Nano Nonsense & Cryonics
True believers seek redemption from the sin of death
Cryonicists believe that people can be frozen immediately after death and reanimated later when the cure for what ailed them is found. To see the flaw in this system, thaw out a can of frozen strawberries. During freezing, the water within each cell expands, crystallizes, and ruptures the cell membranes. When defrosted, all the intracellular goo oozes out, turning your strawberries into runny mush. This is your brain on cryonics.
Cryonicists recognize this detriment and turn to nanotechnology for a solution. Microscopic machines will be injected into the defrosting “patient” to repair the body molecule by molecule until the trillions of cells are restored and the person can be resuscitated. Every religion needs its gods, and this scientistic vision has a trinity in Robert C. W. (The Prospect of Immortality), K. Eric Drexler (Engines of Creation) and Ralph C. Merkle (The Molecular Repair of the Brain), who preach that nanocryonics will wash away the sin of death. These works are built on the premise that if you are cremated or buried, you have zero probability of being resurrected — cryonics is better than everlasting nothingness.
Is it? That depends on how much time, effort and money ($120,000 for a full-body freeze or $50,000 for just the head) you are willing to invest for odds of success only slightly higher than zero. It takes a blindly optimistic faith in the illimitable power of science to solve any and all problems, including death. Look how far we’ve come in just a century, believers argue — from the Wright brothers to Neil Armstrong in only 66 years. Extrapolate these trends out 1,000 years, or 10,000, and immortality is virtually certain.
I want to believe the cryonicists. Really I do. I gave up on religion in college, but I often slip back into my former evangelical fervor, now directed toward the wonders of science and nature. But this is precisely why I’m skeptical. It is too much like religion: it promises everything, delivers nothing (but hope) and is based almost entirely on faith in the future. And if Ettinger, Drexler and Merkle are the trinity of this scientistic sect, then F. M. Esfandiary is its Saul. Esfandiary, on the road to his personal Damascus, changed his name to FM-2030 (the number signifying his 100th birthday and the year nanotechnology is predicted to make cryonics successful) and declared, “I have no age. Am born and reborn every day. I intend to live forever. Barring an accident I probably will.”
Esfandiary forgot about cancer, a pancreatic form of which killed him on July 8, 2000. FM-2030 — or more precisely, his head — now resides in a vat of liquid nitrogen at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, but his legacy lives on among his fellow “transhumanists” (they have moved beyond human) and “extropians” (they are against entropy).
This is what I call “borderlands science,” because it dwells in that fuzzy region of claims that have yet to pass any tests but have some basis, however remote, in reality. It is not impossible for cryonics to succeed; it is just exceptionally unlikely. The rub in exploring the borderlands is finding that balance between being open-minded enough to accept radical new ideas but not so open-minded that your brains fall out. My credulity module is glad that some scientists are devoting themselves to the problem of mortality. My skepticism module, however, recognizes that transhumanistic-extropian cryonics is uncomfortably close to religion. I worry, as Matthew Arnold did in his 1852 poem “Hymn of Empedocles,” that we will
Feign a bliss
Of doubtful future date,
And while we dream on this
Lose all our present state,
And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose.
February 24th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
I probably agree, and I think you’re probably signed up, anyway. I probably will sign up too, because death is irrational and any bit away from 0% is exponentially further from the absoluteness of death.
August 5th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Michael Shermer’s criticism of cryonics purports to be
scientific, but it is based on ignorance of not only the
science used in cryonics, but of basic science.
Strawberries (and mammalian tissues) are not turned to
mush by freezing because water expands and crystallizes
inside the cells. Water crystallizes in the extracellular
space because more nucleators are found extracellularly.
As water crystallizes in the extracellular space, the
extracellular salt concentration increases causing cells
to lose water osmotically and shrink. Ultimately the cell
membranes are broken by crushing from extracellular ice
and/or high extracellular salt concentration.
The fact that Shermer does not know *why* freezing
strawberries turns them to mush is both an indicator of
his scientific ignorance and of his willingness to
pompously pose as an oracle of scientific authority
on the basis of his intuition rather than science.
Shermer has also unscientifically chosen to
criticize cryonics without first informing himself on
the subject — comparable to his ignorant speculation
about why freezing turns strawberries to mush. Cryonics
organizations use vitrification perfusion before
cooling to cryogenic temperatures. With good brain
perfusion, vitrification can reduce ice formation to
negligible amounts.
The careful reader will notice that Shermer does not
present anything other than the ill-conceived strawberry
argument as a scientific reason why cryonics cannot
work. All of the rest of what Shermer says is nonscientific,
and involves a considerable amount of name-calling:
“blindly optimistic faith”, “promises everything but
delivers nothing”, and “exceptionally unlikely” to work.
These are not arguments, they are unsupported assertions.
A scientist would recognize that.
