To me, the most relevant reason for not saving for cryonics mentioned here is that the success rate of cryonics is effectively zero at present. I am unconvinced that people being dissatisfied with their current lives is a significant reason for rejecting this procedure. Then again, it might take more evidence to convince me simply because even when I am dissatisfied with my current life, I still think life is far too short. I am more interested in methods of life extension that have more research behind them (alas, so little seems to be known at present). There are lots of unproven methods of life extension, so I’d greatly prefer to invest in something more proven. Perhaps in the future cryonics will have more of a scientific basis. Until then, I’d be more interested in donating to general life extension research than paying for cryonics specifically.
christina
I don’t think the choice is as simple as choosing cryonics or ignoring life extension completely. I am very interested in the idea of life extension, but so far what civilization has achieved in those terms is relatively modest, given that the oldest person to ever live only lived to 122, and I probably can’t hope to even get to that. I would be absolutely thrilled to be wrong about this.
What makes me hesitate about cryonics is that it is so speculative. Perhaps it is possible to reconstruct a living brain from a cryogenically frozen one. However, I would want to have some expectation that this was so. To give an example, the ancient Egyptians believed that mummification allowed one to continue to live. However, as they removed the brain entirely, their strategy for life extension is not one I think you would be interested in investing in (even if no one was saying you also had to believe in Horus,Isis, Osiris, et al). Cryonics seems a much more plausible revival strategy than ancient Egyptian mummification to me, but I also think restricted caloric diets are more plausible than cryonics (given that this has been shown to work on a wide variety of species, even if humans aren’t one of those). You may think that restricted caloric diets could never possibly extend people’s lives as much as cryonics, but I think it is currently impossible to estimate the additional lifespan of a person successfully revived from cryonic extension. Your assumption, I’m guessing, is that this number would likely be large due to improved future technology. Once again, I think this is a huge assumption, and given the large number of things I could conceivably try, I think the best bet would be to first figure out, to the greatest degree possible, the answer to the following three questions:
Is the method a physically plausible way to extend the human lifespan?
What are the costs (in terms of money, quality of life, etc).
What are the likely benefits (in terms of added years of life, quality of life, etc).
And I’m not saying that a person couldn’t choose more than one strategy of life extension. For example, there’s no reason that a person couldn’t choose caloric restriction and cryonics. The only problem with choosing one or more of these (and other) strategies is that you don’t just have the possible benefits, but the very real costs. And the more strategies you choose, the more of those costs you incur (even ignoring strategies that would be mutually incompatible). With caloric restriction, an obvious cost would be that it would take more time and effort or money to stick to the low calorie, high nutrient diet required (you probably won’t find many restaurants or vending machines that serve the appropriate foods in the appropriate portions, so the only two choices would likely be to do all the cooking and meal planning yourself, or to have your own personal chef who is well-versed in such a diet). Also, if you do not have sufficient self-control, you would probably have to have someone hovering over you, forcing you to eat the right foods (significantly detracting from your quality of life and likely also a blow to your finances). For cryonics, the obvious cost is the non-trivial amount of money it would take. Maybe it would be better to find a way to store information about the brain in a computer until it could be restored. Maybe your brain would be better preserved in a jar of formaldehyde (although I’m hoping for the sake of cryonics customers that this isn’t so, some of those who had their brains preserved for science might then gain an unexpected benefit).
So no, I don’t think the success rate of not-cryonics is a guaranteed zero. I don’t even think the future success rate of cryonics is a guaranteed zero, and you could convince me with more evidence that it is not an almost-certain zero. I would consider the successful revival of non-human animals of increasing complexity through cryonics a great first step to proving its viability. And I need more evidence of the expected benefits only because I have ample evidence of the expected costs (nobody is saying cryonics is free). Opportunity cost means that I should make choices not only with the consideration of what that choice might gain me, but also what passing up my other choices might cost me. That’s why I think it’s a better strategy to give money to life extension research now than save up to give to cryonics specifically to freeze me.
I hope that helps to clarify my thinking on this. I am wondering, what experimental evidence in favor of cryonics do you find most compelling? Are there other life-extension strategies you have considered?
EDIT: Curses...my HTML tricks will do me no good here (goes off to search for message board markup tags...)
EDIT: Yay! Fixed! Thanks for the help, @Mixed Nuts and @nsheppard!
I wouldn’t disagree. I stated above that I find cryonics also more plausible than mummification as a life extension strategy, and I think I might place mummification as more plausible than placing a fried egg over someone’s grave. After all, a significantly advanced civiization could perhaps extract enough information from a combination of the person’s genetic material, remaining belongings, and statistical analysis that you could perhaps genetically engineer something close to their original body with it and then add memories sort of like what you think they might have had. I’m pretty sure the fried egg wouldn’t be nearly as helpful. My main objection to cryonics is that I do not find it currently plausible enough to pursue given the fact that it is costly, other possibilities exist, and I do not have sufficient evidence of benefit.
