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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?
Help mom, LessWrong is leaking and not just because of AI. No, don't worry, I love to see it. I love The Motte, but I wish it drifted more towards more central Rationalist pastures.
Anyway. I've been following this, and I'm somewhere between attentive and cautiously optimistic. The founders know their stuff, and have been quite upfront of what exactly they can offer and what it requires. The effective necessity of MAID doesn't bother me at all. If you die traumatically, the odds that standard approaches can preserve you enough to reconstruct with high fidelity is... low.
A decade ago, I would have told you I'd sign up for cryonics the first opportunity I got. But things have changed. AGI will either substantially change the trajectory of technological development in an upward direction, or kill us in a manner that precludes cryonics mattering. I assign rather little probability mass to things in between. It's not worth discussing rn, even if Things Continue As Usual is not impossible.
But now? If AGI doesn't show up within 10 years, I'll consider it again. Not in 20? I'll be signing up immediately. Right now, I have better things to do with my money, and that includes hedging for disruption in the near future. That includes most of my loved ones, even if my grandpa would never consent and it's not practical to do it in India. I regret this immensely.
I mean, I admire the attitude, but I do think that immortality doesn't necessarily involve killing ourselves to attain. "Mere" biological mortality is a possibility. I say this, while being willing to destructively scan my brain and upload my mind into a computer the moment it's viable, validated and safe. Whatever, it's my sense of identity and willingness to subscribe to substrate-independent theories of consciousness. I would prefer non-destructive scans if they were an option, and might even wait if I didn't expect to die before it was a reality.
Yeah, I don't reckon you need to buy a bridge if you're swimming across.
I'll be erring on the side of patience as a virtue irrespective of any other considerations, thank you very much. Sense of identity maybe not so much, but my willingness can change in a traffic jam.
Did I infer correctly that Nectome's crosslinking method is intended for the simulator end game, and fundamentally further or mutually exclusive with the "maybe someday medicine gets really good" revival hope of traditional cryo? The LW discussion didn't seem to talk about it as a pivot. I guess if you're in the market for cryo it's more like hedging and that's why it is presented and discussed this way.
This was in part a bait post for the thoughts of local enthusiast and medicine man, cheers!
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