Anti-cryonics links

[ciphergoth]

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

• Ebonmuse, On Cryonics
• Ebonmuse, Who Wants to Live Forever?
• Why we'll never be downloaded
• Why Minds Are Not Like Computers - actually there's quite a lot of scholarly writing arguing that the idea of simulating a brain on a computer is not merely impractical but impossible in principle.
• Michael Shermer on cryonics
• Skeptic's Dictionary on cryonics
• Cryonics–A futile desire for everlasting life
• Quackwatch - Is Cryonics Feasable?
• Ben Best - Debates about Cryonics with Skeptics (Best is President/CEO of the Cryonics Institute, but this is a snapshot of a debate on the James Randi forums, with a link to the original forum debate)
• Frozen Stiffs, Ruth Holland, BMJ 1981

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.

Comments

[djm4]

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.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Ah, akicif was applying it to the whole of cryonics I think, and I understood you to mean the same. Thanks.

[djm4]

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.)

[akicif.livejournal.com]

(briefly popping back in)

No, I'm closer to 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....

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Is it that you think those people are information-theoretically dead, or something else?