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What about cryonics? What's new? Where else would I read new cryonics if not a pitch on LessWrong?
"Traditional" cryonics requires a crisis response to a customer's death. A person dies, people are alerted, and a plan is carried out to evacuate a body to administer cryogoo-- glycerol. That body is transferred to cold storage and suspended in liquid nitrogen with a barrier of one fancy cask. The liquid nitrogen creates extreme temperatures for preservation, around -192C, a temperature that comes with risks-- human tissue kept at -192C tends to be very fragile. Another pressing issue is that the goo filling-to-freezer process takes time, and bodies stop all kinds of maintenance after death. Dying with imperfect preservation means if someone did find a way to upload your brain to the Matrix, or reanimate your corpse, unless they've fully cracked the mysteries of regenerative medicine the experience may not be to your liking.
Why is this this culture war? Nectome's new method offers a workaround to the last problem: kill yourself.
Nectome wants you to have the option to end your life so they can preserve your bits, bobs, and neuronal structure, increasing the chance you emerge intact down the line. You can read a slightly more detailed overview in this PDF from Nectome with citations. You can compare it to the big brand-name cryonics company in the US named Alcor. Alcor has facilities located in Arizona, which is a state with cheap land, no hurricanes, low humidity, and a favorable regulatory environment. Good things for long term groundskeeping. Unlike Alcor, Nectome plans to set up shop in Oregon. Also unlike Alcor, Nectome clarifies they will host no brains in jars with holistic, rather than trope filled, process.
The business pitch relies on the fact that Oregon has MAID, colloquially known as assisted suicide. Rather than keep cells frozen in place with extremely low temperatures, Nectome's goo formula does more work to stabilize structures chemically, which allows a moderate preservation temperature at -32C. This process must be completed immediately following death. So if a client can plan around, or potentially induce, a state recognized terminal illness, they can purchase a flight to the state of Oregon, end their life, and receive the latest greatest chance at... something in the future. Don't want to miss the singularity or omnipotent medicine? No cryonics company promises anything like that, they usually only agree to look after your frozen bits for as long as is feasible.
About that, Nectome's founder is also involved with Eon Systems, a company currently working on brain emulators. They generated a viral story with apparent progress on a fly connectome earlier this month. Specific claims of hype are contested, but progress on mapping, building, and simulating brains seems real. Much has been written on MAID slippery slopes, but it seems we already have a current legal avenue to test a "freeze me" future with an upload waiting room. Take the upload to Elon Musk's Afterlife, which is a RuneScape clone by the way, replete with a procedurally generated non-stop feed of his greatest twitter hits at your finger tips into eternity, or until transcendent beings awaken you.
With so many sci-fi fantasies filling up the horizon, why not kill yourself and wait awhile? What did you think transhumanism meant, anyway? vibes? papers? essays?
Cryonics supposes that someone else will do the hard part.
Well, who's going to invent this amazing life-saving radical biotech? Not you, you were busy having your body frozen. Or busy working out how to build the refrigerators. Somebody else studying biology or something will have to achieve the breakthroughs cryonics depends on.
Meanwhile someone like Bryan Johnson is probably doing more for the future of extending lifespan than anybody hooking refrigerators into armpits.
Other than what @wemptronics said, AGI/ASI is looking rather likely, especially if you're already dead and frozen and thus not in a hurry. If they can't help us solve the problem, it's probably not solvable.
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It's a fair bet that humans will continue to be interested in modes of immortality, life extension, or techno-necromancy in 50, 100, and 1000 years from now. New refrigerants don't help crack the nut, no, but if Bryan Johnson's hero dose inspired shitpost grants him an epiphany in 50 years those refrigerants might enable a lot more people to benefit if the stewardship role of cryo works out.
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