On a completely unrelated note, could you tell me how you made that wonderful link of yours? I would be most appreciative if I, too, could have magical linking powers.
Thanks for the very helpful commenting instructions! Magical markup powers unlocked! I have upvoted your very useful info on this.
As for pitting cryonics against a chthonic fried egg, I’m not sure that proves that cryonics has a decent chance of working, just that it is not completely implausible. I would be more interested in hearing more about what research has been done in this field, although I understand that is a time consuming task and I don’t expect for you to do any research in that area for me (although of course no objections if you wish to).
I am curious why you think it is the best bet given the cost. For example, it probably makes sense as a strategy for someone who is a.) reasonably wealthy and b.) knows they are likely to die very soon, but that’s because the opportunity cost will be greatly lower for such a person. Since they already have the money, they wouldn’t have to sacrifice as much in their (certain) current life to try cryonics for an (uncertain) future life. Also, being about to die very soon makes the opportunity cost of giving up investigation of other options considerably lower.
Still, I don’t think everyone has the same opportunity costs since not everyone lives the same life. I think learning a lot more about life extension is my best possible option, which should then be followed by investing accordingly. I think your comment reflects the feeling that cryonics has an image problem, and I would agree with that. I also don’t think it should have as much of an image problem as it does, even though I currently don’t have any reason to believe it will be overwhelmingly successful. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying whatever seems to be the best option given your own opportunity costs.
Thanks! I’m glad people are being so helpful with this.
Interesting. I’d never heard of this until you mentioned it and I googled a short description. I’ll have to learn what this entails before I can comment more.
Thanks! Upvoted since your responses are highly relevant to my questions.
I’m first looking at the arguments for the science of cryonics that Alcor gives. I do not have much expectation that I can judge all their claims to be valid or invalid yet, but I will give my general impression of the 3 main premises they present on their site here:
1.) Life can be stopped and restarted if cell structure and chemistry are preserved sufficiently well.
Arguments for this are point are based on currently verified procedures such as reviving people after their heart stops, people being revived long after drowning in cold water, freezing embryos, etc. I assume this is the reason you say “cryonics works” based on the history of medicine. I would change this to say that the likeliehood of cryonics working is greater in the universe we live in, because we can now revive people that would once have been irretrievably dead, so it is not inconceivable that people could be revived in the future from some states that would be considered irretrievably dead today. I have no disagreement with this point. I would note that the ‘some’ in the previous sentence is important since it means that it likely matters what strategy is used.
2) Vitrification (not freezing) can preserve biological structure very well.
This is an interesting argument and not one that I was previously aware of, nor of the fact that kidneys have been usable after vitrification or that a cat brain briefly regained EEG capability after vitrification. I thought the pictures were very helpful in showing the structural improvements Alcor says have been accomplished in this procedure, and this increases my confidence that this procedure could preserve information. I will need to look into this determine in more detail what we know about this process. Alcor is pretty clear that the toxicity of the procedure prevents brains from being revived this way today, so I definitely want to try to understand that aspect a little more. It is good to know that the process has improved in preserving visual structure over time, however.
3) Methods for repairing structure at the molecular level can now be foreseen.
True, although I’m not sure if this is an argument so much for cryonics in particular as for finding the most successful strategy for preserving information about that structure in some way. Cryonics may or may not be the best way to accomplish this, and if the best way is mutually exclusive to this method, I think that would be an important piece of information in making the most rational decision.
I will need to look at the other articles some more in the future. I skimmed over them but have not yet had the time to think them over and formulate a response. Thanks for responding to my questions about the available research in the field, the costs, and the opportunity cost.
Thanks! Upvoted for the useful essay link. I have started reading the essay to get more familiar with this.
Hmmm. Okay. I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, though. Are you trying to say that you think this ability is unique but not interesting or that it is interesting but not unique (I would say it is nice to have but not unique)? Is there a reason you have a particular interest in this ability, one way or another, or are you making a comment on the phrasing of the sentence? I looked at the articles you linked to, but the meaning of your comment is still unclear to me. Perhaps I am missing something obvious.
So are you saying that you don’t think it matters if one method is better, as in having more known working components? I’m not sure I understand what method you are favoring here.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I would find it terribly irritating. Would also wonder how much money I could get off a lawsuit. I am not yet sure if cryonics would be helpful in living to my maximum lifespan (which I would like to be as long as possible), but I certainly don’t think this proposal sounds reasonable.
