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/sci/ - Science & Math

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[ERROR] No.3642504 [Reply] [Original]

/sci/, how legit is the company Alcor? I've come fairly close to signing up...

I'm fairly optimistic about the idea of human cryonic suspension, but reading some of the rumors/accusations from people like Larry Johnson kinda dampens my optimism.

In "Frozen", Johnson describes incompetence at Alcor... unsanitary operating rooms, expired drugs, gross mistreatment of cadavers. What has Alcor done to address these accusations?

>> No.3642516
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Alcor: a bunch of nutjobs hacking off peoples heads, or legit scientific endeavor preserving lives?

>> No.3642530

>>3642516

Why does it have to be one or the other?

>> No.3642535
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>> No.3642544
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>>3642530
*incompetent nutjobs

>> No.3642552
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anybody know anything about alcor?

>> No.3642553
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I sort of assume Johnson is a money-grabbing hack, but Mike Darwin's description of the Alcor facilities is kinda scary:

http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/05/29/a-visit-to-alcor/

And I can't trust Max More. I can't trust any of the transhumanists who got their names changed in the 80's :)

But seriously, read the case reports and make an informed decision.

>> No.3642554

>>3642504
You may as well take the money in cash you were going to pay them with and light it on fire, cook some hotdogs over the flames, at least you'll get some value for your money that way.

Dead is DEAD. Learn to accept it now instead of going through your life living in fear of it, ending up not having any fun while you're alive.

>> No.3642576
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>>3642554

>Dead is DEAD.

Ralph Merkle wants a word with you

>Learn to accept it now instead of going through your life living in fear

Cryonics is a backup plan.

>> No.3642579
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>> No.3642580

cryogenics is stupid. you might be rich enough now to afford it, but guess what? they might revive you in a few hundred years, and you'll be 85, tumor-ridden, your riches will mean nothing because of either inflation or the currency will have gone extinct. you'll still have all of the same mental defects (depression, anxiety, whatever). you'll have no family or friends. your education will be worthless because it will have been buried beneath all those years of research. you will wake up completely obsolete, broken, and alone.

>> No.3642591

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/01/19/040119fa_fact_wilkinson

Don't know, but there's an article for you. It didn't sound too legit when I read it.

>> No.3642595
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Why don't they freeze dry people? You could still offer the false hope of revival with out the space and energy intensive effort of keeping them cryogenic temperatures for decades.

Also a freeze dried person could go back home and remain part of the family.

>> No.3642596

>>3642580
> you'll be 85, tumor-ridden
If they can bring you back at all, they can bring you back healthy.

The rest might be true though - it's a question of whether you'll adapt. The example in Transmetropolitan paints them as become bums living off charity because they can't adjust to the culture shock.

>> No.3642600

>>3642595
It's about trying to revive them later, not keeping a mannequin around. Freeze-drying is too destructive, apparently.

>> No.3642609 [DELETED] 
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>>3642595
mfw google immaged Iris-van-Herpen... LOL he sure is derpen

>> No.3642614

>>3642600

>It's about trying to revive them later, not keeping a mannequin around.

Funny that the first cryonics corporation was about cosmetic cryopreservation of the corpses.

Needless to say nobody frozen before 1973 is in conditions for revival -- They were either thawed and buried by the families or lost in the Chestworth tragedy -- except one.

>> No.3642616
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>>3642553
yikes... reading. I wish there were a more competent organization than Alcor, maybe something with a democratized board and far more transparent. The pseudoreligious shit is pretty freaky.

>> No.3642619

>>3642600
You clearly don't understand freeze drying. It is less destructive than the initial freezing. Sublimation is a very genital process.

>> No.3642632

>>3642596
assuming they can bring you back healthy, you'll probably end up (as your book suggested) being a beggar (if they can't reverse aging) or manual laborer (if they can reverse the aging).

>> No.3642641

>>3642632
Or, you'll be sought-after for interviews by historians.

But yeah, gaining practical relevance in the new society would be a real problem.

>> No.3642650

Am I missing something here? Have they ever been able to thaw anything other than single-cell organisms and have them continue to live? i thought cryogenics was just a fantasy, and they never revived any complex organism.

>> No.3642652

>>3642641
i think that, unless you're one of the first to be unfrozen, the media would probably ignore you.

>> No.3642655

>>3642650

They have vitrified brains and showed that their synapses were preserved: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/braincryopreservation1.html#micrographs

>> No.3642658

>>3642652
True. I mean, the same thing happened with moon landings.

