Comments on: Alcor-40 conference

By: resort living

resort living — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:18:43 +0000

there is a term that when you reached 40 its a new era of your life, thanks for sharing this one, I love it.

By: Kelsey473

Kelsey473 — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 11:22:54 +0000

I fully accecpt yr `opinion` (but obviously disagree) on this and as I acknowledged it may not work – I personally am willing to `gamble` on it (I am 50 now so with luck I will not need it for on average 30 years) main stream thought even for Doctors etc is often only social proof and an informed opinion would not only need medical knowledge but also `future tech` knowledge.
Still I accept you are a informed and intelligent individual from the structure of your posts, and as I say it could be you who are right.

By: Bruce Wright

Bruce Wright — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 13:52:49 +0000

Essentially all mainstream biologists and medical professionals agree that at the current level of technology, cryonics is roughly akin to earlier claims for Laetrile or cold fusion. I’m more inclined to believe the mainstream consensus opinion rather than the proponents of this completely unproven technology; like those other claims that didn’t pan out, the movement often seems altogether too much like a cult and not enough like a scientific technology. The idea isn’t crazy, but its successful implementation is at least a couple of decades off, IMHO.

By: Kelsey473

Kelsey473 — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:36:20 +0000

they are not `weathy` individuals they are very `highly qualified` ones – I have spoken to De Gray (Phd from Cambridge University in Biology) in person about his decision to be frozen and he said he believed it may work due to `vitrification` as a freezing method.

I agree fully it may not work – you may be right – however yr comment about the lottery makes no sense at all, whilst you `may` be right you may also be wrong, if so those frozen will be revived, the `lottery` comment is just misplaced in this reguard. (aplogise for spelling grammar Dyslexia)

By: Bruce Wright

Bruce Wright — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 05:13:20 +0000

@Gophernevich, “Clearly insane?” I rather think not, given sufficient technology – however I am extremely skeptical that the current state of the art is sufficiently far advanced to make it likely that a cryonically preserved human body frozen with current techniques can be reanimated at some future date, even given advanced nanotechnology. The basic problem is the cell damage that occurs during the freezing and thawing processes using current techniques, which disrupts the cell membranes. Nanotechnology may eventually be able to repair some cell damage caused by freezing and thawing in small-ish tissues or organisms (and some very small organisms can already be flash-frozen successfully), but repairing damage to billions of cells simultaneously is far more difficult – you’d need far more nanomachines than cells to achieve timely repairs during the thawing process, and there are serious questions about whether you could physically infiltrate enough of them into the frozen body without causing further damage (remember that even though the nanomachines might be small, they must still have a finite size, and there’s only so much space to try to fit the trillions of them that would be required into the frozen body).

Once information is lost, you can’t just expect to wave the magic wand of “nanotechnology” and make it reappear. But on the other hand I’m reasonably optimistic that continued research in this area may well yield more promising results on improved techniques that might work.

I’m not impressed that some wealthy individuals have signed up for cryonics – after all, other than whatever hope one might have for an afterlife, it’s really the only game in town. Unfortunately I think you’d be looking at far better odds if you put all of your money into the lottery (not that that would do much for life extension).

By: Brian Roberts

Brian Roberts — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 16:55:29 +0000

Once a few more hurdles are overcome w/cryonics I can see it being viable and lucrative. I remember how they said transplants were “insane” a few years ago on how printing organs was “insane”.

It’s certainly a gamble. But it’s a gamble I’ll take vs oblivion any day of the week.

By: Kelsey

Kelsey — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:17:43 +0000

Of course its insane – what do Kurzweil or De Gray or Merkel (all of whom have signed up for cryonics) know eh?? – it must be `mad` because LOTS of people `don`t` do it – thats called `social proof` – try not saying things like `clearly insane` it does not help and its not evidence, there are plenty of published papers on cyronics, that it may or may not work is true thats its `insane` is not.

By: Gophernevich

Gophernevich — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 21:58:44 +0000

Sorry, this stuff is clearly insane. You are freezing body tissue not living human beings.

By: Improbus

Improbus — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 17:37:19 +0000

I don’t suppose they are going to post video from the conference online ala TED. Some of us don’t have the time and/or money to go to these conferences no matter how interested we are in the subject matter.

By: Editor

Editor — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:18:18 +0000

I sent your note to the conference organizers.

By: OmnipotentJP

OmnipotentJP — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 10:00:14 +0000

I want to go so bad! but sadly im only 18 :(