Cryonics Wants To Be Big

The most important reason that cryonics wants to be big is because if people thought that they were going to be alive in the future, then they would work hard to prevent the future from going wrong. They would also work hard to prevent cryonics from going wrong, and it would be made illegal for cryopatients to be thawed, eliminating a huge risk in the success of cryonics.

For me, the deciding factor is cost. I would be willing to sign up for cryonics at 1/3 the current cost. However, this is unlikely, since I had to negotiate to get the smaller amount of life insurance I actually needed -- my cost would currently be about $15/month life insurance and $10/month CI fee. No matter how much we cut the cost of cryonics, my life insurance refuses to charge less. One solution is a cryonics group willing to take care of the life insurance themselves -- go under $100,000 -- then this would help cut the bottleneck cost.

Oh, also I'll commit to signing up for cryonics when it drops below $10/month. And perhaps before, since there's a good chance cryonics prices slowly drop or a singularity occurs before I'm 40.

Given the large storage mass involved, preventing temperature fluctuations without being at the exact boiling temperature of LN2 is feasible; it could be both highly failsafe and use the ideal cryonics temperature of -135C rather than the -196C that LN2 boiloff as a temperature regulation mechanism requires. Feel free to raise further issues in the comments.

Wow, that's incredibly attractive - it would completely eliminate cracking as we pass through the glass transition temperature. I take it that would also reduce LN2 costs by a further 30% or so?

Does anyone have some actual numbers on what fraction of the expenses of existing cryonics companies are spent on cooling? That should give an indication on how much can be saved by scaling up.

In fact, we can be mathematically precise about this. Consider the equation for heat conduction (Q watts) through a spherical shell, where T and t are the outside and inside temperatures, R is the outer radius, r is the inner radius:

Q = 4 x k x pi x R x r x (T-t)/(R-r)

For R > 2r, this equation says that the power getting from the outside to the inside scales only linearly in the overall size of the system (and further increases in R/r make no more difference). But the volume of cryogen stored in the inside sphere scales as the size cubed. This means that the boiloff time scales inverse-quadratically in system size, which in turn means that you could construct a sufficiently large system that it wouldn't need topping up for a century or so (sufficiently large being a mere r=15m or 3000 tons of liquid nitrogen, and a cost of $50M or so). Such a system would virtually eliminate the risk that the patient is killed because the cryo company goes bust, because it would have zero maintenance cost, and would be like a "cryonics grave".

Incorrect demanding further proof for an idea with as many single points of failure as cryonics is logical and sensible. The ability to make a rational decision means you need sufficient evidence of a sufficient quality to make you conclusions. Eliminate some more single points of failure from cryonics then maybe. Its like thinking you can solve a math problem with ten variables where you only have information and relations for two.

This paragraph seems very confused. You have made a decision, have you not? You have decided not to be cryopreserved. And you've made it with no more information than we have. The fact that your decision consists of deciding upon inaction, doesn't make it not a decision. Whether you choose to be cryopreserved or not, you have to choose one way or the other, albeit not necessarily explicitly. You are simultaneously claiming that a rational decision is impossible while arguing for your decision! It's not clear to me how that can be considered consistent. One of these choices is the "default" one, to be sure, but that's just a result of current circumstances; it's not inherent in the problem.

Furthermore you seem to be insisting that it is necessary to know cryonics works before considering it worthwhile. This is false; it is only necessary to assign it a sufficiently high probability of working to make it worth it. Ultimately, you look at the evidence you have, you assess a probability, and you make a decision based on that. Simply saying "we don't know" doesn't suffice to make a decision - in particular, it doesn't suffice to make the decision not to be cryopreserved any more than it suffices to make the decision to be cryopreserved. An actual probability is needed.

I also don't understand your claim that at sufficiently low levels of information, rational decision is impossible. What exactly do you propose as a way to make decisions at low information, how is it not rational, and how does it support the decision you've made not to be cryopreserved?

Gosh I have no life here I am throwing more pearls before swine.

We are clearly not worth your time. Please give up on us.

Looking at:

http://www.secularhumanism.org/fi/dealing-with-dying/hoffman.jpg

...it shows lots of small freezers on wheels - and not one big one.

So, perhaps there are factors involved which have not been considered in this analysis. It would seem that the benefits of large size run into diminishing returns, and the costs rise faster. It is the same reason why there are no surviving land animals bigger than an elephant.

I already stated that I disregarded the last link for lack of evidence that the source is trustworthy (published papers and the like).

