Tag Archives: Cryonics

The 2011 Calorie Restriction Society Conference

On October 27-29 I attended CR VII, the 2011 Calorie Restriction Society Conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Members of the Calorie Restriction Society restrict their calories while maintaining adequate nutrition as a means of extending their lifespan (or improving … Continue reading

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What you don’t eat can’t hurt you

Many people in the life extension community follow some kind of diet. Historically, caloric restriction (CR) has been the most popular and most discussed option. Other popular diets include the Mediterranean diet and the Paleolithic diet.  In one sense, comparing … Continue reading

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Smartphone Apps for the Smart Cryonicist

As every modern consumer knows, smartphones are today’s go-to portable technology. Everything from GPS navigation to finding a good deal on your next meal or haircut right NOW to a wide variety of games and applications may be had at … Continue reading

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Alcor member profile of Aschwin de Wolf

The latest issue of Cryonics magazine features my member profile. This profile was written by Cairn Idun, a long-time Alcor member and cryonics activist who is currently known for organizing the annual asset preservation and teens and twenties meetings. To … Continue reading

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ApoE4 – The Ancestral Allele

Reportedly, when James Watson and Steven Pinker had their genome sequenced, they declined to know their risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Clearly this is not an option for life extensionists and cryonicists, who are better off knowing whether they have a copy … Continue reading

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The double standard about cryonics

One of the most predictable features of public debates about cryonics is that those arguing in favor of cryonics are held to more rigorous standards than those seeking conventional medical treatment. Advocates of cryonics do not just have to prove … Continue reading

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Gerald Feinberg on physics and life extension

Gerald Feinberg, a Columbia university physicist who, among other things, hypothesized the existence of the muon neutrino, had a strong interest in the future of science and life extension. In 1966 he published the article “Physics and Life Prolongation” in … Continue reading

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Medico-Legal Aspects of Human Cryopreservation Optimization

Introduction Ongoing legal challenges and hostile interference of relatives have increased awareness among cryonicists that addressing the likelihood that one will be cryopreserved at all should take center stage among other strategies for survival. As a consequence, a number of … Continue reading

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Neural cryobiology and the legal recognition of cryonics

It has been said that if you want to persuade someone, you need to find common ground. But one of the defining characteristics of cryonics is that proponents and opponents cannot even seem to agree on the criteria that should … Continue reading

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Comments on the book YOUNIVERSE by Robert Ettinger

Robert Ettinger‘s book Youniverse: Toward a Self-Centered Philosophy of Immortalism and Cryonics is a book containing many insights and deep thoughts, yet has such an informal writing style that many readers might not take it seriously. I know of no … Continue reading

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The case against cryonics

What is striking about cryonics is that those who have taken serious efforts to understand the arguments in favor of its technical feasibility generally endorse the idea. Those who have not made cryonics arrangements usually give non-technical arguments (anxiety about … Continue reading

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Case reports in cryonics

This article was originally published in Cryonics magazine, 4th Quarter, 2010. Introduction The most important reasons for writing case reports are: 1. To provide a transparent and detailed description of procedures and techniques for members of the cryonics organization and … Continue reading

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The RhinoChill: A New Way to Cool the Brain Quickly

We scientists are difficult, cranky, and above all, maddeningly frustrating people. Want to turn lead into gold? No problem, we can tell you how to do that, and in fact have even done it already: the only catch is that … Continue reading

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Imagine there’s no sleep

Imagine that human culture has never experienced sleep, but suddenly must experience it to survive. Would they be apprehensive about experiencing it for the first time? Of course! Just picture… this total suspension of consciousness, experienced for the very first … Continue reading

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Alcor update from CEO Max More

The Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence blog features a short interview with new Alcor CEO Max More: Q: Where do you see cryonics in the future? We’ll look back on this 50 to 100 years from now — we’ll shake our heads … Continue reading

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Suspended Animation Conference 2011

The cryonics company Suspended Animation “will sponsor the conference, “Suspended Animation – The Company and The Goal,” which will be held in Fort Lauderdale in May, 2011. The conference will feature speakers on the latest strategies and advances toward perfecting … Continue reading

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Support real progress in life extension

As we start the new year, it is helpful to draw attention to the sobering fact that no credible human rejuvenation therapies are available today, and it is doubtful that such therapies will see the light of day in the … Continue reading

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Is a life worth starting? Some personal views

