16 replies to this topic

[travel]

Whenever I talk about cryonics most people say that they cannot believe in that technology because no one has ever revived a mouse (or any mammal) from vitrification.

If anybody could make that happen it would be much easier to convince people of cryonics.

I know that reviving a mammal is extremly difficult. However what do you think? How long will it take until someone can show a revived mammal from vitrification?

[Mind]

I doubt that reviving a mammal would create A LOT more interest in cryonics. Sure, it would be a great advance and would spur some new interest in cryonics and new medical practices, but the rejection of cryonics goes much deeper than the lack of evidence of reversible cryopreservation. Just look at this forum. There are a lot of highly intelligent people here, who can easily foresee future technological advances that would make cryonics a reality. They know that there are no known laws of physics that would rule out reversible cryopreservation. Yet only a tiny fraction of Longecity forum participants have signed up for cryonics. Most reject it outright. Many people here want to live indefinitely, yet do not want to consider cryonics.

If you can figure out why so many people at Longecity reject cryonics, then you will find out how best to promote it in the future. I think it has to do with the "death trance" that so many people have talked about. People might say they do not have the "death trance", but in their rejection of cryonics (or other extreme methods of preserving individual consciousness) they reveal the opposite.

[travel]

In my opinion if someone is really interested in a very long lifespan he should consider cryonics. Cryonics is a very difficult technology of course but completely reversing the aging process seems to be MUCH more difficult. Furthermore there a so many diseases (not only cancer) that are deadly and it will take a long time until we can cure every disease. So you cant only die from aging.

Many people that I talk with are generally interested in cryonics if there would be a strong evidence that it works. I know that there are many good facts right now but the majority of the people cannot be convinced by that facts. In my opinion a reanimated mammal would be a very strong evidence especially for non-scientists.

[Musli]

I agree with travel. I'm one of those who need a proof that vitrification works to consider cryonics. I've always been a healthy skeptic, especially since I am sth between atheist and agnostic, so you know I need some kind of evidence to support it. And if there's no proof that something doesn't work, it doesn't mean that it works, either. More importantly though, I'm from Poland and cryonics seems expensive for us, Poles, so such evidence would make a HUGE difference
"Completely reversing the aging process seems to be MUCH more difficult" - if it's that much more difficult, we should be really close to being able to revive vitricated mammals. And we're not. Why? Well, I think it's because it isn't really that much easier :|

"I doubt that reviving a mammal would create A LOT more interest in cryonics." A lot - no, but it would convince those who are not sure about cryonics, but still prefer it over "afterlife". There's not many people supporting life extension in the first place, so, obviously, there's even less interest in cryonics.
"If you can figure out why so many people at Longecity reject cryonics..." I'd say most people simply don't believe that it works, and won't change their stance unless proven otherwise. Some may also think that even if it works, people in the future will need a reason to bring the cryopreserved to life and rejuvenate them, as opposed to just dumping them somewhere, cuz they're legally dead anyway. I can easily imagine some people in the future thinking "It's already too many people living on Earth atm, why bring all those cryopreserved to life? What's in it for us?" With no guarantees whatsoever, some people may think it's better to give the money to the living ones (family, poor or sick people), instead of spending it on gambling.

Edited by Musli, 19 March 2012 - 08:07 PM.

[Mind]

Yes, cryonics would benefit from a demonstration of reversible cryo in a mammal model, but believe me, the rejection of cryonics goes much deeper than objective proof. I have been talking to people about radical life extension and cryonics for over a decade now and I have found there is a lot if irrational resistance.

[travel]

Do you agree that a reanimated vitrified mammal would be a very strong evidence for most people? When demonstrating that at a mammal why shouldnt it work at a human? Thats why at this time we can say that cryonics is a technology that works.

Then the key question is: Would there be more interests for cryonics if there is evidence that it would definitely work?

So why should cryonics be interesting for somebody?

- Perhaps most important: If you are dieing young this is your only chance of surviving.

- If you believe that aging wil be stoppable in the future -> very long lifespan

- Even if you dont believe that -> Take a look at the future in  ~1000 years, maybe the coolest journey ever

Thats why in my opinion if cryonics works definitely there would be many interests.

Edited by travel, 20 March 2012 - 03:19 PM.

[treonsverdery]

well if somebody made a really popular cryonics anime then cosplayers might go with being frozen at their own crystal fortress, that way outright simulation of make believe would launch them nto being frozen, then revived, possibly at an animeish future.

[Elus]

I wonder if this would work:

[Luke Parrish]

Here's my thought: There's no rational reason to reject cryonics based on the lack of reversible vitrification of mammals because that is a completely different area of study. Cryonics is doing the best we can with what we have, and any child can see the chances are better than rotting as a corpse. Despite what many in cryonics seem to think, researching how to do better is NOT the same concern as doing what we already know can be done.

But you should be disturbed nonetheless by the relative lack of focused research and activism in that area. It is just as viable if not more so than SENS or any other anti-aging approach to AEV. Anti-aging will be harder to solve for several reasons:

• Experimental subjects must undergo aging to test therapies. This takes time.
  
