From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Sun Jul 06 2003 - 22:32:45 MDT
Brett Paatsch wrote,
> > Neither do a lot of former believers, unfortunately.
> > Cryonics has to advance back up to the point where
> > we once thought it already was. We now know more
> > than we did before, and it doesn't look as rosy as it
> > once did.
>
> Harvey, can you expand on this?
We have a lot better imaging technology now, and pictures of patients'
brains who have been frozen. The damage is a lot worse than we thought.
The cells shrank and pulled apart from each other with gaps between them.
Where the cells stayed put, they are disconnected from other cells. Where
the cells stayed connected, they are all pulled together leaving huge gaps.
The structure and positional relationship between the cells may or may not
be recoverable. Some people have likened this result to "hamburger", under
the analogy that resurrecting a brain in that condition would be like
resurrecting a cow from hamburger.
I am still signed up for cryonics, but it seems to be to be a very low
probability chance of success, barely better than nothing. Many people
don't even bother to sign up for this reason. I certainly hope that better
methods can reduce this situation before my time comes.
> When do you think cryonics was at it's high point
> in plausibility and why do you think it is lower now?
Before the imaging we thought a frozen brain looked pretty much like a
brain. We assumed that future technology could fix it, or maybe nanotech,
or maybe we could just scan the structure and build a new brain. Now after
we have a better picture of what is going on inside and at the cellular
level, the picture literally looks worse than we expected. That is why I
consider cryonics to be lower in plausibility now than in earlier years. We
have more information, and the newer information isn't good.
> If I was to make one overriding criticism of the transhumanism
> movement it would be that there is entirely too much
> "believing" going on and too little structured critical thinking
> where assumptions are made explicit and are themselves
> open to constructive criticism. We, this generation, including
> transhumanist that I'd hoped would know better, seem to be
> in serious danger of "believing" (as opposed to critical thinking)
> another couple of generations to death.
This is what drives me crazy. So many people are quoting slogans or going
on "faith" in science and technology. Science and technology aren't
supposed to based on "faith". It is so rampant that I believe that MOST of
the claims and predictions we hear today in the movement are over-hyped and
predicted to occur much sooner than they will. This is NOT to say that I
don't believe in this stuff any more. But it isn't here yet. Somebody is
going to have to actually learn the technology and work on this stuff for a
few decades to bring about the stuff we are talking about. The pop-culture
level of discussion we usually see just is out of touch with reality.
> http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Papers/PBAoNP.html
> http://sageke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sageke;2003/1/vp1
I can't get to either of those pages, but I do applaud any real scientific
work being done. I don't mind popularizing and discussion either. Let's
just get it right. Hype, over-selling and misinformation won't help our
cause.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISM, CISSP, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified InfoSec Manager, Certified IS Security Pro, NSA-certified InfoSec Assessor, IBM-certified Security Consultant, SANS-cert GSEC <HarveyNewstrom.com> <Newstaff.com>
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