squrqimus:
I'm fully open to explanations of why some particular death-avoiding strategy wouldn't work, provided that they are A] well researched, and B] not just That Wolf repeating variations on the theme of "you should die" over and over again. Also: you are using the word "spiritual" wrong. It's not a pejorative, nor does it mean pigheaded. Spiritual means that someone thinks there are spirits separate from the body. Transhumanism is one of the least spiritual philosophies there is, as it actively rejects that notion. But, more generally, saying a philosophy is "spiritual" isn't the same thing as saying it is bad. You should not use that word in that way.
That Wolf:
I know I said I was done with this thread, but your latest post shows that you're at least willing to look up information about the arguments against cryonics, if not the well known counter arguments. I'll list them briefly; ask if you need more detail on any particular.
-Cryonics does money, and your numbers are actually a bit low, given that you'll probably want to pay the fee to have a standby team ready to get your health starts failing. That said, the usual way to pay for it is with life insurance, and dues plus an overfunded insurance policy comes out to around 80$ a month in my case. I feel like that is worth it.
-No, it isn't guaranteed. No brain revivals have been successful. But they've managed to preserve (yes, using the "antifreeze" method you describe) and revive a kidney, then successfully transplant it with no complications or loss of function. And there's no magical difference between a kidney and a brain. What works for one should, in principle, work for the other. The fact that they don't literally freeze people in literal ice is not a downside when the newly developed methods work better than ice.
-Getting the team to the hospital, getting you and getting your brain preserved all do indeed take time. People have considered this problem and planned around it. Alcor encourages people who have reason to suspect they will legally die soon to either pay for a standby team to get ready, or to move close to their facility so you can be transported quickly. There's even a fund set aside to help you move if you're diagnosed with an acutely fatal illness. It's also a really good idea to avoid going places where there's a strong danger of dying in a way where your brain can't be recovered.
-Mostly Alcor doesn't worry about the dead body. The majority of policies are for just the head. There's good reason to think that just the brain is all that's needed, because the contains
all of the really essential things that make a person who they are. Again, totally willing to get into this in greater detail if requested.
-It's actually quite a bit more 500$ a year, but that doesn't actually matter. The "that money could be used to help people" argument applies to everything from video games to food to posting on the internet. Obviously no reasonable person is going to spend every last dollar they earn on charity, and electing to spend 80$ out of my discretionary budget on this instead of fast food or shopping trips does not make me a bad person.
-Cloning does not work that way. First, neither bone nor hair actually have DNA in them. Secondly, you'd be better off getting the DNA sequenced and stored electronically in a digital format rather than trying to preserve the original parts. But, most importantly: a clone is not the same person as the original. It won't have any of your memories, it won't be raised in the same environment, it won't develop the same way. It's more like having a twin sibling than making a new instance of the original person.
-Brain destruction is a thing that would foil any sort of cryopreservation plan. That is rather the point - cryopreservation is about taking reasonable precautions to avoid your brain being destroyed, in hopes of preserving the contents to be revived in the future. If we ever get to the point where there's a better way to preserve brain contents (like, say, translating them into an electronic format) cryonicists will start advocating that instead of advocating the preservation of actual physical brains. The good news is that whatever future technology is going to be used to read the contents off a preserved brain will probably allow electronic backups of the brain to be made the same way. And if it doesn't, it'll be a high priority to invent something that does.
TempAcc:
Quantum physics does not work that way. "Observation" in a quantum physics sense of the word is not the same thing as observation in the humans looking at things with eyeballs sense of the word. Likewise, the reputable quantum physics version of the many worlds hypothesis has to do with phase configurations of self-interacting particles, not with parallel universes. Robert Lanza is a very good biologist, I'm sure, but his physics credentials are shaky. In particular, I found his "A New Theory of the Universe" article in American Scholar to be very wooly. It's one thing to embrace block time. I'm all for that. Even timeless physics, if that pans out. But insisting that empiricism is false, space and motion are the result of biological observation and anything that can't be observed by a biological entity is mere speculation is less a step for far and more sprinting into the distance.
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Topic: Spirituality and Consciousness (Read 9385 times)