• Aging is metabolic damage, which is very complicated and involves lots of unknowns. Damage from cold is relatively straightforward, and we know what causes it.
  
• Animals serving as experimental subjects for aging have different enough metabolisms from us as humans that the way they age is not necessarily portable to human testing.
  
• Humans are already dramatically life-extended as mammals, so the evolutionary low-hanging fruit may already be picked. Strategies that extend the life of a mouse may already be used by humans, so discovering them wouldn't do us any good.
  
• Once you find a successful therapy, you aren't automatically at AEV. You have to keep an intensive and successful research program going until it has been cured for good. Damage-free cryopreservation of individuals (which I consider a totally different category from cryonics) is by contrast something that can bring someone forward by hundreds of years without new innovation.

Part of the political problem is the lack of well known words to describe the distinct concepts. Thus people end up interpreting their (justifiable) unease with the situation as if it were skepticism for cryonics. Once you separate out the concepts, cryonics looks more sympathetic and the tech goal of reversible preservation looks more like a cause desperately in need of support.

In fact, I'd almost rather see cryonics (the practice of doing what we can) not exist, than to see the research (improving on it with the goal of demonstrable reversibility) not happening. The former only saves people who are psychologically capable of accepting uncertainty, and then only of the bet is right. The latter can go immediately into a clinical setting and save thousands of lives per day -- up to 100,000 or more if we can gather the political clout to implement it globally.

[Mind]

Reversible cryopreservation of a mammal is difficult. Maybe we should start a lot smaller and slowly work our way up. Start with some of the smallest living things known, get some succes under our belt, and then move onto more complex organisms.

[treonsverdery]

One thing about cryopreservation is that there are a vast number of simple approaches which people have, as far as I know, yet to try.

Trehalose is the cryopreservative of some fish as well as the cytoplasmic  cushioning material that permits the resurrection plant to revive after dry storage.  Viewing the molecule though it is easy to see how it could be made more cryopreservative,  the location of all those OH as well as H groups do hydrogen linking with cytostructures providing, it is thought, imitation water structural support.   I think a mathematician could refigure the hydroxyl (oh) as well as hydrogen positions throughout this sugar to create the very greatest likelihood of linking more fully as well as politely with cytostructures.   Further, halogenation usually causes greater strength linkage to cytostructures yet with fluorine it usually the other way, so a partially chlorinated partially flourinated trehalose could be simultaneously super supportive as well as minimally "overbearing"  possibly orders of magnitude better as a result of both diffident as well as superstrong halogen effects.


viewing the image I made  there are two variations which have a possible reason to be higher performing crypreservatives

On one I fluorinate (swap H with F) slightly more of those atoms that jut towards the viewer (symbol looks kind of like >)  
Noting that trehalose is thought of as a water replacer that pads molecules thus maintaining their form, kind of suggests chlorinate the the atoms nearest the oxygens, which is sort of like the version where you "glue the padding to the sides of the container" compared with the version where you "glue the padding to the main object"  which would be making-OCl groups.   of course we all know that if you blend three kinds of padding, or research those molecules that are most sensitive you can get your padding right



If a researcher blended trehalose with cytoplasm then noted which areas of trehalose most frequently were near a protein preservation nonoptimality then those atoms could be fluorinated or chlorinated to create greater preservation.   It is also possible that a modified version of trehalose might be more effective at cytomembrane transport providing greater concentration at the nucleus.  Melatonin, which looks like tryptophan concentrates at the nucleus, so part of melatoinin attached to part or all of trehalose might create an order of magnitude cryopreservative at the nucleus.  A methylated trehalose might gather near parts of lipid membranes reducing harm to cytomembranes.  There are numerous possible beneficial variations.

 halotrehalose variations as better crypreservatives.png   43.86K   1 downloads

Edited by treonsverdery, 08 May 2012 - 11:59 PM.

[benbest]

travel, on 16 March 2012 - 09:50 PM, said:

Whenever I talk about cryonics most people say that they cannot believe in that technology because no one has ever revived a mouse (or any mammal) from vitrification.

If anybody could make that happen it would be much easier to convince people of cryonics.

I know that reviving a mammal is extremly difficult. However what do you think? How long will it take until someone can show a revived mammal from vitrification?

You could say that billions of dollars spent on cancer research is a huge waste of money because curing cancer has not been proven to work in small mammals. There is no proof that cancer can be cured. I am not being entirely sarcastic about this, but I would give a higher probability for success to most of the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence to achieve rejuvenation. Knowledge of the forms of damage that result in aging  is the first step toward repairing that damage. With cryonics the problem is similar: there is damage to be repaired, and it is not unreasonable to believe that in 50 or 100 years the molecular repair technology will be available. It would be foolish to believe that humans will never be able to live on Mars until you see humans living on Mars. The ability to extrapolate from present technology to future technology requires more sophistication than simplistic empiricism.