>> No.3642664

>>3642650
It's a question of preserving someone as well as possible, so that future tech (probably nanobots) can revive them. No, we can't revive them now.

>> No.3642673
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>>3642554
Dead is Dead is Information-theoretic death is the destruction of the human brain (or any cognitive structure capable of constituting a person) and the information within it to such an extent that recovery of the original person is theoretically impossible by any physical means.

ya'll niggas trollin about freeze drying... Alcor uses a process called vitrification... the antifreeze they pump your body full of turns everything to glass instead of ice at low temps.

i'd probably have to meet the alcor dudes before signing on to that shit... and hear what they have to say about the accusations and shit. they do seem pretty creepy online...

>> No.3642674
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>>3642664

To be honest I think it'll be more feasible to upload them.

So if you wake up in an environment full of impossible geometries you know you're in a computer!

>> No.3642685

>>3642674
>So if you wake up in an environment full of impossible geometries you know you're in a computer!
I'd think the intro VR would be vanilla.

But yeah, scanning+uploading later would probably be easier.

>> No.3642693

>>3642685

Make sure you tell them "I didn't ask for this".

Though you totally would.

>> No.3642696

>>3642693

totally did*

>> No.3642697

>>3642674
And then the cleaning lady unplugs that thin to plug in her vacuum...

>> No.3642703

>>3642685

You know, the concept of uploading a consciousness to a computer is the reason I am interested in Computer Science. Fuck the idgits that wanna program games. I was to see the blending of the human mind and machines to the point that consciousness can exist inside a machine, instead of just a copy of the information in a given mind.

barkingmadscientistrant.tiff

>> No.3642704

>>3642650
cat brains thawed after 7 years of storage have shown electrical activity. also, shitloads of experiments with full-body washouts with dogs have been done... with some pretty fucked up damage, but they lived.

>> No.3642716

>>3642704

Link?

>>3642703

Give me a brofist <3

>> No.3642730

>>3642716
cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/SudaNature1966.pdf

http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/armand-karow-the-suda-experiment/

>> No.3642745

>>3642730

By Sagan. Somebody needs to try this again. Also, where does it say 7 years?

>> No.3642758

>>3642745
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:Vn547Jbs-SQJ:namcub.accela-labs.com/pdf/Bioelectric%25
20discharges%2520of%2520isolated%2520cat%2520brain%2520after%2520revival%2520from%2520years%2520of%2
520frozen%2520storage.pdf+frozen+cat+brains+revived&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESh
MzUGwqfmb2v8d-DiQZnDoYhpayaJIHyXQp67wGom-wD96jg1Cu913fXrm7OTJtJWxGyDqWRX2qXELjBdcVh9btetZunwtjfpeZDn
eNjM_7vnVZFu8xqB8JENsFBx0RNwIuPty&sig=AHIEtbS-4EjnhXBLrp4Jt0p0uFUJWtobaw

>> No.3642766

>>3642758

Right, right, they tried a bunch of brains and the longest was 7.25 years. I get it now.

>> No.3642784

OP here, just gotta say... I know this seems ridiculous and freaky... but compare it to what we currently do for palliative patients.

Your average nursing home is filled with zombie-like people going through dialysis, semi conscious at best. We keep them in this extremely expensive, slowly decaying mode for decades. Eventually their hearts stop and then we toss them in the ground.

if you think the currently widely accepted method of dealing with aging isn't horrifying and retarded, you aren't paying attention.

>> No.3642831

>>3642784
anybody?

you can't escape death. don't even try.

>> No.3642837

>>3642831

>don't even try.

Typical.

>> No.3642946
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>> No.3642955

NO~

>> No.3642972

>>3642553
where is this?

>> No.3642995

Frozen until it comes time for the Portal trials.

Calling it right now.

>> No.3643183

bbl

>> No.3643199

>>3642972

Cryonics Institute

>> No.3643485
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front for Soylent Green Ltd.

>> No.3643516

what will happen:
immortality (through prevention) gets invented long before we figure out how to heal people from that state. Noone has any reason to freeze their bodies anymore, so that project loses funding / goes out of business. All the frozen people are dumped somewhere.

>> No.3645472

>>3643516
idk, like half the cost of getting frozen goes into some sorta supermassive conglomerate trust fund... assuming theres still money around when we become immortal, there will be financial incentive to thaw out the corpsicles... somehow