exposure to sub-freezing temperatures, or cryoprotectant mixtures concentrated enough to prevent freezing at low temperatures. Without dialysis (which we do not do), a non-functioning sole kidney results in post-transplant serum creatinine rising without bound, and death within a few days regardless of medical support. We take these facts as common knowledge, but perhaps it is necessary for others to read earlier papers to appreciate how monumental the accomplishments described in this paper are.

Without this background, it is understandable how a cursory reading of the 2009 kidney vitrification paper

http://www.21cm.com/pdfs/12FahyORG5-3%5B1%5D.pdf

might appear anecdotal and difficult to interpret. The long-term survival of one vitrified kidney was indeed anecdotal. However we were justified in trying the experiment because after establishing our disciplined and hard-won platform at -45 degC, we finally had everything we needed to try the “moon shot” of going below the glass transition temperature and achieving vitrification at -130 degC. We were justified in publishing the positive anecdotal result because it was a major milestone to show that an organ as large and complex as a kidney could survive vitrification, even if just once. It was a demonstration of the intrinsic feasibility of something that had only been theoretical for a quarter century. It meant that there were no inherent obstacles to large and complex organs surviving and functioning after turning into a solid piece of glass. It was a very significant observation.

On another note, it would be nice to see a study from a group that doesn’t have a proprietary stake in the result. People with a profit motive have been known to misinterpret or misrepresent data — I’m not suggesting misconduct, of course, just pointing out that it’s very difficult to believe in a result when the only support comes from someone who might commercially benefit from the outcome.

That’s not really fair. 21CM functions in many respects like an academic research institution with few sources of commercial revenue. Our economic stake in the success of our organ cryopreservation experiments is the same as most academic researchers; persuading benefactors that our research merits continued funding. As a practical matter we are the only lab in the world doing research on vitrifying kidneys, or any large organs. Unfortunately there are no other labs setup right now to replicate this work. The surgical model alone takes years to develop.

The hippocampal slice data are somewhat more promising, but (a) these are very thin samples, and (b) the evidence of successful recovery focused intensely on histological detail rather than function.

This is not correct. The hippocampal slice paper documented successful preservation of histology and function (91 to 108% of controls) in brain slices that had been vitrified.

What does any of this have to do with cryonics? Certainly recovery of a rabbit kidney after vitrification, and recovery of isolated brain slices after vitrification, say almost nothing about what happens to whole human brains that are cryopreserved. The only connection of these experiments to cryonics is that similar cryoprotectant solutions(exactly the same solution in the case of the kidney) are used by Alcor for human cryopreservation. These solutions have exceptionally low toxicity compared to other cryoprotectant mixtures, so cryonicists are conscientiously using the least toxic solutions available to them.

What does this mean for the biology of cryonics? To understand what happens in actual human cryopreservation, we must look not to kidney cryopreservation research or isolated brain slices, but to whole brain cryopreservation experiments.

http://www.alcor.org/Library/pdfs/Lemler-Annals.pdf

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

Rabbit brains perfused with the same cryoprotectant mixture that humans are at all Alcor, and cooled at the same rate that human brains experience, show successful structural vitrification. Due to the long exposure time to cryoprotectants, it is not expected that functional viability is preserved. However if human brains behave as the rabbit brains, vitrification will be achieved, and structural damage from ice will be avoided. Diagnosing and repairing the adverse biochemical effects of the cryoprotectants, whatever they are, is among the burdens of future repair technology.

Generally I agree with you that cryonicists tend to underestimate the difficulty of the repair problem. It will certainly require centuries of advancement. Those who trivialize the problems either don’t understand them, or don’t understand how hard and slow of a process science really is.

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

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 20:28:16 +0100

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

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 20:07:49 +0100

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 London, 2010-07-03: How to think rationally about the future by Paul Crowley

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 09:02:17 +0100

David and I discussed this here. If anyone else sees email problems let me know.

Comment on London, 2010-07-03: How to think rationally about the future by David Gerard

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:15:33 +0100

OT: Your email appears broken. Do you have a working email address at present?

Comment on Non-technical objections to cryonics by Luke Parrish

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:19:47 +0100

Rather presumptuous to trade gran for her money. Kids need to be taught to save and plan for the future, and take intelligent risks. They don’t need to be told that life is full of absolutes. It’s natural to grieve when someone goes into cryo, given that we don’t know they will make it out again. Kids who know about the uncertainty of death (and life, come to that) aren’t going to be weirder than the ones that don’t. Yeah pizza is nice, but you can make your own at home cheaper. A little thrift isn’t a bad thing. And something that gets you thinking about the longer term earlier in life is a good thing.

