LONGECITY

This will be the American edit of the "Death in the Deep Freeze" Zig Zag documentary that recently aired in the UK. It is being shown on the National Geographic channel program "Naked Science" at 10:00 PM Wednesday Sept. 20. Additional air dates at the link below.

http://channel.natio...0609202200.html

Just watched it on google video... pretty interesting, and informative!

just watched it. great show.

Brian, do you think the show conveyed the general potential of cryonics?

Does the Google video violate copyright? Can I ethically watch it there, or do I have to find some way to pay for the video?

QJones, the Google video almost certainly violates copyright.

Damnit, I've already half-watched it (listened to it, actually).
There are some commercials left it, so I was exposed to them.

I didn't see the American version last night, but I heard that it was substantially the same as the British version with "mismatched" American narration in place of the original British. That's disappointing because I was hoping the more gory parts would be edited out. Like one of those real life ER shows, it's not something that kids can watch.

...just watched it. great show.

Brian, do you think the show conveyed the general potential of cryonics?

You know, it's funny. The general reaction I've heard from people not very familiar with cryonics is that they found the show fascinating. In contrast, the general reaction from people who know cryonics well seems to be disappointment. One Alcor official believes the show is actively damaging, and should not be promoted. In my own case, I think the documentary failed to communicate the central idea of cryonics, which is that declarations of death in contemporary medicine are essentially arbitrary, and that the objective of cryonics is to preserve *THIS* life, not buy a second life after death. I also found the quality of the scientific discussion of what cryonics proposes to do to be low (no discussion of ischemic injury, brain cryopreservation, diversity of proposed repair strategies, or information theoretic death). There was also the usual problem of woefully uninformed critics attacking strawmen. It was mostly a human interest story.

There are so many layers of theory involved in cryonics that it may be impossible to properly deal with the subject in a one hour show aimed at mass audiences. Maybe someday an extraordinary bright journalist unburdened by cultural prejudices will get the best spokespeople and some informed critics together and do it right.

Thought it would have been taken down from google already...

 

In my own case, I think the documentary failed to communicate the central idea of cryonics, which is that declarations of death in contemporary medicine are essentially arbitrary, and that the objective of cryonics is to preserve *THIS* life, not buy a second life after death.

That is the only way I have communicated cryonics to people successfully. One reason, is it is a very powerful message that takes almost no time to say. Another is when someone finds out that I am signed up, they always say something about "after you are dead" which gives me an opening to explain it. It also puts the focus on the science of time of death, not on a human in an ice cube. So, usually it goes from, "what you are doing that?", to " insert joke here containing the word dead", to them being interested in the topic.

Is it essentially a case of .......nanotech, game over?


I mean, if freitas conceptions come to fruition, how much further would nanotech need to progress to nake reanimation feasible on a cellular level?

Nanotech + insanely high levels of data processing capability and processing power. Though mature nanotech should speed up the development of appropiate computing power immensely.