Cryonics – RationalWiki

Cryonics is the practice of freezing clinically dead people in liquid nitrogen with the hope of future reanimation. Presently-nonexistent sufficiently advanced nanotechnology or mind uploading are the favored methods envisioned for revival.

Scientists will admit that some sort of cryogenic preservation and revival does not provably violate known physics. But they stress that, in practical terms, freezing and reviving dead humans is so far off as to hardly be worth taking seriously; present cryonics practices are speculation at best, and quackery and pseudoscience at worst.

Nevertheless, cryonicists will accept considerable amounts of money right now for procedures based only on vague science fiction-level speculations, with no scientific evidence whatsoever that any of their present actions will help achieve their declared aims. They sincerely consider this an obviously sensible idea that one would have to be stupid not to sign up for.

Cryonics should not be confused with cryobiology (the study of living things and tissues at low temperatures), cryotherapy (the use of cold in medicine) or cryogenics (subjecting things to cold temperatures in general).

That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.

Cryonics enthusiasts will allow that a person is entirely dead when they reach "information-theoretic death," where the information that makes up their mind is beyond recovery.

The purpose of freezing the recently dead is to stop chemistry. This is intended to allow hypothetical future science and technology to recover the information in the frozen cells and repair them or otherwise reconstruct the person, or at least their mind. We have literally no idea how to do the revival now or how it might be done in the future but cryonicists believe that scientific and technological progress will, if sustained for a sufficient time, advance to the point where the information can be recovered and the mind restarted, in a body (for those who see cryonics as a medical procedure) or a computer running an emulator (for the transhumanists).

Most of the problems with cryonics relate to the massive physical damage caused by the freezing process.

Robert Ettinger, a teacher of physics and mathematics, published The Prospect of Immortality in 1964. He then founded the Cryonics Institute and the related Immortalist Society. Ettinger was inspired by "The Jameson Satellite" by Neil R. Jones (Amazing Stories, July 1931).[1] Lots of science fiction fans and early transhumanists then seized upon the notion with tremendous enthusiasm.

Corpses were being frozen in liquid nitrogen by the early 1960s, though only for cosmetic preservation. The first person to be frozen with the aim of revival was James Bedford, frozen in early 1967. Bedford remains frozen (at Alcor) to this day.

New hope came with K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation, postulating nanobots as a mechanism for cell repair, in 1986. That Drexlerian nanobots are utterly impossible has not affected cryonics advocates' enthusiasm for them in the slightest, and they remain a standard proposed revival mechanism.[2]

A major advance in tissue preservation came in the late 1990s with vitrification, where chemicals are added to the tissue so as to allow it to freeze as a glass rather than as ice crystals. This all but eliminated ice crystal damage, at the cost of toxicity of the chemicals.

Upon his death in 2011, Ettinger himself was stored at the Cryonics Institute in Detroit, the 106th person to be stored there. In all, over 200 people have been "preserved" around the world as of 2011. [3] There are about 2000 living people presently signed up with Alcor or the Cryonics Institute the cryonics subculture is very small for its cultural impact.

Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.

Cryonics for dead humans currently consists of a ritual that many find reminiscent of those performed by practitioners of the world's major religions:

As the Society for Cryobiology put it:

The Society does, however, take the position that cadaver freezing is not science. The knowledge necessary for the revival of whole mammals following freezing and for bringing the dead to life does not currently exist and can come only from conscientious and patient research in cryobiology, biology, chemistry, and medicine.

In the US, cryonics is legally considered an extremely elaborate form of burial,[4] and cannot be performed on someone who has not been declared medically dead. You are declared dead and your fellow cryonicists swoop in to preserve you as quickly as possible.

The body, or just the head, is given large doses of anti-clotting drugs, as well as being infused with cryoprotectant chemicals to allow vitrification. It is then frozen by being put into a bath of liquid nitrogen at -196C. At this temperature chemical reactions all but stop.

Long-term memory is stored in physical form in the neural network as proteins accumulated at a chemical synapse to change the strength of the interconnection between neurons. So if you freeze the brain without crystals forming, the information may not be lost. As such. Hopefully. Though we have no idea if current cryonics techniques preserve the physical and chemical structure in sufficient detail to recover the information even in principle. Samples look good, though working scientists with a strong interest in preserving the information disagree.[5]

Recovering the information is another matter. We have not even the start of an idea how to get it back out again. No revival method is proposed beyond "one day we will be able to do anything!" Some advocates literally propose a magic-equivalent future artificial superintelligence that will make everything better as the universal slam-dunk counterargument to all doubts.[6]

Ben Best, CEO of the Cryonics Institute, supplies in Scientific Justification of Cryonics Practice[7] a list of cryobiology findings that suggest that cryonicists might not be completely wrong; however, this paper (contrary to the promise of its title) also contains a liberal admixture of "then a miracle occurs." His assertions as to what cited papers say also vary considerably from what the cited papers' abstracts state.

