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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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Better late than never, this is our monthly place to discuss relevant topics that have not appeared in recent posts.
Open Thread
VV:
I'm wondering if fixing the tissue with strong crosslinking fixative and storing in a jar is better idea... if I know that the information is very likely in forms of proteins and their placement, but I do not know their solubility, for purposes of preserving information, I'd rather cross-link the hell out of it and put it in a jar than perfuse with solvents and then freeze. Dipping a book in solvent may keep the book easy to open, but dipping the book in fixative is better if you want to, you know, not wash off the ink.
@google-8a859b151b507f070cefe46a035c0a99:disqus If cryo companies were seriously interested in research, they could certainly find various ways to do it.
Consider a cryopreservation lottery, for instance: Cryopreserve a body or head charging half the price, then an independent and trusted party tosses a coin. If head comes up, the "patient" is kept intact, if tails comes up, it is dissected for research.
Given that the probability of cryonics success is so small, and there is so much uncertainty on it that even the order of magnitude is difficult to estimate, halving it won't significantly affect any expected value estimation that you may be doing, and the reduced price would open it to people who wouldn't be able to afford it at full price.
But of course real-life cryonics would recoil in horror at the thought of their precious brains and bodies being dissected, experimented with and finally discarded in the waste bin, even though if no research is done they may be well doomed anyway, even if their ice graves are kept intact until the end of time. But cryonics is not about rationally increasing your lifespan. It's the transhumanist equivalent of a religious burial ritual.