Comment on Doug Clow on the Whole Brain Emulation roadmap by Luke Parrish

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:14:15 +0100

Slicing for cryopreservation purposes is easier than slicing for scanning purposes as the slice can be around a millimeter thick. UV lasers are ~250 nm wide, so only ~1/4000th of the tissue would be intersected.

Once that is achieved, the three methods of revival would be destructive scan, nondestructive scan, and biological reconstruction. The latter could be facilitated by selectively applied printed magnetics and glues that permit the tissue to join at the original spots and seal shut blood vessels. Stem cells, prosthetic neurons and dendrites, etc. could all be sprayed into place during the reanimation process.

Comment on Non-technical objections to cryonics by RichieKGB

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:48:54 +0100

It is pretty weird and icky I completely agree with that. As for non-technical reasons how about the social contract? When you pass on the majority of people leave their estate to their families. Leaving aside all the inevitable arguments about feeling shafted on grans will lets just look at the concept. This passing on of material possessions helps with the pain of losing someone. Sometimes if your relatives were successfull it can change their whole situation by providing a much needed windfall and or a home. Also (depending on their beliefs of course) I worry about the chidren that are effected by cryonics. If they are told Granny isn’t really dead but is frozen for storage and one day she might come back better than ever — well that kinda sucks. The children don’t really understand the concept of death and may well develop weird belief systems as a result. It’s not fair to impose what i think is a almost religous belief in cryonics onto children. Thirdly using life-insurance to cover your cryonics may seem pretty unselfish way to go. But is it really, what if you die young and use up your 100K on a gamble instead of using it to provide your partner and or children? I suppose you could take out 2 seperate life insurance schemes but come on — lets be serious who is going to do that. Hell people always get shafted on insurance in any case — i say your better off using that monthly payment to get a nice pizza and enjoy your life. :)

Comment on London, 2010-07-03: How to think rationally about the future by RichieKGB

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:31:25 +0100

I really enjoyed your part of the presentation paul — i try and use some of those methods myself (though not always successfully). But what did you think of the following speaker Roko?

Comment on Doug Clow on the Whole Brain Emulation roadmap by Paul Crowley

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:32:12 +0100

people betting against the future advances of science have not had a very good track record.

Do we know this? Perhaps the examples of people betting against and being wrong are just more famous than the perhaps more numerous examples of them being right.

Comment on Doug Clow on the Whole Brain Emulation roadmap by Pore G

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:35:30 +0100

Thanks for tackling some of the issues Doug.

Disagree that prion protein in C-J shows that protein conformation is crucial for scale separation. The prion protein causes native proteins to get out of their own proper folding equilibriums.

You’ll find much better examples of why proteins are important by looking at things like subcellular protein concentration differences (i.e. local ribosome synthesis) and the protein composition at post-synaptic densities.

They key is not whether these different proteins, and their folding state, matter. Of course they do. And of course individual amino acids do, and of course the atoms that make them up do. The key question is whether one can model neuron classes, or neuron subclasses, as one distinct type, and accept that you are missing some variability between neurons, but still profitably predict the variation between individual brains. That is scale separation.

Agree that nanoassembly doesn’t make so much sense. And it might not in the future too. But on the meta level I am willing to accept that people betting against the future advances of science have not had a very good track record.

On imaging side, you seem correct in noting that the best approach would probably be to slice up the brain into little slices and imagine those individually. You say:

“That’s not feasible without destroying at least half of what you’re trying to analyse. When you slice something, you basically smash up a thin column of stuff in the path of the knife (or laser beam, or whatever). And even if you invented some magical way of preparing the samples without that mechanical damage, you’d still have to pull the network of synapses apart in order to expose the surfaces to microscopy.”

There will presumably be some mechanical damage. But one could imagine some kind of knife / laser beam that would imagine as it slices, in the z direction, to capture that information before it is destroyed. This could then be reconstructed later.

Moreover, who’s to say that the slight slight damage from the small laserbeam will be too much damage? Especially if the laser beam could avoid crucial locations such as synapses or dendritic arborizations, which is certainly technically feasible, then you should be fine.

You note that simulating a brain may be easier, and a “better plan.” But there are large ethical and possibly existential risks to this, whereas simply restoring a dead brain to a live one is something that humanity could conceivably be more willing to cope with. Agree that recreating / emulating one individual dead brain should be much more difficult.

They did talk about EM being really close to the resolution necessary. But you may be interested in reading about a new laser that might be able to go even “deeper”, http://home.slac.stanford.edu/pressreleases/2010/20100630.htm .