Also, how would it make sense to stop offering cryonics to women who decide to get the procedure in order to punish women who don’t? And wouldn’t that also punish husbands with wives who agree to be placed in cryonics with them? And if you are only postulating stopping unmarried women from joining, rather than women who have husbands who also want to join, again how does this punish these people you dislike who would probably only smile smugly at the news and think “well at least that’s a few less people who can try for immortality!” These women aren’t really any different from a large number of men who say they object to cryonics mainly because they think immortality is wrong (I don’t really think this objection makes any sense, but a lot of people seem to think this way). The only difference is that they happen to be married to men who want this procedure. And if one or the other seriously thinks this disagreement is a problem, maybe they need to end the relationship.
Okay. I see what you were saying now.
I guess to me it seems very important to figure out what would work in terms of both preservation and revival. I see that it could work out to just preserve the brain as well as possible—in some future universes we might imagine, this could work out very well. But I would be more inclined to think this was an easier choice if some of the uncertainty could be removed. I don’t at all mind if other people want to take this risk for themselves, and I hope it works out well for them. But I like to know more about a situation if I’m considering it for myself. I am very risk averse, and I can’t help but worry this could possibly take money I might need later for a medical emergency and then I would die and cryonics wouldn’t work for me. Or it would succeed, but those reviving me would be incredibly hostile. I want to live a long time—but I’m really, really hoping that much of that isn’t also while suffering inconceivable pain. It’s not that I think success is impossible; it’s that I like to know what I’m getting into, as much as is humanly possible.
Well, I do think that someone has to be revived to demonstrate it works. This is not the same as saying that cryonics as it is practiced today couldn’t work. Something can still work even if it hasn’t been demonstrated, but to be demonstrated to work, it has to have already been done. However, I understand why you might want to try it even if it hasn’t been demonstrated, given the potential for benefit.
So I still say that the success rate is zero at present, but this number has the potential to go up in the future. I do not equate success rate with probability of success. The probablility of success is unknown.
Hi, Linda.
That’s interesting. You’re pretty much the opposite of me, then. I experience a wide variety of mental images, sounds, etc. I get a lot out of visual images of things, and I imagine written stories as if they are movies in my head. However, if there is a very technical idea that I can’t visualize either directly or indirectly, I usually struggle to understand it. For example, I am very interested in math and science and also have reason to use them on a daily basis (I am a software engineer who has a lot of scientific hobbies). But I almost always try to understand these topics through charts, graphs, geometry, tree structures, and other types of visualizations of the concepts. I posted a little on the topic how my thought processes work in this article, if you’re curious.
I’m curious about how you process information internally. What methods do you find most effective for learning new material? And for recreation, what is your experience of reading a novel vs seeing a movie? Also, feel free to use those questions on your survey if you’re also interested in other people’s answers to them (I realize the first one is related to a question you ask on your survey, although asking about it from a slightly different angle.
I see now. Thanks for the clarification (and upvoted because of it). The phrasing I used does seem to imply that I don’t think that it is a special talent, although that was not my intent. I actually meant that I can play music in my mind but not on an instrument, nor can I write music (I can compose short melodies in my head, however). I do greatly enjoy being able to listen to songs I know by playing them in my head. Playing them on an mp3 player is a bit higher fidelity, but requires charged batteries, so my ability does come in handy.
Probably a more accurate thing to say would have been that I can hear or compose music in my head, but I do not have the ability to play an instrument, sing, or write music (at least not currently well enough that I would be able to pass any kind of music test whatsoever). I tend to be fairly happy with what I have, actually. While I do compare what I have to what other people have, I am rarely dismayed by the comparison. One reason for this is that other people often have rather different utility functions than I do, so I tend to not be trying to maximize what they are.
I agree that it is highly useful to appreciate what you have. Especially since that will help you enjoy life and solve problems better than the things you don’t have.
Yes, I certainly do know things about cryonics. I know it is a process where those who are currently considered deceased can have their bodies preserved at extremely low temperatures. I know this is done with the hope of reviving those people in the future. I recently learned that I could probably afford it, which was not something I knew before. I also recently learned that cryonics techniques preserve more fine detail than they once did. In fact, both of the things I learned push up the probability that this procedure might be useful to me. Unfortunately, the probablity of success is still unknown. This is because the utility of the procedure is largely determined by a.) what information we need to preserve to preserve personality and memories and b.) changes in technology, culture, and the physical environment in the future.
What do I know about what we need to preserve personality and memories? Well, we need the brain. We need cells in the brain and their connections. What parts of cells? I have no idea. Do neurotransmitter states matter? Again, I have no idea. Is the brain like RAM—do we need to keep a constant current, however small and disorganized, to keep it viable? Good question—but I don’t know the answer. What I don’t know about neuroscience vastly dwarfs what I do. This is because a.) I am not a neuroscientist and b.) even neuroscientists currently know very little about how the brain works, although they know considerably more than I do.