Alcor Corporation calls cryonics "a scientific approach to extending human life" and compares it to heart surgery.[8] This is a gross misrepresentation of the state of both the science and technology and verges on both pseudoscience and quackery. Alcor also has a tendency to use invented pseudomedical terminology in its suspension reports.[9][10]

Keeping the head or entire body at -196C stops chemistry, but the freezing process itself causes massive physical damage to the cells. The following problems (many of which are acknowledged by cryonicists[11]) would all need to be solved to bring a frozen head or body back to life. Many would need breakthroughs not merely in engineering, but in scientific understanding itself, which we simply cannot predict.

This is the big problem. The two existing cryonics facilities are charities with large operational expenses run by obsessive enthusiasts. They are small and financially shaky.[20][21] In 1979, the Chatsworth facility (Cryonics Company of California, run by Robert Nelson) ran out of money and the frozen bodies thawed.[22][23] The cryonics movement as a whole was outraged and facility operators are much more careful these days. But it's an expensive business to operate as a charity.

The more general problem is that many cryonicists are libertarians and, unsurprisingly, have proven rather bad at putting together highly social nonprofits designed well enough to work in society on timescales of decades, let alone centuries. The movement has severe and obvious financial problems the cash flows just aren't sustainable, and Alcor relies on occasional large donations from rich members to make up the deficit.[24][25]

Insurance companies are barely willing to consider cryonics. You will have to work rather hard to find someone to even sell you the policy. There are, however, cryonicist insurance agents who specialise in the area.[26]

Of the early frozen corpses, only James Bedford remains, due to tremendous effort on the part of his surviving relatives. Though they didn't do anything to alleviate ice crystals, so his remains are likely just broken cell mush by now.

There are many medical issues connected with reanimation, but it is worth pointing out that a reanimated person faces numerous non-medical issues after returning to society. These might include:

All of these could cause the person great social, not to mention psychological, problems after revival. The person may also experience identity crisis or delusions of grandeur.

Cryonics, in various forms, has become a theme in science fiction,[27], either as a serious plot device (The Door into Summer, the Alien tetralogy), or a source of humor (Futurama, Sleeper). Its usual job is one-way time travel, the cryonics itself being handwaved (as you are allowed to do in science fiction, though not in reality) as a pretext for one of various Rip Van Winkle scenarios.

As a fictional concept, "cryogenics" generally refers to a not-yet-invented form of suspended animation rather than present-day cryonics, in that the worst technical issue to be resolved (if at all) in the far future is either aging, or the cause of death/whatever killed you.

Timothy Leary, the famous LSD-dropper, was famously interested in the "one in a thousand" chance of revival and signed up with Alcor soon after it opened.[28] Eventually, though, the cryonicists themselves creeped him out so much[29] he opted for cremation.[30]

Walt Disney, who is cited in urban legend as having had his head or body frozen, died in December 1966, a few weeks before the first cryonic freezing process in early 1967.

Hall of Fame baseball player and all-time Red Sox great Ted Williams was frozen after he died in 2002. A nasty fight broke out between his oldest children, who had a will saying he wished to be cremated, and his youngest son John-Henry who produced an informal family agreement saying he was to be frozen. This resulted in a macabre family feud for much of the summer of 2002. Williams was eventually frozen.[31]

Cryonics is not considered a part of cryobiology, and cryobiologists consider cryonicists nuisances. The Society for Cryobiology banned cryonicists from membership in 1982, specifically those "misrepresenting the science of cryobiology, including any practice or application of freezing deceased persons in anticipation of their reanimation."[32] As they put it in an official statement:

The act of freezing a dead body and storing it indefinitely on the chance that some future generation may restore it to life is an act of faith, not science.

The Society's planned statement was actually considerably toned down (it originally called cryonics a "fraud") after threats of litigation from Mike Darwin of Alcor.[33]

It can be difficult to find scientific critics willing to bother detailing why they think what the cryonics industry does is silly.[34] Mostly, scientists consider that cryonicists are failing to acknowledge the hard, grinding work needed to advance the several sciences and technologies that are prerequisites for their goals.[17] Castles in the air are a completely acceptable, indeed standard, part of turning science fiction into practical technology, but you do have to go through the brick-by-brick slog of building the foundations underneath. Or, indeed, inventing the grains of sand each brick is made of. (Some cryonicists are cryobiologists and so are personally putting in the hard slog needed to get there.)

