A recent article at Gizmodo.com has the title "Neurosurgeons Are Weirdly Optimistic About Cryonics for Life Extension, Survey Finds." We read of a poll taken of physicians, asking about the feasibility of freezing people and trying to revive them much later. There are already organizations such as Alcor that will do such "cryonic preservation." This reminds me of my favorite cryonics joke, referring to a brand name of frozen treats:
Man: Did you hear that the son of Ted Williams had his father's head cryonically preserved?
Woman: Really? So what do you call that, when you have your Dad's head frozen?
Man: You call it a Popsicle.
In the article, we read that " a little over one in four of these physicians (27.9%) reported that they believed it was 'plausible,' or even 'very plausible,' that cryonic preservation could potentially lead to some form of revival for patients one day." But it seems that one subset of the physicians was optimistic about the chances of success: neurosurgeons. The article states, "When asked to weigh the probability that 'critical psychological information' could be adequately preserved by whole brain preservation and revival, neurosurgeons were much more bullish on average, collectively giving the procedure a 72% median estimated probability of success. "
The idea of freezing people and reviving them years later is nonsense, because of reasons I will discuss in this post. We can infer something from the fact that neurosurgeons have such an unusually high optimism about the chance of such a thing succeeding. What we can infer is that brain experts tend to be pushovers for unbelievable brain-related narratives, guys who fall "hook, line and sinker" for tall tales involving brains. There are endless other reasons for making such an inference, such as the tendency of brain experts to keep making triumphal boasts based on very low-quality junk science research involving mice, studies using way-too-small study group sizes and unreliable measurement techniques such as "freezing behavior" judgments.
In order for you to be successfully revived after you were frozen, each of the following eight conditions would have to be met:
Condition 1: You would have to be successfully frozen soon after death. It would not do for you to die 1000 miles from your cryonic preservation company. In such a case, your brain would undergo too much damage before they put you under the deep freeze. You would have to die relatively near your cryonic preservation company, and your body would have to be quickly transported to them.
Condition 2: You would have to be successfully frozen in the right way. Your cryonic preservation company would have to take great care to preserve your body in the right way. This would be a dicey proposition, because they might be freezing people for 50 years or 100 years before anyone got around to reviving a body; so no one would know exactly what was the right way to preserve the body (for example, no one would know whether it was some particular chemical that should be injected into the brain, or some other chemical). Also, the staff working for your cryonic preservation company would have to work very carefully, which might be unlikely (since some of them might be thinking to themselves: who cares, the guy's dead).
Condition 3: Your cryonic preservation company would have to stay in business until science advanced far enough to allow resuscitation of frozen bodies. This might be unlikely, because it might take many decades until such a time. During such a time there might be all kinds of social and economic upheavals that might lead to the collapse of your cryonic preservation company, plus the possibilities of nuclear war or the banning of cryonics by some conservative administration.
Condition 4: The funds you had supplied to the company would have to last until science advanced far enough to allow resuscitation of frozen bodies. Given inflation and escalating energy costs, that might be very unlikely. Once your account balance fell to zero, your cryonics company would probably incinerate or bury your body.
Condition 5: Consciousness and memory would have to be based purely on physical brain states, and not on delicate energy states that would be lost during freezing. Conceivably your memory and consciousness might depend purely on physical arrangements of neurons and synapses, or it might also depend on very delicate electrical and quantum state conditions in your brain. If the latter case is true, your memory and personality is likely to get completely wiped out by decades of low-temperature cryonic preservation.
Condition 6: There would have to be no soul that survives death. Based on things such as near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, apparition sightings, deathbed visions, mediumship successes and children who report memories of people who died earlier, and also the failure of neuroscientists to credibly explain self-hood and memory, there is an extremely strong basis for believing that you have a soul that survives death. If that is true, it will not work to try to revive a frozen body. If, for example, your soul has gone on to some heavenly realm, then it will not reappear in your body when someone tries to unfreeze it.
Condition 7: Science would have to figure out a way to resuscitate frozen bodies. This part is very unlikely. We have no promising approach here, other than warming a body up, zapping it with electricity and hoping for the best.
Condition 8: When they revived your body, the resulting personality would have to be you, rather than a new person. An additional uncertainty is that when they revived your body, you might find that your memory was entirely wiped out. So the resulting personality might not really be you, but some new “blank slate” mind that might really be a whole new person.
Condition 1: You would have to be successfully frozen soon after death. It would not do for you to die 1000 miles from your cryonic preservation company. In such a case, your brain would undergo too much damage before they put you under the deep freeze. You would have to die relatively near your cryonic preservation company, and your body would have to be quickly transported to them.
Condition 2: You would have to be successfully frozen in the right way. Your cryonic preservation company would have to take great care to preserve your body in the right way. This would be a dicey proposition, because they might be freezing people for 50 years or 100 years before anyone got around to reviving a body; so no one would know exactly what was the right way to preserve the body (for example, no one would know whether it was some particular chemical that should be injected into the brain, or some other chemical). Also, the staff working for your cryonic preservation company would have to work very carefully, which might be unlikely (since some of them might be thinking to themselves: who cares, the guy's dead).
Condition 3: Your cryonic preservation company would have to stay in business until science advanced far enough to allow resuscitation of frozen bodies. This might be unlikely, because it might take many decades until such a time. During such a time there might be all kinds of social and economic upheavals that might lead to the collapse of your cryonic preservation company, plus the possibilities of nuclear war or the banning of cryonics by some conservative administration.
Condition 4: The funds you had supplied to the company would have to last until science advanced far enough to allow resuscitation of frozen bodies. Given inflation and escalating energy costs, that might be very unlikely. Once your account balance fell to zero, your cryonics company would probably incinerate or bury your body.
Condition 5: Consciousness and memory would have to be based purely on physical brain states, and not on delicate energy states that would be lost during freezing. Conceivably your memory and consciousness might depend purely on physical arrangements of neurons and synapses, or it might also depend on very delicate electrical and quantum state conditions in your brain. If the latter case is true, your memory and personality is likely to get completely wiped out by decades of low-temperature cryonic preservation.
Condition 6: There would have to be no soul that survives death. Based on things such as near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, apparition sightings, deathbed visions, mediumship successes and children who report memories of people who died earlier, and also the failure of neuroscientists to credibly explain self-hood and memory, there is an extremely strong basis for believing that you have a soul that survives death. If that is true, it will not work to try to revive a frozen body. If, for example, your soul has gone on to some heavenly realm, then it will not reappear in your body when someone tries to unfreeze it.
Condition 7: Science would have to figure out a way to resuscitate frozen bodies. This part is very unlikely. We have no promising approach here, other than warming a body up, zapping it with electricity and hoping for the best.
Condition 8: When they revived your body, the resulting personality would have to be you, rather than a new person. An additional uncertainty is that when they revived your body, you might find that your memory was entirely wiped out. So the resulting personality might not really be you, but some new “blank slate” mind that might really be a whole new person.
Because of all these difficulties, it is unreasonable to have any confidence that attempts to revive long-frozen bodies will be successful. So what can we infer when the article tells us that 72% of neurosurgeons expressed confidence that " 'critical psychological information' could be adequately preserved by whole brain preservation and revival"? We can infer that brain experts tend to be pushovers for unbelievable brain-related narratives, guys who fall "hook, line and sinker" for tall tales involving brains. We see evidence for this inference all over the place, such as when neuroscientists tell the utterly unbelievable claim that memories are preserved in ordinary humans by mere "synapse strengthening," a claim that makes no sense at all.
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