X-Message-Number: 32979
References: <>
From: Gerald Monroe <>
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2010 13:27:26 -0500
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32974 - #32976

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To Charles in Arizona : most of your points are probably factually correct.
 But the question is : what are the alternatives?  It is estimated that a
touch over 100 billion people have ever lived.  Out of those, at least 95
billion have already died, with less than 100 people ever cryopreserved.
 Unless you propose to found a new cryonics organization, it looks like your
fate might be the same as nearly all of humanity.  I'm sure many of those 95
billion people feared their deaths, even before human language existed.
 Many of those humans probably lived rich, memorable lives the memories of
which are gone forever from this realm.

Also, your attitude is wrong.  Death is not a mild, far off event.  It's a
terrible storm driven backed up by the unavoidable laws of thermodynamics
and entropy, with minions that do include "regulators, legislators, judges,
police, hospital administrators, coroners".  The handful of cryonics
organizations are comparable to the few human survivors of the last ice age
huddling together in a cave sharing warmth against this awful storm outside.
 Even if Alcor and CI and the others had bigger budgets this would not
change the problems much.

Anyways, your attitude is that those who bring more stuff with them when
they enter the cave should receive preferential treatment and we should
throw out some of the poorer individuals out into the cold, because it isn't
'profitable' to care for them.  Even if the resources are there to preserve
them, and they paid enough to cover most of the costs.  In a desperate
enough situation, perhaps your attitude would be pragmatic, but it strikes
me as simply wrong.

Your attitude also ignores the real costs of cryonics.  With any luck, they
are significantly lower than the sticker price of the fees charged.  I don't
know what these are, but they are the costs of transport, the preservation
team, the chemicals, and the cost of adding a small amount of liquid
nitrogen to a tank for at least a century.  Rudi Hoffman that the latest
chemicals are very expensive, which is why Alcor has raised the cost of a
neuropreservation to $85k. However, hopefully, these fees that Alcor charges
and has had to raise over the years leave an adequate buffer that will keep
them afloat until something better comes along.

There is reason for optimism.  Alcor has kept patients frozen for nearly 40
years.  A reasonable guess is that within another 100 years, either the
technology to do revivals will exist or we will be close enough to such
technology that the society of the future will see preserving cryonics
patients as a much higher priority.  Sure, a few scientists know the tools
are physically possible today, but the majority of the population does not.


A good example that some here will remember : how many people were
interested in space travel before the Mercury spacecraft and the moon
landings?  An educated person could have predicted manned spaceflight in the
1930s, all the precursor technology was there and the mathematics all lined
up.

Even in this less than ideal world, if you do everything right you probably
have a better than even chance of getting your frozen memories into a future
that can appreciate them.  You are correct that paying $2 a day isn't enough
to maximize your odds.  Just do that and your odds are probably lower. You
have to keep yourself in good shape to lessen the chance that you die
suddenly from heart failure.  Pay for lots of medical tests, including
probably those 'unnecessary' MRIs and imaging tests to spot possible
aneurysms and tumors and other nasty surprises.  Make as much money as you
can, and save as much as you can without unduly compromising your lifestyle.
 When you become older or sicker, move to a place as close as possible to
the preservation lab of the cryonics organization you are a member of.  Have
a means to call for help, and try to work somewhere or surround yourself
with relatives or people who can call for help if your body fails suddenly
and unexpectedly.  Once you develop a terminal illness, move into a nursing
home or hospice that has a relationship with the cryonics folks.

And have more money remaining after death than the minimum fee.  Donate a
chunk to the organization keeping you suspended, and set up one of those
lichenstein trusts to provide for your reanimation.  If you don't have a ton
of money, maybe going to work for one of the cryonics organizations directly
just might improve your chances.

Do all this, and the odds are probably 'better than even'. (greater than
50%) Looking at a cause of death table for the U.S. population, most of the
causes are ones that would not result in a sudden, totally unexpected death.
 Also, most causes of death do not destroy the brain.  Since no-one in a
reasonably well funded cryonics organization has ever thawed in ~40 years,
the odds on the back end of surviving a century are probably pretty good.
 Even if your preservation is not perfectly performed, with perhaps a delay
of a few hours, so long as the synapses are still mostly present it is
plausible that a revival could be done.  We do know that information is
stored in a manner in the brain that involves massive duplication of data,
and degradation of memories is usually fairly graceful.  (neurological
disease often damages the areas of the brain needed to access memory data,
not necessarily the memories themselves, which is why Alzheimer's patients
near death can still have a 'lucid day'  where they apparently recall
significant amounts of information)  A molecular scan of even a heavily
damaged brain should recover a tremendous amount of information.

Note I haven't formally calculated the probability because a small change in
assumptions would greatly affect the final result.  Also, these events are
not independent of each other.  For example, for several reasons the
probabilities of different causes of death for the general population are
not the same as the odds for the average person who is a signed up for
cryonics.

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