Concerning proof of principle, see my essays on "Cryopreservation as a means of Suspended Animation"

http://www.benbest.c...ics/Crypto.html

Notably reversible cryopreservation of insects and similar small animals from cryogenic temperatures

http://www.benbest.c....html#cryogenic

and reversible vitrification of mammalian organs

http://www.benbest.c...to.html#mammals

If it seems probable to a person from indirect evidence that future medicine will be able to revive cryonics patients, and the person makes cryonics arrangements based on that understanding, there is a good chance that this person will enjoy future life and youth. Those who refuse to believe that future medicine will be able to revive cryonics patients until a mouse is revived from cryogenic temperatures will not make cryonics arrangements and will have no hope of benefiting from future medicine. This is not the same thing as being "saved by faith" -- it is being saved by the ability to make rational assessments on the basis of indirect evidence.  No one has ever seen an electron or a proton, but the existence of these particles is universally accepted among scientists on the grounds of indirect evidence.

[Luke Parrish]

Just to clarify, as a thought experiment, suppose you had $10 billion to invest over the course of 10 years. If you put it all towards a given goal, which one do you think would have the highest probability of being accomplished:

• Significant extension of human life through regenerative medicine / SENS.
  
• Clinically reversible cryopreservation of a human being.

To expand upon this, we could do a graph of solution-probability estimates for $10bn/10yr through $50bn/50yr. Another useful set of data points would be which approach benefits most from more money being sunk into it. This kind of data would tell us which one to raise the most funds for, and we could tune it to however much money we think we can raise.

How to collect data for such a graph? Perhaps we could survey scientists. For now, we can do simple crude thought experiments based on the available data.

There are also marketing questions. Can people be persuaded to use technology A more easily than technology B? How much added investment in advertising does it take to get them to use cryonics to extend their lives versus regenerative medicine? Is the required marketing to get them to all use today's cryonics less costly than the research to get to the reanimated human stage? Would it be less costly to get to the reanimated mouse stage and then market cryonics?

This all deserves detailed analysis, which I have not seen anywhere. The fact that 100,000 people die every day can be approached rationally and quantitatively, but it seems there is little interest in doing so. With all due respect to Ben, his approach seems to be to damn those who reject cryonics over this to their fate... That just doesn't sit right with me. Humans are malleable, with proper advertising they will do more or less anything you tell them. The question is strictly one of how expensive the battle is.

Perhaps there are strong intuitions that advertising cryonics will result in everyone converting cheaply even with no additional breakthroughs, but I don't think this is the case -- I think most people see this as an expensive marketing project indeed, because cryonics is seen as faith-based. Rather it seems like converting people would be significantly cheaper if the technology to reanimate them exists, particularly if they are in pain and this offers an inexpensive non-death way out of it.

I also have concerns that regenerative approaches will be more expensive to convert people over to than reversible cryonics. The first few tries could have nasty side effects, and clinical trials to do it right / make sure it was done right seem like they would take a long time. Reversible cryonics would be tested right away and the bugs worked out quickly -- the same tech that works well for 1 year works for 100 years. Scientists in particular would trust and recommend this more, IMHO.

[benbest]

Luke Parrish, on 19 May 2012 - 09:54 PM, said:

I also have concerns that regenerative approaches will be more expensive to convert people over to than reversible cryonics. The first few tries could have nasty side effects, and clinical trials to do it right / make sure it was done right seem like they would take a long time. Reversible cryonics would be tested right away and the bugs worked out quickly -- the same tech that works well for 1 year works for 100 years. Scientists in particular would trust and recommend this more, IMHO.

I would be very supportive of your approach, Luke, if I thought it would be as easy as you apparently do
to reversibly vitrify a mouse. I don't see this being possible within 30 years even with vast expenditures
of money. And I don't imagine someone doing this for the purpose of marketing cryonics. I think that an
X-prize to reversibly vitrify a mouse would be a very bad idea, because an X-prize would only make sense
if it could be achievable in a reasonable time-frame (five years) with less than billions of dollars.

[Luke Parrish]

Well, the only other thing I can think of that would convince large numbers of people that cryonics can work (meaning, soften them up to a well marketed message) is if you could demonstrably keep a brain alive without a "body". Obviously the mechanisms to maintain homeostasis have to exist in some form (hence a body in a manner of speaking), but if you could use all artificial parts with perhaps a bio-printed liver it might prove the concept well enough.

A sub-goal of that would be perhaps something along the lines of printing a liver and keeping it alive in an artificial body-like system for several months at a sufficiently low cost.

[Dystopya]

I guess many haen´t bothered signing up at a cryonic institute because it doesn´t sound very promising right now..and certainly won´t in 20 years. So they wait and might think: Before I spend my money for something that doesn´t work now, I just could wait and see if it´s worth putting money in in 30 years because most pople of this forum will still live in 2040..to see how it all turned out. And there might be a certain amount of laziness and still the fact, that this is all still very far away until we have to deal with it...at least a certain percentage might think this way.

[Luminosity]

I don't think that will ever happen, but I do not support animal research.