For life—the life of any sentient creature—to be worth living, there must, as Robert Ettinger has often said, be a preponderance of satisfaction over dissatisfaction. If this overall slant toward good rather than bad is maintained, it seems reasonable that … Continue reading

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Review of ‘Better Never to Have Been’

Review of  Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence by David Benatar. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006 “Would that I had never been born” is a lament sometimes voiced in the depth of misfortune, a … Continue reading

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Non-existence is hard to do

A review of  contemporary antinatalist writings Originally published in Cryonics, 2nd Quarter, 2010 (PDF) “Coming into existence is bad in part because it invariably leads to the harm of ceasing to exist.” David Benatar “If they could get a corpse … Continue reading

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At last, a sure-cold way to sell cryonics with guaranteed success!

A humorous romp through a promising new technique in aesthetic medicine from one cryonicist’s (warped) point of view. Figure 1: Before cryopreservation (L) and after cryopreservation (R). As everyone involved in cryonics for more than a fortnight is sadly aware, … Continue reading

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Historical Death Meme

There’s a pretty simple explanation as to where motivated skepticism for cryonics originates. If you currently are skeptical of cryonics, you should carefully consider whether this applies. Historically, there has been a powerfully optimized meme regarding the topic known as … Continue reading

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The diminishing returns of reactive medicine

In an article for Slate, Jay Olshansky argues in favor of a position that one would expect to be common sense at this point: While we can extend life in aging bodies through behavioral improvements and medical treatments, the time … Continue reading

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Cryonics, trans-temporal communism and future squatters

Cryonics advocate Eugen Leitl puts forward some hard-hitting and thought-provoking observations about cryonics (reminiscent of Mike Darwin’s more recent thoughts on the subject): Cryonics, like Natural Selection, or the theories of General and Special Relativity, is core-smashing in character, and … Continue reading

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Meta-research and medical skepticism

The Atlantic features an important article about “meta-researcher” Athina Tatsioni, who has published a number of influential papers about the quality of biomedical research: He and his team have shown, again and again, and in many different ways, that much … Continue reading

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Mark Plus on cryonics and double standards

One of the mysterious things about cryonics is that some of the arguments that are invoked against it would be considered ridiculous, or even insensitive, if they would be raised in the context of other live-saving technologies. As Alcor member … Continue reading

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Thought experiments as knowledge

One of the most remarkable aspects about the ongoing debates concerning the technical feasibility of mind uploading is the excessive confidence that some people have that these issues can be resolved without further experimental validation. The (implicit) assumption seems to … Continue reading

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Mind uploading, falsifiability and cryonics

On the cryonics discussion list Cryonet cryobiologist Brian Wowk weighed in on the topic of mind uploading in a post that merits quoting in its entirety: I read with interest Bob Ettinger’s recent remarks about Mark Gubrud’s piece in The … Continue reading

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Ken Hayworth on straight freezing in cryonics

Ken Hayworth’s idea of promoting a fixation-based alternative to brain cryopreservation is something I am highly sympathetic to overall, and I hope some progress in this direction results from the work he is doing and trying to induce others to … Continue reading

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The low-hanging fruit of technological progress

The website Alternative Right has an interesting article on the declining pace of technological progress: The world of 1959 is pretty much the same world we live in today technologically speaking. This is a vaguely horrifying fact which is little … Continue reading

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Free will versus determinism as it relates to cryonics

Excerpt from “Ben Best – A Case for Free Will AND Determinism” Determinism implies materialism — implies that consciousness is material. Cryonics is based on the premise that the preservation of the fine structure of the brain at low temperature … Continue reading

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How many neurons need to survive for cryonics to work?

On this page a calculation is attempted to determine how many neurons need to survive for cryonics to work. The flaw in this approach should be obvious when the author writes : According to The Stroke Association, a stroke is … Continue reading

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Chemical preservation and cryonics research

In the 2009-4 issue of Alcor’s Cryonics magazine I review the technical and practical feasibility of chemical preservation. One of the most interesting aspects of chemopreservation is that it could play a useful role in the cryopreservation of ischemic patients. … Continue reading

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The presumption of death

Bertrand Russell once said that “most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.” One does not need to look any further than the many responses to Kerry Howley’s recent article about cryonics and hostile partners in … Continue reading

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Cryonics and fear of the future

To people who have made cryonics arrangements the biggest mystery remains why more people have not made the same decision. The most obvious answer remains that cryonics has not been proven to “work” yet. People who give this answer usually … Continue reading

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