I don't see where you said that. And even given that, I find that response to be deeply confusing. We are talking about this post http://lesswrong.com/lw/1rv/demands_for_particular_proof_appendices/) yes? That post has nothing to do with specific claims of evidence. It is a self-contained argument about what sorts of arguments are or are not valid when discussing cryonics, or for that matter, when discussing any future technology. I don't see what trustworthiness has to do with the arguments there. Can you point to specific claims in that post that you would want to be backed up by evidence that isn't there?

Actually to be fair cryonics has to many single points of failure yet to be avoided to make deciding about it any thing more then a total crapshoot.

I'll refrain from quoting The Princess Bride but what do you mean by "to be fair" in that sentence? Normally when that phrase is used people are mentioning an argument which goes against the position that they are arguing for, or to clarify that a position being argued against is not the position of some relevant source. How are you using that phrase?

In general, telling Bayesians that something is a "total crapshoot" isn't generally helpful. We can make estimates for technologies.

Who knows but this falls in the realm of a problem with to many unknowns making it impossible to answer. So I say anyone claiming otherwise is claiming based on blind faith not on reason.

But there are many things which aren't unknown. We have a pretty decent understanding of how brain tissue functions. We know that synapses (barring acousting fractures resulting in large sheering) are by and large intact. Many things aren't unknowns. And this really doesn't help given that even most proponents of cryonics agree that the chance of revival may not be very high. So where in any of that is there "blind faith?" Are you using the term "blind faith" in a non-standard fashion?

You guys like cryonics thats lovely I hope it works for you.

Another reason you are getting voted down may be the lack of grammar and spellchecking which reinforces the perception that you aren't putting much effort into your posts. One doesn't need perfect grammar and spelling. But many modern browsers have an option (often set as the default) so that words which are not in the spellchecker turn up with a red underline. "Thats" turns up red on Firefox for example. "That's" does not. Your sentence above could also use a few other punctuation marks. Two periods and a capitalization of the T would be nice.

Aside from the poor grammar, the most puzzling thing about this sentence is that it doesn't seem to fit in with your earlier attitude. I would find your remarks more believable if you switched from contempt to careful neutrally writing. But in this case, your sentence seems almost Pi radians from [your earlier position http://lesswrong.com/lw/2f5/cryonics_wants_to_be_big/28wx where you talked about "corpse popsicles" and talked about "popsicle people" being "e revived from popsicle land, which is the flip side of Mr Rogers neighborhood." Frankly, this looks like another attempt at emotionalism rather than rational argument, this time trying to appear like your attitudes are more sympathetic to pro-cryonics people than they are. Frankly, this attempt comes across as so clumsy it might be more damaging to the goal of getting people to listen to you than you would if you just kept up the "corpse popsicle" language.

Please go away.

Incorrect demanding further proof for an idea with as many single points of failure as cryonics is logical and sensible. The ability to make a rational decision means you need sufficient evidence of a sufficient quality to make you conclusions. Eliminate some more single points of failure from cryonics then maybe.

You seem to be confusing matters. It might help to reread the essay about the particular proof demand. No one is arguing that more evidence wouldn't be a very good thing. I have my own list of things that I'd like to see. No one is arguing that one can't say "I want more evidence" or "A,B and C would convince me that this was worthwhile." What is a problem is when one your claims is "I want a demonstration of complete revival." And the problem with that is simple: no one is claiming that we are able to do that now or that we are anywhere near that capability. This would be as if we were discussing the possibility of eventually sending a very slow probe to Alpha Centauri fifty or a hundred years from now and one insisted that the only thing that mattered is whether you could see a working probe now. See the problem? One is making a demand for something which even if everything the tech proponent says is correct, they shouldn't be able to produce.

Incorrect demanding further proof for an idea with as many single points of failure as cryonics is logical and sensible. The ability to make a rational decision means you need sufficient evidence of a sufficient quality to make you conclusions. Eliminate some more single points of failure from cryonics then maybe.

Ok. So what are the single points of failure you want eliminated? Why don't you give a list of what you think the single points of failure are and then we can discuss whether those points are as severe as you think they are.

Moving on, you discuss the work with rat hippocampal material, you say:

This is very different then taking a dead brain and re-activating it. Just because the cells are viable doesn't mean you can restart the neural processes once stopped. Not to mention there is a huge amount of work to prove that which could be derailed easily.

I'm not sure what you mean by the second sentence. The first sentence is interesting because we know that neural processes can be restarted. For example, rats and dogs can be deprived of oxygen and brought to hypothermic temperatures so that brain activity is close to zero and then brought back up with minimal problems. Neural structure is pretty robust. To use what may be a weak analogy, it functions much more like a CPU than like RAM. This is well understood.