Cryonicists, like many technologists, also frequently show arrogant ignorance of fields not their own not just sciences[35] but even directly-related medicine[36][37] leaving people in those fields disinclined to take them seriously.

William T. Jarvis, president of the National Council Against Health Fraud, said, "Cryonics might be a suitable subject for scientific research, but marketing an unproven method to the public is quackery."[38] Mostly, doctors ignore cryonics and consider it a nice, but expensive, long shot.

Demographically, cryonics advocates tend to intersect strongly with transhumanists and singularitarians: almost all well-educated, mostly male to the point where the phrase "hostile wife syndrome" is commonplace[39] mostly atheist or agnostic but with some being religious, and disproportionately involved in mathematics, computers, or physics.[40] Belief in cryonics is pretty much required on LessWrong to be accepted as "rational."[41]

Hardly any celebrities have signed up to be frozen in hopes of being brought back to life in the distant future.[42] (This may be a net win.)

Cryonicists are some of the smartest people you will ever meet and provide sterling evidence that humans are just monkeys with shiny toys, who mostly use intelligence to implement stupidity faster and better.

When arguing their case, cryonics advocates tend to conflate non-existent technologies that might someday be plausible with science-fiction-level speculation, and speak of "first, achieve the singularity" as if it were a minor detail that will just happen, rather than a huge amount of work by a huge number of people working out the many, many tiny details.

The proposals and speculations are so vague as to be pretty much unfalsifiable. Solid objection to a speculation is met with another speculation that may (but does not necessarily, or sometimes even probably) escape the problem. You will find many attempts to reverse the burden of proof and demand that you prove a given speculation isn't possible. Answering can involve trying to compress a degree in biology into a few paragraphs.[35] Most cryonicists' knowledge of biology appears severely deficient.

Cryonicists also tend to assert unsupported high probabilities for as-yet nonexistent technologies and as-yet nonexistent science.[43][44][45] Figures are derived on the basis of no evidence at all, concerning the behaviour of systems we've built nothing like and therefore have no empirical understanding of they even assert probabilities of particular as-yet unrealised scientific breakthroughs occurring. (Saying "Bayesian!" is apparently sufficient support with no further working being shown under any circumstances.) If someone gives a number or even says the word "probable," ask them to show their working.

One must also take care to make very precise queries, distinguishing between, "Is some sort of cryogenic suspension and revival not theoretically impossible with as yet unrealised future technologies?" and "Is there any evidence that what the cryonics industry is doing right now does any good at all?" Cryonics advocates who have been asked the second question tend to answer the first, at which point it is almost entirely impossible to pry a falsifiable claim out of them.

When you ask about a particularly tricky part and the answer is "but, nanobots!" take a drink. If it's "but, future nigh-magical artificial superintelligence!", down the bottle.

Cryonicists are almost all sincere, exceedingly smart, and capable people. However, they are also by and large absolute fanatics, and really believe that freezing your freshly-dead body is the best current hope of evading permanent death and that the $50120,000 this costs is an obviously sensible investment in the distant future. There is little, if any, deliberate fraud going on.

Some cryonicists considered the Chatsworth facility going broke to be due to fraud, but there's little to suggest it wasn't just the owner being out of his depth.

In widely-reported allegations by their ex-COO, Alcor have been incredibly careless with the frozen heads in their care.[46] Alcor denies all allegations, tried to get his book blocked from publication[47] and threatened further legal action. However, considering what fanatics cryonics people are, the allegations are unlikely to be true, despite how widely they were reported.

Cryonics enthusiasts are fond of applying a variant of Pascal's wager to cryonics[48] and saying that being a Pascal's Wager variant doesn't make their argument fallacious.[44][45][49] Ralph Merkle gives us Merkle's Matrix:

The questionable aspect here is omitting the bit where "sign up" means "spend $120,000 of your children's inheritance for a spot in the freezer and a bunch of completely scientifically unjustified promises from shaky organizations run by strange people who are medical incompetents." It also assumes that living at some undetermined future date is sufficiently bonum in se that it is worth spending all that money that could be used to feed starving children now.

When you freeze a steak and bring it back to edible, I'll believe it.

The basic notion of freezing and reviving an animal, e.g. a human, is far from completely implausible.

Instead of freezing your brain ... how about plastinating it instead?[69]

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Cryonics - RationalWiki