I didn't know Hal Finney, but condolences to his family.
Comparing different religions' various flavors of afterlife is very interesting, but perhaps this isn't the right forum for it (though maybe it is; I don't know). One thing is certain, though: cryonics's promise of an afterlife is definitely the most materially expensive of all religions -- on average, that is (some Christians spent what probably amounts to more than the cost of cryopreservation to expunge their sins). It is also the most strictly transactional since Catholicism prior to the reformation. The burial practice itself, however, bears a lot of resemblance to ancient Egyptian religion, and probably some other religions of antiquity.
It's just a commoditization. Religion will charge what they think they buyer will be able to afford, cryopreservation companies charge what they think it should cost to get the problem pushed beyond their own lifetimes.
It's a scam, but a very clever one, just like religion. The only mitigating factor to me is that the participants here go in eyes wide open rather than that they are sucked in as defenceless children.
In terms of how it is marketed cryonics may be scammy by drastically overselling the chances of success, but I'd expect many people who sign up for it see it for what it is: an extremely long bet with money they don't have any further use for anyway.
Unless you have other things you care deeply about spending your money on, there's pretty much only upside.
Calling it a "scam" implies that, not only is cryonics hopeless, but that the cryonicists agree it is hopeless and are just lying to people for money. Do you have any evidence of that at all?
Cult leader, ponzi schemer or other conman believing his or her own bullshit does't make a difference. Victims are lead to believe something with no basis in science, reason, logic or reality for the purpose of personal or financial gain.
Being a scam doesn't require the buy in or belief of the scammer.
Plenty has been written on Alcor[0] in particular[1], there is an entire book[2] written by a former employee. The entire industry is dangerous, weird[3], and preys on the vulnerable.
Some neuroscientists and cryobiologists think that cryonics deserves a second look as a way to try to turn death from a permanent off-state into a temporary and reversible off-state by approaching the problem as a challenge in applied neuroscience. They have set up the Brain Preservation Foundation to raise money for incentive prizes to encourage scientists to push hard on the envelope of current and reachable brain preservation techniques:
Two prominent figures in the skeptic community, Michael Shermer and Susan Blackmore, have lent their names to the Foundation as advisers, so they apparently consider the idea scientifically defensible:
GP asked for evidence, not for proof. Your refutation is a generic argument you could use on anything. I can only assume you understand this, (judging from your generally high-quality comments on this site). So I'm curious as to your reasoning for such a poor response. Is it just that you disagree there's useful evidence for cryonics and don't want to write more in-depth comments?
How much more in-depth can it get, I think I've written enough in this thread already and it seems to me as though the belief in the might of science outstrips the ability to reason. Science gave us guns and computers, therefore it will give us resurrection.
And then to ask for evidence is adding to the pile, the only admissible evidence here would be proof that it is indeed possible. And I don't see any such evidence, only very small bits and pieces which could possibly one day be expanded to a whole given unfathomable advances in technology.
The branches of science required to pull this off do not even exist yet.
Remember that old saw about advanced enough technology being indistinguishable from magic? That's the territory we're in here.
Technology is nuts-and-bolts stuff based on understanding, not modern variations on Pascal's wager.
Useful evidence for cryonics -> anything that can be used to market cryonics. Evidence against cryonics: nobody has ever returned from the dead. I realize that facing death is one of the hardest issues to come to terms with for the living but I'm a little but surprised how gullible the techies are when it comes to selling them a bill of goods like this.
I guess at some level everybody wants to live forever and companies like this handily tap in to that (as did every religion with a commercial aspect since millenia).
No, contradicting evidence would be quite admissible. For instance, showing that some major part of the structure of the brain decays immediately into noise would kill the idea of revival. As I understand, there's a bit of uncertainty, but generally, so far, it seems like it is in theory possible.
>not modern variations on Pascal's wager.
Pascal's wager is bad because it takes the current universe, then lets you pick from only 2 choices, and the god choice isn't free (as belief in something you know to be wrong is detrimental). If a superintelligence offered the wager with the condition that every other religion/afterlife was wrong, and the only two possibilities were god or no god, and that there was no cost (just have to say "I believe"), then Pascal's wager wouldn't be a joke.
I agree though that of course this is ripe for commercial exploitation. Just like an insurance fund that promised to try to get involved/fund every AI research initiative, in exchange for somehow giving you preferential treatment in case of a not-so-friendly singularity.
I think religion (and I include cryonics in that category for the purpose of this discussion) is far from being a scam as it most certainly provides immediate benefits that cannot be dismissed. I'm sure it makes people happy to pay a high price for effectively convincing themselves that their death is merely temporary, thus hopefully alleviating what may be a very burdensome dread. That money would otherwise be spent on alcohol, drugs or therapy, and may not be as effective.
But what if what you really need is not the promise to be delivered (which will be long in the future in any case) but it to be fully convincing. That is, you're paying for a convincing promise -- not for its fulfillment (then again, some would say that all scams work like that)
Yes, I understand what you're driving at. But wishes, horses, beggars. This is a scam, pure and simple in the long term with decreasing chances of probability either one of the following things will happen: people will stop believing this and rationality will reassert itself, people will continue to believe until we run out of resources to preserve all the vitrified corpses (it's essentially a graveyard without the benefit of decomposition and filling up billions of dewar flasks with liquid nitrogen is not the most rewarding job) and then it will be time for some tough decisions on how to clean up the mess, the last person on the planet will attempt to cryopreserve themselves in the faint hope that maybe one day in the distant future and hopefully before the sun runs out to power the fully automated planetwide cryogenics facility aliens will discover planet earth and will revive us all or miraculously someone will figure out how to restore all the preserved people in some substrate or give them new bodies (never mind the details here) and will successfully deal with all the social upheaval that will cause (luxury problems).
If the voting in this thread is any indication there are a lot of believers.
> people will stop believing this and rationality will reassert itself
Those are two very different things. Rationality will not reassert itself (has it ever been asserted? :)) because human existence is probably not compatible with pervasive rationality (i.e. rationality in humans is limited to very narrow scopes, usually those that don't scare us or induce other strong emotions), but people will stop believing this and start believing something else, or -- many won't believe this to begin with because believing in cryonics contradicts their other beliefs. If cryonics were compatible with, say, Christianity, then the resurrected would be really pissed for being dragged out of heaven. In fact, this contradiction with other, far more ubiquitous religions and most of all -- the contradiction with people's income -- will keep cryonics a very exclusive religion (like Scientology, only for geeks rather than Hollywood actors), so we need not worry running out of room in that particular, cold, cold heaven.
I think it's nuts, but I don't know if you can call it a scam when apparently sophisticated people are demanding it.
My old friend Hara Ra (né Gregory Yob -- yes, the creator of Hunt the Wumpus) had it done when he died of cancer in 2005. He was well aware of my opinion about it. Anyway, I figure, it was his money, and if it gave him some comfort in dying (of cancer), maybe it wasn't that badly spent.
Comparing different religions' various flavors of afterlife is very interesting, but perhaps this isn't the right forum for it (though maybe it is; I don't know). One thing is certain, though: cryonics's promise of an afterlife is definitely the most materially expensive of all religions -- on average, that is (some Christians spent what probably amounts to more than the cost of cryopreservation to expunge their sins). It is also the most strictly transactional since Catholicism prior to the reformation. The burial practice itself, however, bears a lot of resemblance to ancient Egyptian religion, and probably some other religions of antiquity.