In the space provided for “website” in the comments
form I have provided a link to the cryonics section of
my website. Those really interested in investigating
the science and technology behind cryonics should
look there.
August 5th, 2008 at 11:00 am
The link to the cryonics section of my website did
not get posted. It is:
http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/cryonics.html
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Excellent post Ben. You are absolutely correct that Shermer’s criticism is both unscientific and ignorant. I am in no way the greatest proponent of cryonics (though in theory, reanimation may one day be possible), but I can certainly recognize that this article is filled with bogus assertions.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:00 am
I’d like to just add that many who are signed up for cryonics do not “believe” that it will work. Quite the opposite, they feel it won’t matter to them either way as they’ll be dead, just a benefit if some sort of re-animation occurs, through bio-tech or nano-tech. Here is a link to a petition I started as I feel people have the right to choose cryonics as an end of life option, just as much as they have the right to choose cremation or burial. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/preserve-the-right-of-those-who-are-dying-to-choose-cryonics
.
By the way, I love Michael Shermer’s work and often use his talks or writings in my Unitarian Universalist Children’s Religious Education classes
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:08 am
I’m afraid Ben’s post comes off more as “nuh-uh” tactics than a compelling counterargument. His main objection is that Shermer uses an analogy to make a point. Imperfect but stimulating analogies have been trademarks of scientific communication (like most literary forms to actual communicate with a broad audience) from before the Greek and up until today. Worse, Ben isn’t even saying the core comparison of the analogy is wrong, just that the coded statement behind the analogy–ignoring the analogy’s true or false value–is explained imprecisely. Thus Ben’s argument becomes, “it doesn’t matter if you’re right because your proof lacks specificity.” I think for many, many people, actually being right likely matters more.
Shermer’s points about the limitations and the psychology of the cryonics movement go completely unaddressed. Really, outbursts like this seem to push his points because they wholly ignore the actual criticism. That, indeed, is a rhetorical choice that can be easily associated with apologists and ideologues.
April 29th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
The Michael above, is my husband Michael Trice
. I like what Michael Shermer had to say in his book “Why People Believe Weird Things” about cryonics, his piece in it on Immortality was positive in that it could happen someday. He is right that many take it too seriously, almost religious-like, but also many just live their lives enjoying their families and support extreme life extension “just in case” or are signed up for cryonics, as our family is–for that very small and mostly unlikely chance that it might work. Shermer is correct to say Cryonics’ biggest challenge is that it is not yet proven. That being said there is evidence that it might someday work (if society keeps advancing, the cryonics companies stay in business, etc.) the evidence is based on studies of mammalian brain preservation at cryogenic temperatures. http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/caseforcryonics.html Beyond that, there need to be a lot of advances in science to be able to re-animate a cryonicaly preserved person (or head), advances in nano-tech, bio-tech, or artificial general intelligence. Supporting Cryonics now though by being a member does help the research of how to better preserve and transport donor organs needed to help save lives now.
I support the view that cryonics should be an end of life option–to me it doesn’t matter either way, it will either work or not and I get to donate my body to science either way
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/preserve-the-right-of-those-who-are-dying-to-choose-cryonics
July 18th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Shannon,
Ben Best actually refutes very well Michael Shermer’s rather unscientific derision of cryonics and if “your Michael” is so unsupportive – I am not sure if I were you I would be linking the two of you. Especially if you are in favor of the right of those to choose Cryonics.
With frienes like these!
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:24 am
I am a great fan and admirer of Michael Shermer and will continue to be. I have also been signed-up as a cryonicist since 1985, and on reading this post by him, I am very disappointed. Not only has Michael taken an uninformed and cavalier approach in his criticism, as noted by Ben Best, but he sets up straw men for easy (though entertaining)ridicule.
Few if any cronicisits believe that “immortality is virtually certain”, and no cryonics organization promises any particular result (much less “everything”). The hallmarks of religion (dogma, moral code, tradition, etc.) are simply not part of cryonics, and, with few exceptions, cryonicist simply sign-up and go on with their lives, rather than losing “all our present state, And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose”.
Cryonicists do, indeed, look at astonishing scientific and technological progress such as the Wright brothers to Neil Armstrong, antibiotics, artificial hearts, the Internet, gene therapy, etc., with encouragement. A bigger problem with Michael’s commentary is that it fails to address at least two larger issues with which cryonicits must deal: (1) In current and future social and political environments, can cryonics organizations get it’s “patients” from now to then (i.e., maintain them is suspended state until “reanimation” is practical)? And (2) will one want to “live” in an unknown future world that could be anything from utopia to one in which you could be a slave, a scientific freak show, or a disembodied brain used for some unknown purpose, etc.
These are the issues about which I would like to see the kind of thoughtful, non-prejudicial discussion of which Michael Shermer is usually a part. For to quote Carl Sagan, one of Michael’s (and my) heroes, “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”