One organ revived and implanted in a living organism is a long way from some 100 year old corpse popsicle being revived from the dead. One in no way implies the other. (For gods sake have you ever actually studied biology)

The length of time of preservation is not very relevant. We know that at liquid nitrogen temperatures the vast majority of chemical reactions become negligible. So the "100 year old" part isn't relevant. I also don't think that anyone is claiming that these successful studies with rabbits imply that cryonics will work. To be very explicitly Bayesian P(cryonics working|rabbit kidneys can successfully be vitrified and revived with negligible damage) is greater than P(cryonics working).

(For gods sake have you ever actually studied biology)
In summary a swing and a miss from Roko.

It seems like you are personalizing this conversation unnecessarily. This does not help having an actual discussion where we each learn interesting things and come away with something useful. It is likely a major reason that you are getting voted down.

I have to wonder given your personal attacks above, and your apparent return to using the phrase "corpse popsicle" when even the simple "corpse" would get your point across, what are you attempting to accomplish? Are you trying to understand why some people here consider cryonics plausible or worth looking into? Are you trying to convince the individuals you are talking to that they shouldn't engage in cryonics? Are you trying to convince people who are not posting but might read that they shouldn't engage in cryonics? Are you trying to have an open exchange of ideas and information? It doesn't seem like your strategy would succeed at any of those things. So what is your goal?

Actually to be fair cryonics has to many single points of failure yet to be avoided to make deciding about it any thing more then a total crapshoot.

Are you stating a preference for allocating resources towards finding out whether it will work or not?

I can respect that. Let's make a deal. When you can get science to prove cryonics is not going to work, I will give up my intention to be cryopreserved.

As a side note, what if you knew the exact odds of it working, and it was say 1 in a million. Assuming that your life is worth 5 million dollars, would you put $5 towards cryonics?

Ok, this is the point where I decide to be mildly obnoxious and use Sam's work as an indication that humans have many more cognitive biases and fallacies than even people at LW realize. In particular, the above post displays a large amount of artificial classification in trying to claim that specific scale issues somehow become differences in kind. This seems very similar to (for example) creationists who claim to accept microevolution but not macroevolution. Moreover, the presence of these problems does not leave in some cases even after prolonged exposure to careful rational and critical thinking.

The fourth point does a good example of this:

Cryonics has many single-points of failure and many unresolved questions: A couple examples: a.) Is there anything fundamental about death the precludes the possibility of restoring life? b.) Is it possible to maintain self/person-hood by simply maintaing physical state integrity? c.) Is the general concept of organ preservation able to be scaled to entire bodies or is there a limit to what can be restarted? d.) Is a living organism required to overcome the effects of the cryopreservation? etc.

To be sure, there are other problems here as well (such as the heavy overlap between a,b and c and the fact that a seems to take "death" as a potentially ontological fundamental phenomenon), but the issue I want to focus on is c, "is the general concept of organ preservation able to be scaled to entire bodies or is there a limit to what can be restarted?" This is an assertion that while any single part of a system can be restarted, somehow it takes a much higher burden of evidence to assert that the entire system can be restarted. This seems similar to the micro/macro fallacy but I'm not sure what precisely the fallacy is. I'd almost be tempted to coin a new one, something like "failure to reduce."

I have to wonder if this sort of thing is an indication that LW is not substantially succeeding in improving rationality. Sam's first comment on LW was about a year ago, and his posting quality has either remained the same or declined during that time (although to be fair it is difficult to distinguish between rationality and civility issues in his case.) Now, it seems based on comments Sam has made that it is probable that he hasn't read the sequences. Sam's emphasis on wanting to only read "authorities" may play a role but that may be simply a specific defense in this case against reading posts which challenge his worldview (the strongest evidence for this case is that people have summarized the demand for particular proof argument and he's still ignoring or misinterpreting it) . Is Sam a representative sample? If there are a substantial number of people here who have gone through and interacted with the community and yet have not improved their rationality, does that suggest we have a problem that requires a change in tactics?

Sam certainly isn't the only example of this sort of problem, and even the general community here sometimes demonstrates strong biases that impact their evaluation of claims(I've noticed this most strongly where evaluations of historical claims are concerned). So, are we succeeding? Should the presence of people like Sam mean we should be concerned that we are not?

The reply link isn't there for the post where you laid out your point of view.

I can understand thinking that cryonics is unlikely to work and therefore thinking that it's not worth doing. What I can't figure out is why you're so angry about it.

