Lsparrish

Cryonics sources

He’s banking on technology — the idea that brain scanning will someday become sophisticated enough to map an entire brain and all its neural circuits. Then the brains that have been cryopreserved can be thawed, mapped and digitally downloaded. The people who once lived with those brains might live again, as software. http://portlandtribune.com/pt/9-news/293801-170586-frozen-in-time-oregon-firm-preserves-bodies-brains-in-hopes-that-science-catches-up

Cryonics proponents refer to what we normally call “death” as “information-theoretic death” — the idea that death is irreversible. Clinical death, on the other hand, will become a reversible state when the tech catches up with what the mind can conceive. Cryonics supporters know the odds are not good. They put it this way: With death, there is a zero percent chance of resuscitation. With cryonics, there is at least a chance, however infinitesimally small it might be. http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/reddit-help-me-find-some-peace-in-dying-young-cryonics-futurology/

It's called the information-theoretic definition of death: there is a point of decay of the brain at which death would become irreversible by any technology, simply because the brain no longer contains the data that made you. But until that point, in theory, you could be revived, given better medical technology. http://web.archive.org/web/20150906061444/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100122576/on-larry-king-and-an-atheists-fear-of-death/

A key part is that cryonics attempts to justify itself on rational, non-religious grounds. According to cryonic belief, enough information about the original bodily state is hopefully retained at the end of the suspension process (acknowledged as being damaging to tissues and dependent on certain biomedical assumptions) that conceivably future technologies could extract it and repair the body. The reasons for this are partially based on empirical investigations in cryobiology (e.g. how tissues are affected by different cryoprotectant formulas and cooling regimens, the effects of different suspension methods, how thawed tissue samples function, decay rates in storage, etc.), but also a set of hazier assumptions about the future (e.g. the limits of technology, the likelihood of restorative medicine becoming powerful enough, that suspension companies can remain viable long enough, that future generations will have motivations to resuscitate suspended people etc.) http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/08/freezing-critique-privileged-views-and-cryonics/

AE

Please see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement § Lsparrish. Guy (help!) 17:23, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

I have closed this request: [1]. While no sanctions were imposed at this time, there was reason to be concerned regarding the practices you have exhibited in this topic area. I would encourage you to review the result and be careful to avoid this going forward. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 18:28, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Just following up on this... I think it's good for editors to have a deep or even passionate interest in the topics they edit. The important thing is that they are aware of their own biases and learn to set those to the side and put the encyclopedia first. ~Awilley (talk) 03:55, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm currently feeling burnt out about my involvement in the Cryonics article, but the topic is still one I feel enthusiastic about. I hope a reality based consensus will predominate in the long run. Lsparrish (talk) 22:49, 18 September 2019 (UTC)