Talk:Cryonics

Pascal's Wager Section
David Shaw has a paper on Pascal's Wager and cryonics which could be used to expand the section on that subject: http://philpapers.org/rec/SHACSL


 * If Pascal's Wager is work, which choice is more rational and wise ? Cryonics or Religion (e.g. Christianity) or Both (but you may be seriously punished by God because God don't like people practice cryonics) ?

Rabbit kidney example STILL 100% wrong after 9 years
https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Cryonics&diff=next&oldid=1484020

Look at the source. Full text is free, anyone can do this. Control-F "euthanized for histological follow-up on day 48".

Simple argument against
Since the process has been developed have any celebrities/significant persons being cryonicised? If they have not, then the process does not work. (Whatever flaw there is in the logic is significantly smaller than the flaws in the logic of the proponents.) Anna Livia (talk) 18:10, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Baseball player Ted Williams - David Gerard (talk) 19:23, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Not known in the UK - and according to the page at the other place there is some uncertainty as to whether he so wished.
 * Has 'the Donald' said anything about the matter? Anna Livia (talk) 20:00, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing the logic here. Why would celebrity involvement - one way or another - affect the analysis? There are plenty of celebs who are involved in nutty stuff, and there are plenty who are not.  For example, some are vaccinated and some are not.  So what?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 13:44, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
 * As 'they' aren't all rushing in to be deep-frosted (so they can live off 100 years of royalties etc) then why should we do so (plus, the 'when the power starts running low the cryonics will be rather below the world seed banks in the priority of things). Anna Livia (talk) 16:41, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * You can find tons of articles about how the super-rich are (anonymously) trying to live forever by all available means, including cryonics. I don't really see it as a significant argument in either direction. Rich people try alternative medicine, worship God, and so on. Some of what they do can be explained by the decreasing marginal utility of dollars making moonshots become economically rational beyond a certain level of wealth. 174.55.237.45 (talk) 10:42, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Finances
A note about organizational problems and finance issues that the article is talking about. For example:

''This is the big problem. The existing cryonics facilities are charities with large operational expenses run by obsessive enthusiasts. They are small and financially shaky. In 1979, the Chatsworth facility (Cryonics Company of California, run by Robert Nelson) ran out of money and the frozen bodies thawed. 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.''

''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.''

and

''Finance etc. — the person would presumably have to support or fund themselves (or worse, be an indentured servant to pay for the unanticipated electrical bills from centuries of freezing). Many technical qualifications will be obsolete. The person's assets may have also been mismanaged or their money made worthless by changes in currencies.''

Alcor claims that they place a significant portion of the member's money into an Investment Account managed by Morgan Stanley called the "Alcor Care Trust Supporting Organization", which is legally a separate entity. In other words, Alcor claims that even if they go bust, there is still funding available to keep you frozen, potentially revive you, and potentially have some money left over for your hopefully fully re-animated self to spend/re-invest. https://www.alcor.org/library/the-alcor-patient-care-trusts/

In other words, with the investment account mentioned above, Alcor has claimed to solve the problem of cryonics companies going bust and the bodies they kept frozen thawing in the dewars. So the article should at least make a mention of it.

Recent work investigating physical viability
Less than a year ago, Robert Freitas (author of the 1999 Nanomedicine book) created another book investigating whether cryonics is physically possible. Unlike a lot of other literature, this does incredible diligence into sticking to physics, citing sources, and being falsifiable. It also acknowledges limitations in its assumptions, and (reluctantly) the possibility cryonics could be impossible. For context, I used to believe in cryonics but stopped after reading the RationalWiki article. I still think this work is very intriguing, and debating its contents could make conversation about cryonics more science-based/productive.

Key paragraphs from the foreword (disclaimer: not endorsed by the Society for Cryobiology):

''Therefore, despite several favorable signs, injury induced by present cryonics procedures cannot be repaired without highly advanced future repair technologies that can be applied to cryopreserved systems. Therefore, the second question, pertaining to the ultimate feasibility of these technologies, remains essential for the evaluation of cryonics, and is fortunately the major issue addressed in this book.''

''Cryonics, uniquely, is a present practice that is largely based on the possibilities of future technology, but the future has always been hard to see. Now, exactly 60 years after cryonics was first proposed in 1962, Freitas has provided a highly concrete glimpse into a future in which a set of definable and technically defensible future technologies could be equal to the task of repairing virtually any degree of biological injury associated with cryonics. His new comprehensive and falsifiable framework for debate and discussion may well lead to less dismissal and more serious consideration of the proposition of cryonics from this point forward. In that sense, just possibly, cryonics itself, if not yet those who have undergone it, may be at the threshold of a new awakening.''

Full link: https://www.alcor.org/docs/CryostasisRevivalV2.11.pdf