Using a large unit for cryonics does have some complications. One would need to be able to be able to add people in at different times without disrupting the temperature. And when we eventually start taking people out they'll need to be able to remove the the then repairable ones without disruption to the more injured/sick. I suspect that neither of these will be a large technical hassle. Maybe someone who knows more about low temp engineering can comment if that's correct.

Cryonics wants to be small, or why should the future want you?

All this technical discussion misses what I see as the major problem of cryonics if it works as advertised - why should the future want us?

Imagine if today were discovered few frozen Homo habilis and had technology to revive them. After, they would spend their lives in comfortable zoo that is paradise by ape men standards ( plentiful food! no dangerous beasts! warm shelter!)

Now try the same scenario, but with few millions of our frozen ancestors. The results will be same - at best, few dozens would be picked to be resurrected and studied, but I cannot see us welcoming millions of new hairy citizens.

Conclusion - to me it seems that if you want to maximize chance of future society resurrecting you, keep cryonics as close guarded secret of tiny elite...

Sam,

The nanotech required is so far outside of current science that trying to predict what it can do is a hard problem at best

I wanted to pick on this in particular, because you seem to be saying "there's no overwhelming evidence either way, so I can believe whatever I want". But really, advanced molecular nanotechnology does have evidence in favor of its eventual achievement:

For example, progress in self-assembly with DNA nanotechnology (http://www.physorg.com/news9322.html), primitive nanomachines that locomote (http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v2/n2/abs/nnano.2006.210.html), etc. These are small steps that we are seeing today, yes.

You can't claim to be doing good-quality futurism if you don't assign some probability to current trends continuing, and it is especially bad to say "you can't prove that X will happen, therefore I'm allowed to believe that it definitely won't happen".

Rather, you should assign a probability to the events in question occurring.

Which means that there is a probability of cryonics working, and most people say it's around 10%.

to many single points of failure = a crapshoot when trying to be rational about something

Actually, it's pretty simple. Take each point of failure and rate its probability of actually happening. Then multiply all those chances. Say you stack three 99% chances of failure. That's a one in a million chance. If your life (in terms of willingness to pay) is $5M, it is rational to pay $5.

On thing that strikes me: has anyone told you about information theoretic death vs. legal death?

The idea of somebody being information-theoretically alive is simply that if their brain is in a state such that you could read it with some kind of advanced technology (e.g. advanced nanotech) and logically infer what their brain used to be like before they died, which would then allow you to repair the brain atom-by-atom.

The difference between information theoretic death and what we would call medical or legal death is that legal death changes over time as technology gets better.

Information theoretic death is what cryonicists care about.

I really think people shouldn't downvote SamAdams to -7. This is a reasonable comment from somebody who hasn't read the sequences.

In large enough quantities, it is conceivable that indefinite storage costs would be as low as $50 per person, or 50 cents per year.

Could you provide a cite for this? Thanks!

Is it established that molecular nanotech is required? Uploading might be possible with scanning technology of sufficient speed and accuracy, for example. Just because someone three hundred years ago might have suggested that flapping wings was necessary to flight doesn't mean that the technology that eventually succeeds need use them.

Sorry. Er, that post had a formatting error that was making most of the post not appear (I don't fully understand how to do html links. Sometimes they garble stuff up and make sections not visible). The full post is now actually visible. If someone else had wrote was visible there I'd have probably downvoted it to if I could.

I don't think we should go into details on this. It's creepy enough that lifesaving stasis now involves having your head cut off. I don't think it will reassure people to learn that the ideal it to then drop it into a giant jar of heads. i know it would be a giant frost metal ball, but in my mind's eye it's transparent and the heads are shrunken.

You guys are aware that the type of cryonics you are talking about doesn't exist. So far nobody has been revived from a frozen state. Sure they may be able to freeze organs or small scale things but that is a long ways from resurrecting a dead frozen human.

You also do realize that cryonics may never work in which case you are turning yourself into a corpse popsicle and having to pay for the honor.

How in the world can you assign any value to that proposal? There is a total lack of evidence in support of resurrecting a frozen human because its never been done and as of now nobody knows if it is even possible. So essentially cryonics is a way to spend money on a one in a million chance you might be revived in the future. Why? I would much rather bet on life extension then cryonics.

What you hope is that in the future, if it happens, where this is possible that they won't just ditch all these warehouses of corpse popsicles because it is deemed to be a waste of money or not cost effective to defrost millions of 1000 year old, way past their prime, corpse popsicles.

Food for thought my future corpse popsicles.