To clarify, I am claiming that there is reasonable evidence that vitrification (including E-VT) does not constitute death in the information-theoretic sense. In fact, I think a stronger claim than that is justifiable because information-theoretic death criteria permits situations where inference of absent structure is needed whereas vitrification provides excellent morphological preservation and thus inference of structure is arguably not necessary (i.e. is not necessary if the connectome hypothesis is true). We could term this stronger claim “survival by inference-free information-theoretic death criteria”. This is importantly distinct because it is hard to estimate how reliable or feasible such inference would be (e.g. you probably can’t infer the structure of a snowflake once it has melted).
A stronger claim yet that I do not make is that E-VT currently leads to the preservation of biologically viable cells (upon thawing without the technology for e.g. first replacing cryoprotectant and deactivating autolysis mechanisms that have been triggered by chilling and toxicity). However I do think that E-VT has the potential to accomplish this (for a heavily preconditioned patient) with a few decades of research. Another claim that I do not make is that the patient can survive independently, something that can only be established (on brain that meets neuroviability criteria) when advanced organ printing and/or other cybernetic enhancement technologies permit a brain to survive without its original natural body.
Interestingly, printed/scaffold-grown organs can be preconditioned and gene-tweaked in ways that should make them more susceptible to K-VT and E-VT, for example expressing Trehalose synthesis as response to chilling, or being threaded with thermally conductive.wires during the printing process. It might thus be a short step from whole-brain revivability with lab-grown organs to more routine reversibility of whole-body cryopreservation.
To clarify, I am claiming that there is reasonable evidence that vitrification (including E-VT) does not constitute death in the information-theoretic sense. In fact, I think a stronger claim than that is justifiable because information-theoretic death criteria permits situations where inference of absent structure is needed whereas vitrification provides excellent morphological preservation and thus inference of structure is arguably not necessary (i.e. is not necessary if the connectome hypothesis is true). We could term this stronger claim “survival by inference-free information-theoretic death criteria”. This is importantly distinct because it is hard to estimate how reliable or feasible such inference would be (e.g. you probably can’t infer the structure of a snowflake once it has melted).
A stronger claim yet that I do not make is that E-VT currently leads to the preservation of biologically viable cells (upon thawing without the technology for e.g. first replacing cryoprotectant and deactivating autolysis mechanisms that have been triggered by chilling and toxicity). However I do think that E-VT has the potential to accomplish this (for a heavily preconditioned patient) with a few decades of research. Another claim that I do not make is that the patient can survive independently, something that can only be established (on brain that meets neuroviability criteria) when advanced organ printing and/or other cybernetic enhancement technologies permit a brain to survive without its original natural body.
Interestingly, printed/scaffold-grown organs can be preconditioned and gene-tweaked in ways that should make them more susceptible to K-VT and E-VT, for example expressing Trehalose synthesis as response to chilling, or being threaded with thermally conductive.wires during the printing process. It might thus be a short step from whole-brain revivability with lab-grown organs to more routine reversibility of whole-body cryopreservation.