What about b.)? How will technology change in the future? My guess is that it becomes more advanced, but in what way? Well, that depends on people’s priorities, which depends on culture, which is extremely unpredictable. I did not expect, when I was a child, that by the time I became an adult, computers would be involved in nearly every aspect of my life. I also did not predict any of the stock market crashes, any of the wars that occurred, or any of the natural disasters that occurred. My approach to planning for the future, which has worked out suprisingly well for me thus far considering how flawed it is, is as follows:
Think of possible outcomes.
Use my knowledge to act to increase the chance of good outcomes happening to me.
Use my knowledge to act to reduce the chance of bad outcomes happening to me.
When probability of success of a choice is unknown (ie. high degree of uncertainty), replace with high probability of related bad outcomes (ie high risk).
So you can see that number four is hugely flawed, but I find it models how I think of things and how I act pretty well. I posted in a different thread in this article that two possible bad outcomes of cryonics that I could imagine are: 1. that the attempt at cryonics is unsuccessful AND depletes me of resources in a way that somehow decreases my current lifespan. 2. Another possibility is that it would be successful, but that I would then be revived to be tortured for an indefinite period of time. That is the implicit value estimate I make.
Thanks for your detailed response! And upvoted since it gave me a lot to think about in regards to variations on how the mind works.
Hi, Phil .
Seems like some people don’t get them (incidentally, I’d never heard the term ear-worm used for it before now—I always thought of that as song-stuck-in-my head—yours is a good succinct term for it). I get them, though. Songs don’t get stuck in my head too often, however, and I find I can easily make them go away by playing a few songs on a radio or mp3 player that are different from the song that’s stuck there.
I addition, most of the time I can control the auditory channel in my thoughts, so I can use this to listen to songs I feel like hearing, and change these as desired. I can also use this to listen to other people’s voices in my head, or to waves on an ocean beach, etc. I don’t get perfect fidelity of remembered songs, but I can get both instrumentals and vocals. The lower the fidelity of the remembered song, the more the vocals sound like me(if I were a much better singer doing a passable karaoke of it).
Incidentally, why would introspection be bad? As an introvert, I desire large amounts of introspection. In addition, I think that understanding one’s self is essential for knowing what one really wants in life, which in turn is essential for creating plans that will maximize your satisfaction of life. Some examples of this would be choosing the best major for yourself in college, choosing what employment you will seek, and choosing your overall approach to life. I feel this is always one part understanding myself and one part understanding the world.
I have had that ability all my life. I do not experience any sort of auditory or visual hallucinations as a result (I can distinguish the difference between a sound or image from my mind and one from my eyes or ears). I guess it was alarming to you because it turned up suddenly and you had no prior expectation of it. Maybe for some people this is something to worry about, but as long as you can perceive the difference between external inputs and internal ones, this abiility is actually very useful.
I think this is an interesting question. What is it that you want to be able to think of non-verbally? Some of the replies discuss using this to perform mathematical manipulations. Is this your primary goal, or is it something else? What is it you want to process faster? Also, does this mean you want to be able to visualize more, or that you want to somehow think of things in an abstract but still completely non-verbal way (abstract meaning nothing that you could see, hear, touch, taste, or smell)? I may have some input for the first, but not really for the second (at least, not that I know of—the only things I can’t see, hear, smell, taste or touch that clearly exist in my thoughts are my emotions, though these are often also imbued with linguistic and visual associations).
Being able to visualize doesn’t necessarily require cutting off your word-thinking abilities at all. I know this because I think of a lot of things both visually and in words and symbols and tend to swap between the two interchangeably. This is actually my natural mode of thought. Whether you can adopt my approach may depend on how your mental architecture works. On the other hand, maybe it is possible to learn how to adopt this approach even if your mind doesn’t currently work this way, much like people can train to improve their memorization skills. I don’t currently know how easy or hard that is, but I like the approach of trying to change something to see if it works. As I understand it, some people are very good at visualization and some never think in pictures at all and are even surprised to learn that some people do. Some people can play songs in their head, and some people can’t (I can do this, though I have no special musical ability). I know that I often use visualization both when I am doing math and writing novels, and also when I’m just daydreaming. On the other hand, I will sometimes both see and hear words and symbols in my head in addition to or instead of visuals.
What is the current way that your mind works? Are all of your thoughts in your personal voice, like hearing yourself speak inside your head, or are some annotated with pictures, sounds, smells, etc? People have very different ways of naturally thinking about things, so I’d need to know more to write a more detailed response to your question. I would also be immensely interested to know what kind of thinking styles people have here.