ciphergoth: (Default)
Paul Crowley ([personal profile] ciphergoth) wrote2010-01-21 11:14 pm
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Anti-cryonics links

I may not reply to everything in that 159-comment thread but thanks to everyone who participated. I hope people don't mind if I carry on asking for your help in thinking about this. I might post articles on specific areas people raised, but first I thought to ask this: my Google-fu may be failing me. I'd appreciate any links anyone can find to good articles arguing against signing up for cryonics, or pointing out flaws in arguments made for cryosuspension. I don't mean South Park, thanks :-) I'm looking for something that really intends to be persuasive.

thanks again!

Update: here's some I've found If you find any of these articles at all convincing, let me know and I'll point out the problems with them. Update: while I am definitely interested in continuing to read your arguments, I'm really really keen to know about anyone anywhere on the Internet who seems well-informed on the subject and writes arguing against it. Such people seem to be strikingly few and far between, especially on the specific question of the plausibility of recovery. There's a hypothesis here on why that might be, but I'm not sure it's enough to wholly account for it.

[identity profile] ciphergoth.livejournal.com 2010-01-22 11:10 am (UTC)(link)
BTW just to understand your position here - you think it's very plausible that cryo patients are not information-theoretically dead, but that even if we avoid early thawing or global catastrophe, it's very unlikely that the technology to return them to life will ever exist?
djm4: (Default)

[personal profile] djm4 2010-01-22 11:38 am (UTC)(link)
Not really. I'm not quite sure how you get that from what I said, and I think you may in any case be confusing me with someone who thinks that cryonics is vanishingly unlikely ever to work (I could understand that, but I'm more in the camp of 'I do not have enough information to make an informed guess'). But breaking it down:

Are cryo patients information-theoretically dead? Probably, as the procedure stands at the moment, although I wouldn't be too shocked to find that they weren't. I can see easily-imagined extrapolations of the procedure (better vitrification techniques to reduce tissue damage; less time between 'death' and vitrification; possibly even vitrification while still 'alive') that make information-theory death less likely. I do think that this offers a better chance of getting back the original 'consciousness' than any currently conceivable method of brain scan, followed by brain rebuild. I'm not sure I'd go anywhere near 'very plausible' without a lot more data, including but not limited to successful vitrification and revival of something like a cat or a dog. (Before you refer me to page 11 of that PDF you linked to, I'm not saying it's 'not science' with out that, just that I don't think it's 'very plausible' without that.)

Is it very unlikely that the technology to return them to life will ever exist? I haven't a clue. I can debunk a specific claim such as 'Transmission Electron Microscopy offers a likely method for mapping a complete brain', but I can't debunk a claim like 'in the next 100 years, we will invent a form of microscopy that can scan the complete brain'. It's too far from what existing technology can do for it to be reasonable to say 'plausible' or 'busted'. The route to it navigates Ant Country through a set of technological developments that rely on each other and we can't even begin to predict beyond the first few steps.
djm4: (Default)

[personal profile] djm4 2010-01-22 12:24 pm (UTC)(link)
I think you may in any case be confusing me with someone who thinks that cryonics is vanishingly unlikely ever to work

Note that my first reply to your earlier post wasn't saying 'I don't want to do it because I don't think cryonics will work', but 'I don't want to do it because I'm quite comfortable with the idea of being dead'. I later had issues with some of the specific scientific claims being made, but I don't think any of that totally invalidates the idea. Even if I were sure it worked, though, I don't think I'd go for it.
Edited 2010-01-22 12:25 (UTC)

[identity profile] ciphergoth.livejournal.com 2010-01-22 12:45 pm (UTC)(link)
OK, thanks for the clarification. That seems like a very different position from "not even wrong", though. Perhaps we have different ideas on the class of things to which you should assign probabilities?
djm4: (Default)

[personal profile] djm4 2010-01-22 01:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Possibly. I admit I'm mostly going on how I've seen you use the phrase, which has seemed to be in similar circumstances. It also seems broadly in line with how Pauli coined it:

"However, this was not his most severe criticism, which he reserved for theories or theses so unclearly presented as to be untestable or unevaluatable and, thus, not properly belonging within the realm of science, even though posing as such. They were worse than wrong because they could not be proven wrong. Famously, he once said of such an unclear paper: Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch! 'Not only is it not right, it's not even wrong!'"

I don't say that about the whole of cryonics. I do say that about much of the 'scientific' evidence presented to support the more speculative bits.

[identity profile] ciphergoth.livejournal.com 2010-01-22 01:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, [livejournal.com profile] akicif was applying it to the whole of cryonics I think, and I understood you to mean the same. Thanks.
djm4: (Default)

[personal profile] djm4 2010-01-22 01:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Right, yes, I can see how that misunderstanding arose. No problem.

(It's probably also worth emphasising that I don't mean it quite a damningly as Pauli would have, although I do think that things that are 'not even wrong' are extremely tricky to debunk.)
ext_16733: (Default)

[identity profile] akicif.livejournal.com 2010-01-22 03:45 pm (UTC)(link)
(briefly popping back in)

No, I'm closer to [livejournal.com profile] djm4's position here, I think.

It'd be really neat if cryonics worked, but I think there are too many obstacles in the way.

And unfortunately they are too big to fit in this coffee break....

[identity profile] ciphergoth.livejournal.com 2010-01-22 03:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Is it that you think those people are information-theoretically dead, or something else?