Yuck.

That's an interesting thing to witness...a Sci-Fi author referring to cryogenic suspension with terms like "they froze his noggin".

Wow.

--Dan

So. not only do we have to figure out the thawing process, and cure whatever took the poor man's life, but also how to reconnect his SPINAL CORD.?.?.

What a sad waste.

From CNN's Paul Begala back at the time of the man's demise (http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/07/10/cf.crossfire/index.html):

"Dr. More [president of the Extropy Institute], let's talk about some of the -- I think, silly, absurd, but practical ramifications of your position. If such mythical technology ever takes place and we can revivify an 83-year-old Floridian like Ted Williams, what are we going to do with this army of 83-year-olds?

Do they get back Social Security? Do they get their inheritance back that they left to their kids? Do they still qualify for rent control for all the years that they were in frozen suspension? What are the pragmatics of this?"

I'm intrigued by 'accidentally cracked 10 times.' Just how many cracks can a frozen head take before even the most optimistic of cryogenics enthusiasts will give up on it?

"neuroseperation". lol.

The article also reported that some of his DNA had gone missing (don't ask me how they knew--boggles the imagination). Look for an amazing Little League hitter down the road a bit.

"So. not only do we have to figure out the thawing process, and cure whatever took the poor man's life, but also how to reconnect his SPINAL CORD.?.?."

Yeah, that struck me too. The original purpose of freezing only the head was to save storage costs (!). But if they're freezing the body too, separating head and body actually increases the storage costs, not to mention reducing the likelihood of eventual revivification.

(I'm only posting this so that I can use the word "revivification".)

"Yeah, that struck me too. The original purpose of freezing only the head was to save storage costs (!). But if they're freezing the body too, separating head and body actually increases the storage costs, not to mention reducing the likelihood of eventual revivification."

I'm going to guess that by the time you sit down with an Alcor rep to run some numbers over how to freeze your head, the cost/benefit analysis is going to get odd. You have to juice the richer stiffs to cover the costs from the loss leading "head only" jobs. They undoubtedly fed him the line of "Sir, if we for some reason CAN NOT relivify your whole body, your head will have gotten the more delicate preservation needed to graft your bean to a future robotic frame or newly beheaded, black market human donor body from Southeast Chopistan"

(I'm only posting this so that I can use the word "relivify")

One of the "Life in Hell" books did a gag on this. Jeff and Ackbar's Cryogenics Hut, or something like that. One of the panels showed technicians gathered around a dog with Binky the rabbit's head sewn on it. "Welcome to the future! You owe us one million dollars."

As I recall, extropian / cryogenic dogma has given up on actual ressurection of the frozen corpse. They're assuming cloned bodies with brains recreated by nanotech disassembly of the frozen brains.

all of our cells are full of water, which has the nasty tendency of expanding while freezing into sharp pointy crystals. The crystals extrude out of the surface of the cells and all directions... so when they find a cure for being 83 years old they'll then have a nice mush pile to subject to revivifalization.

Edited by author 08-13-2003 08:12 PM
I once got cornered by an over-the-top extropian who explained that once they've turned all the matter in the solar system into processing units, they'd use the phenomenal computing power available to do mix-and-match pattern matching of scanned-in images of the ice-damaged fragments of frozen brains until a simulation of the resulting neural net produced a coherent personality.

I suggested that the future AI software people would probably rather use all that processing power to run MUDs.

Then I ran away.

If you have your dad frozen, is he a Pop-sicle?

Seriously, though, it amazes me that many of the people who actually fall for this stuff are actually smart people.

Is cryonics actually legal?

"I once got cornered by an over-the-top extropian who explained that (...) pattern matching of scanned-in images of the ice-damaged fragments of frozen brains until a simulation of the resulting neural net produced a coherent personality."

So the best hope that they can offer is not that YOU will be rewilifried (now ya'll got me doing it), but that maybe a copy of you can be made. Wotta gyp!

(Of course, not even the eternally skeptical Leonard H. figured out that the transporter did worse than to "scatter his molecules across the galaxy." It actually killed him, disintegrated his remains down to the quantum level, and used that as a template to manufacture a duplicate Sawbones out of local debris elsewhere. "Dammit, Jim, I'm a Xerox, not a doctor!")

Ow, that's one serious brain-freeze.

If I'm rolling in excess cash on my deathbed, I'm -so- totally getting my head chopped off and frozen. Why the hell not? I don't care if they revive a copy of me, or repair my shattered cells and attach my head to a fresh body grown from my own DNA; it'll be interesting either way, and I assume it beats being dead.

Of course that is unless I'm reenlifenfied by new robot masters.